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Cube

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Everything posted by Cube

  1. Oh, no no no, it was much worse. You would do a full loop of one board, then when you reached "Go", you would move on to the "Go" of the next board. So the amount of spaces would be quadrupled.
  2. Monopoly: Star Trek Limited Edition Original Release: 2000 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game This is the same as The Next Generation Monopoly, but with an Original Series theme. It includes the rules for the “wormhole” mechanic where you set up the four Star Trek Monopoly boards (including the future Deep Space Nine and Voyager sets) as play across all four quadrants: TOS was alpha, TNG was beta, DS9 was gamma and Voyager was Delta. This essentially creates a tortuously long version of a game that is already far too long. The rules do state that “in the unlikely event that all four games aren’t released, play this with the available board”. The DS9 and Voyager versions were thankfully never released. Star Trek Trivia Game (Mattel) Original Release: 2000 Developer: Mattel Publisher: Mattel Platform: Board Game A trivia game with questions based on The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. You roll the dice and move through each “quadrant”, representing each show and answer questions based on the show you’re in. Questions have different themes, but the colour of the spaces is relevant to get the four peices you need to win the game. Star Trek: Invasion 2 Original Release: Pitched in 2000 Developer: Warthog Games Publisher: Activision Platform: PlayStation 2 Not played: Game was only in concept stage When development of Star Trek: Invasion was complete, a sequel for the PlayStation 2 was pitched to Activision, but they decided to not go along with it, so we just have a few bits of concept art. The plans for the sequel included 4 player co-op, some linear ground and aquatic missions, voice controls, large space battles and morphing ships. The four main characters would be human, Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars Original Release: 2001 Developer: Gizmo Publisher: Simon and Schuster Platform: PC Dominion Wars is a real time strategy game set during the Dominion Wars of Deep Space Nine. You command a fleet of 1-6 ships in fights against the Dominion and Cardassians. However, it’s not a real time strategy game like Armada, as there’s no base management or building new ships – you select your fleet at the start of each mission. Starfleet Command does something similar, but that has a massive depth of options and micromanagement while Dominion Wars has a few basic targeting options and not a lot more. This makes you feel quite disconnected with what it happening as you set up a few things and just let your ships do their thing. While the ships look good for the time, there’s also something lacking about the presentation of the game. You can pick characters like Sisko, Dax and Worf as captains, but other than a tiny portrait, it means nothing. There’s no voices or dialogue from them. Even when you’re controlling the Defiant, it doesn’t feel like it’s actually THE Defiant, just another generic ship. If you lose ships in a mission, the captains can still be selected like nothing has happened. I must admit that I didn’t get very far in the campaign. A few missions in, I was on a mission to rescue Thomas Riker (the transporter clone that joined the Marquis), who is suddenly so important that it’s worth losing ships and hundreds of lives over. I spent ages going up and down the map without much luck. I found some ships and scanned them and he wasn’t on those. I don’t know if it was a bug or I did something wrong – there isn’t much in the way of guides for the game. I did do a few skirmish matches. Dominion Wars isn’t really a bad game. The mechanics are fine. It’s just boring and lacking in extra touches. Star Trek: Away Team Original Release: 2001 Developer: Reflexive Publisher: Activision Platform: PC Away Team is an isometric strategy game, kind of like a real-time version of X-Com. You control a squad on board a ship called the NX Incursion – a small ship fitted with holoemitters that can disguise itself as other ships. Sadly, you don’t get to do anything with this cool ship, as you control a security squad on ground-based missions. That said, “control” might be a bit too strong of a word. The game is a really odd mixture of them not following instructions really well but also requiring too much control at the same time. One key thing about real time strategy games is AI – you give your units a task and they do it. However, this is nearly non-existent in Away Team. You can only order tour squad to move a short distance as they can’t figure out longer distances. This leads to some situations where you tell your squad to go somewhere and get the confirmation animation, only that half your squad was slightly out of range and stay behind while the rest leave. When you move as a group, there’s also zero formation, it’s like a group of kids walking around, not a highly trained elite squad. This extends to the shooting. Press the shoot button and your squad will stop and shoot directly there. They won’t carry on moving then shoot, and they won’t shoot while still moving either. So when your team is moving around the corner, you either have to let the person in front stand there and get shot, or shoot and have most of your team fire at a wall. I could understand if the game was designed for quick and precise aiming as a key element, but you can pause to fire at any time. The graphics are also frustrating. There’s a nice art style used, but the game is locked to a 640×480 resolution, which was tiny back then. The default zoom makes it hard to tell your team apart and zooming in just stretches the pixels, which is no help at all. The levels are a mixture of shooting through everything or being stealthy, the latter being handy as you can easily trick enemies into investigating something where there’s a wall in the way and they’ll just be confused by the wall. It’s a shame as the story itself is pretty decent, with a mysterious contagion that seems to be taking over the minds of high ranking officials in the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and even taking over Borg drones. Star Trek: Armada II Original Release: 2001 Developer: Mad Doc Software Publisher: Activision Platform: PC Expanding upon the first Armada, this game adds an extra dimension: you can now move up and down. It’s a bit fiddly to do (hold shift while moving the mouse) and when playing against the AI, it doesn’t really make any difference to the game. When playing against other players, you can use it to your advantage by hiding ships underneath other ships and hoping your opponents are using the default view. Armada 2 also has a fancy tactical camera. While you can play the game in this view, it’s a bit fiddly and more for admiring battles. There’s more resources to collect: on top of dilithium from asteroids, you’ll need heavy metals from planets and latinum from nebulae. Along with this is also trading with outposts. There are also more options for how your ships act, you can have them chase enemies over a long distance or let them flee, and how often they use their special abilities. On paper, Armada 2 sounds like it’s an improvement over the first, but something just feels…off. Battles against other ships are short, but bases seem much tougher. The singleplayer missions seem to really drag, many with you slowly whittling away at the enemy base with a load of ships, knowing you’ve won but waiting for the game to accept it. Ships also blow up much quicker, leading to massive squadrons of the top tier ships being a necessity. In the singleplayer campaign, you play though stories where the Federation fight the Borg, the Klingons fight Cardassians (with some Romulans) and the Borg build up their stranded forces and stopping species 8472. The Cardassians, Romulans and 8472 are playable, but only in skirmish. The story is quite basic, but there are some nice lines, particularly from Picard. Star Trek: Borg Assimilator Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 2001) Developer: Cyberlore Publisher: Activision Original Platform: PC Not played: No leaked prototypes. Borg Assimilator was an RTS game where you played as the Borg. In each of the 12 missions, you would have started with a few drones, building up your resources and assimilating enemies. Each mission would have you assimilating a new race, with the ultimate goal of getting the technology to produce an Omega Particle. If you complete these missions, you could then try to conquer the alpha quadrant in free mode. There would also be threats along the way, such as Species 8472, viruses and individuality. You played as the “hive” with a Borg Queen acting as your conduit. After announcing it, Activision ended up cancelling the game because “the game’s design did not reflect the established Star Trek universe”. The game was supposedly near completion at the time. Star Trek Online (Verant Interactive) Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 2001) Developer: Verant Interactive Publisher: Activision Original Platform: PS2, PC Not played: No leaked prototypes. An online RPG that was planned for the PlayStation 2 for PC. Not long after this was announced, the developer (Verant Interactive) decided to drop the game, citing a conflict of interest. They had got the licence to make a Star Wars game, which ended up being Star Wars Galaxies
  3. General Retro Discussion

    I remember having a VHS with that on, came with N64 magazine.
  4. Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Original Release: 2000 Developer: Raven Publisher: Activision Platform: PC 3 After a previous failed attempt, Voyager finally gets a video game: a first person shooter based on the Quake engine. You are part of an elite squad designed for dangerous situations called “Hazard Team”. During a training mission, Voyager gets attacked by an unknown ship and, upon the ship’s destruction, gets transported to a region of space full of dead ships with a dampening field that stops Voyager from moving. You play as Ensign Munro, second in command of Hazard Team, and get sent on missions to other ships, as well as defending Voyager itself. While using the Quake engine, the game is also inflected by Half-Life, with your Hazard Suit maintaining your health and recharging from ports on the wall. The suit also explains other FPS tropes in a way that fits the Star Trek uniforms. Most notably, your suit has a transporter buffer that can store all your weapons. The weapons are also fun to play with, using a mixture of starfleet designs and alien weapons, with starfleet weapons using power from your suit and alien weapons using crystals. This ammo mechanic also makes choosing weapons interesting – using the portable photon torpedo launcher consumes the same ammo as the phaser rifle. The ammo placement throughout weapons also encourages you to swap between starfleet and alien weapons rather than sticking to the same weapon. You also have a standard phaser as a backup (or quickly switching to in order to blow up objects without consuming ammo). There’s also a few puzzle and platforming sections, although I do with the Tricorder (found in the expansion) was given more of a use for this, as most puzzles are pushing switches. A few slower paced sections where you have to scan, learn an analyse stuff would enhance the game a lot – that said, it’s still a great game. The add-on (which now comes with the standard game) lets you explore a good chunk of Voyager, playing with some consoles and having fun in the holodeck (including a Captain Proton mission). It’s a really nice part of the game, and you can even blow up the ship or just shoot people. When you get “killed”, you get a brig scene, although the response is random, so I got 30 days in the brig for vaporising Chakotay. Elite Force isn’t just a great Star Trek game, it’s also a great FPS game. I definitely highly recommend this one. Star Trek: Invasion Original Release: 2000 Developer: Warthog Games Publisher: Activision Platform: PlayStation Star Trek Invasion is a space combat game developed for the PlayStation. Targeting a more casual audience than other Star Trek games, this game has you flying around in single-person fighters. As fighters aren’t a big thing in Star Trek, this game takes a lot of liberties with the franchise, as every race has suddenly started using fighters, including the Borg. These alien fighters have nice designs, as well as the starting Federation fighter. As you progress though the game, you’ll get new and upgraded fighters which…are quite ugly. That said, the game itself looks really nice, especially for the original PlayStation. Your ship is equipped with multiple kinds of phasers, so you can have “bullet style” ones or beam ones, although both are slow, so your targeting lock-on displays a marker ahead of enemy ships to show where you need to aim. You can twist, boost and move to the side. I found the controls to work really well and the gameplay is very enjoyable in short bursts, but unfortunately very repetitive if you’re playing though the whole game as there’s not much variety, mostly just blowing up ships. There are a couple of nice set pieces (including a Death Star II attack on a Borg Cube), but it’s mainly just blowing up other fighters. The story feels like a jumbled mess. While the opening cutscene shows a massive Borg invasion, this is a trivial part of the story, instead it focuses on a mysterious new alien species that have been accidentally awakened by a Federation ship. That said, the story itself jumps around different scenarios, with you dealing with Cardassians, then the Borg, then this new species. The levels don’t flow. In one mission you fight the borg in deep space, the next you protect the Typhon (the carrier ship that transports the fighters) because it has sustained damage in battle, but it’s suddenly falling into a star. The difficulty of the game also ramps up very quickly, with harsh time limits and some levels with infinitely respawning enemies. If you choose to play on easy difficulty (which still gets challenging), the game stops half way through, telling you to start the game from scratch at a higher difficulty level. On top of this, a lot of missions are hidden behind “secrets”, which the game gives you no hints about. These can be needing to have a certain accuracy rating or finding hidden objects and using the tractor beam on them. One of the secret missions unlocked in this manner is actually a requirement for the ending of the game – miss it and you’ll get a different one. Invasion is a lot of fun in short bursts, but doesn’t feel much like a Star Trek game – if it wasn’t for Worf being your commander, you would easily forget. Nintendo Mini Classics: Star Trek Original Release: 2000 Developer: Stadlbauer Publisher: Take 2 Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. This LCD game is a bit of an odd one. Austrian developer Stadlbauer got a license from Nintendo to sell LCD keychain games, starting with recreating Game & Watch games, but in a more Game Boy themed unit. They eventually got licenses to make new games based on franchises, and other publishers helped to publish them in various countries, resulting in different regions getting different Mini Classics games. The Star Trek games were published by Take 2 in Europe. The game itself is a space invaders-style shooting game, with you blowing up waves of Klingons. You can also adjust the intensity of your ship’s phasers, although they are your only weapons. Between waves, you also dodge objects as you travel through warp. Nintendo Mini Classics: Star Trek: The Next Generation Original Release: 2000 Developer: Stadlbauer Publisher: Take 2 Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. An LCD game similar to the Mini Classics based on The Original Series. This is a dual screen one and is the only Nintendo Mini Classics dual screen game that is an original game (the rest were Game & Watch games). The game starts on the bottom screen, with the Enterprise D fighting waves of Klingon ships, space invaders style, just like the other Mini Classics game (although you can’t adjust phasers). Once you’ve defeated a wave of Klingons, Worf will beam down to attack a Klingon base as he tries to free a prisoner. Your time is limited, as another wave of Klingon ships will eventually arrive, and you’ll need to finish the ground level before you can control the Enterprise D. Various listings on Wikis mention a “Single Screen” Nintendo Mini Classics of The Next Generation, but I can’t find any evidence of this actually existing. Star Trek: Voyager: Classified Advertising Materials Original Release: 2000 Developer: Paramount Publisher: Paramount Platform: PC This reference CD came up in my searches and I would presume that there are other ones like this for previous seasons, and perhaps even Deep Space Nine. This was not intended to be seen by consumers, but is a CD for press and advertisers. This disc is about the syndication of Season 6 of Voyager and included a lot of information on the show. There’s an episode guide with the full synopsis of every episode (similar to the TNG/DS9 Episode Guides), information on all the cast (including their personal backgrounds) and various other information on the show, including logos and photos. The disc also contained a couple of wallpapers and a screensaver that has a nice LCARS theme. It also came with an audio CD that contained versions of the main theme in different lengths plus a selection of audio clips. I think it’s quite interesting that instead of putting all this data on a CD and calling it a day, they made this program to do so. That said, you can still browse through all the files with Windows Explorer – the imagery is surprisingly high resolution and all the information is in pdf documents. I think it’s strange that they had all this information, yet never made a Voyager Companion. Star Trek Red Alert! Original Release: 2000 Developer: Matthew Colville, Darrell Hardy, Christian Moore, Christian T. Petersen Publisher: Last Unicorn Games Platform: Board Game This is a Star Trek themed version of a game called Diskwars, which also had themes based on Legend of the Five Rings and Warhammer. It is essentially a miniature war game, but using cardboard discs to keep the costs down and turn it into a collectible game with random packages (although a lot of the ships were sold in labelled packages). I’ve recreated enough for a basic scenario, a 1v1 Federation vs Cardassian match. Each ship has its own command panel, technology and crew. Each turn, you set up to three command orders out of the following: Change speed, change heading, raise shields, attack or activate a crew/tech disk. This does a good job at making it seem like you’re giving orders to crew rather than controlling a ship directly, especially as changing speed (which includes slowing down) and heading are separate actions. This makes manoeuvring your ships difficult, and two inexperienced players can potentially end up completely missing each other constantly. Red Alert has plenty of depth to it without needing an overly complicated rulebook. The game is easy to understand, but difficult to master. Tribbles Customizable Card Game Original Release: 1999 Developer: Tom Braunlich, Bill Martinson, Roland L. Tesh Publisher: Decipher Platform: Board Game This is sort of a standalone expansion to the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, yet also its own completely unique game at the same time. It’s compatible with Tribble cards from the CCG, but has it’s own rule set – one that’s a single page long. Tribbles is a bit like Uno in that the goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand by placing them in sequence order of 1, 10, 100, 1000 and 100000 Tribble cards. If you can’t go, you draw a card. Cards also have powers like skip, reverse or play another card. Each player starts with their own unique deck and over the course of the 5 matches, you can get rid of some card by adding them to a discard pile, which will then be removed for later matches. It’s a simple game, but also good fun. @Dcubed I think you'll love to know that there were some Star Trek LCD games in the late 2000 - with Nintendo branding, too.
  5. Finally has a release date. Also includes some animated shorts. They seem to have replaced the lives system with "coins", with classic versions still having lives. Edit: More detials: https://origins.sonicthehedgehog.com/ Looks like features are stupidly split across different versions/additional packs. Xbox pricing is live: Standard: £32.99 Deluxe: £36.98 Deluxe has extra animations on the menu and extra remastered music. Some other features (part of the regular game) - Mission Mode (objectives to complete on levels). Extra hard missions in deluxe version - Boss Rush mode Coins are in-game currency, looks like Mirror Mode can be unlocked using them (but automatically unlocked with a pre-order), no idea what else its used for.
  6. Sonic Origins (23rd June)

    Knuckles Chaotix really deserves a re-release with Sonic and Tails added. Sonic is essentially already in the game (when he was removed, he was replaced with Mighty, who functions the same) and the code for Tails is also in the game (loading it works, but with a messed up sprite). They could even do a HD Mean Bean Machine - a lot of the sprites were redone for Sonic Mania anyway, they could even add in the extra mode from the Master System version. Also, when they throw in the Game Gear games like this, they don't even look to see which versions have better Master System versions.
  7. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

    I'm still messing up the controls a bit, but not as much. I've done two temples (Rito, Zora) and a bunch of side quests, enjoying it a lot. I like how they've managed to make the world feel new. It's nice to see themed temples, but they're unfortunately a bit short and easy - the path to them is a much bigger challenge. I've bought a house and the building does some nice things, but it's also short in a lot of ways. There's no windows and walls you don't complete just leave a massive wall (I was expecting it to fill in). A few layout options for each section would also be nice, as well as changing the colour of the outside (like every other Hudson house in the game). That said said, I'm pleased at what I've been able to do with the limited options. I do have one question
  8. General Retro Discussion

    I've already organised James Bond games for my next playthrough of stuff, but I'm enjoying doing them all so much that I'm considering a bigger project: Nintendo 64 games. There's loads I remember reading about but never got to play. I am after some advice regarding doing it. First of all, I won't be fully playing every single game, but I will be giving them a good go (potentially using cheats if absolutely necessary, but only as a last resort). I'm not sure that all the Japanese only games have a fan translation, for example. For some games, I'm thinking of playing through the best version of the game I can find. Examples include the Rare Replay versions of Rare games, 3DS versions of Zelda/Star Fox and some PC versions, plus Widescreen mods where possible. My rules for this would be that the content can't be significantly different (DS version of Mario would be too big a change, but the 360 version of Perfect Dark would be fine as it's the same game with nicer graphics) and still retain the N64 "feeling". I'll still play a little bit of the N64 version for a general feeling. For order, I think sorting games by their earliest release of any region is best as Wikipedia has this data in an easy to sort way. The only cancelled games I'll be covering will be those with playable prototypes, added in based on the date of the prototype. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. This will be a long way off, but I figured best to start preparing early.
  9. Star Trek (Game Boy Color) Original Release: N/A (Pitched in 1999) Developer: Aqua Pacific Publisher: N/A Original Platform: Game Boy Color This demo was probably just a pitch for a Star Trek game, submitted to CBS/Paramount but never approved for development. It’s a vertical scrolling shooter where you pilot a Klingon Bird of Prey and alternate between shooting asteroids and what looks like Romulan Scout Ships. The playable prototype is clearly very early, as while you can blow things up, you suffer no damage from anything. I can see the people in charge of the Star Trek license at the time wanting something a bit more substantial. Star Trek: Armada Original Release: 2000 Developer: Activision Publisher: Activision Platform: PC A real time strategy game set after the Dominion war. The story starts with the Enterprise E dealing with Dominion stragglers that refuse to accept that the war is over when a ship from the future comes and warns Picard that the Borg are about to launch a large scale invasion led by Locutus. At the same time, infighting starts out with the Klingons and Romulans – if this doesn’t stop, the alpha quadrant is doomed. Armada is a fairly basic RTS game. Each playable faction -the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Borg – plays almost identically as they all have the same stations and types of ships, they just look different and have slightly different abilities. Building your forces is the same for all of them, although it does make them more balanced against each other, even if it means a Borg Cube is on par with a Sovereign class ship. The main unique element of Armada is crew. Each ship has its own crew, and the number drops down in battles and become less effective. You can also transport your crew to other ships. Derelict ships can be scattered around to take over, and you can even gain control of enemy ships. It’s a really nice mechanic, even if everyone breeds at an alarming rate. The missions in the story mode have thought out some interesting scenarios to play, which keeps things varied. Some are about defending, some are building up forces to attack, while some have more unique objectives. There’s one where you start off with just a Defiant class ship and need to navigate a maze of asteroid while being chased by far more powerful ships, using derelict ships as cannon fodder to reach the end of the maze. The game looks very nice, and there are some interesting cutscenes throughout the campaign. It makes things less realistic to make the game much more fun to play – like the layouts of the maps, which manage to remain interesting even though they’re in space. While basic, it’s a lot of fun. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen Original Release: 2000 Developer: The Collective Publisher: Simon and Schuster Platform: PC A third person shooter set sometime in season 6 of Deep Space Nine. Most of the main characters are involved, with three playable: Sisko, Kira and Worf. Unfortunately, not all the cast is here, with Avery Brooks and Colm Meaney not returning. The voice actor for Sisko isn’t too bad (although still noticeable), while O’Brien is someone doing a very bad Irish accent. That said, the story is really good. The new alien race, the Grigari are introduced in a spooky manner. They have shielding that needs scanning so you can modulate your phaser to the right frequency, and there’s some nice locations that you visit. The ploy revolves around Pah-Wraith orbs after some Cardassian bodies from a failed experiment are discovered. While the gameplay is mainly shooting, the tricorder is used well for scanning enemies, looking for hazards and solving puzzles. It help keeps the game feeling like it belongs in Star Trek. The shooting mechanics and weapons are quite fun too, and the game plays really well mapped to a controller (using external software). There’s also some rudimentary platforming, which works well enough. It’s a very fun game. My favourite mission involves investigating a crashed Miranda class starship. Even with the old graphics, climbing up a cliff and seeing the ship is a wonderful sight, and you even get to fight on top of it and explore inside. You also get to explore parts of the Defiant and between each mission, explore parts of Deep Space Nine, talking to the main cast and some recurring characters, including Garak. That said, some character’s faces are really not done well – I thought Jazdia Dax was Odo when I first saw her. Worf and the Cardassians look much better than the humans in this game. You can also play through the game as Kira and Worf. Kira has a unique mission on Bajor, but misses out on the crashed Miranda ship. You play though the same levels, but take different routes and have different objectives (although some sections are still completely the same). Kira plays the same as Sisko, while Worf lacks a phaser (which also means no forcefields to bypass) so if you don’t have ammo, you need to get up close and personal with a Bat’leth. Deep Space Nine: The Fallen is a really fun game, I definitely recommend this one. Star Trek: ConQuest Online Original Release: 2000 Developer: Genetic Anomalies Publisher: Activision Platform: PC Unfortunately, I can’t get the full experience of this game as it’s an online focused game and the servers are down. That said, you can still play the tutorial and battle against an AI, just without the full features of the game, so I can at least get a taste of what the game is. ConQuest is some kind of digital board game where you play as a Q battling other Q using pieces from the galaxy. Each turn goes through phases where you plan your actions, which then occur at the same time as your opponent. The deploy phase is where you bring in more pieces from your collection: these can be personnel, ships or items that can be attached to them. The next phase is combat. If you have ships/people in the same place at others, you can fight. However, any attacking ships can not defend. The last phase is the movement phase, where you use the actions of your pieces, which is mainly beaming people to/from planets and ships, the planets being key to victory. The map will have your planet, the opponent’s planet and then 1 or 3 planets in the “Neutral Zone”. You need influence to control these planets, which generate control points to spend on bringing new pieces into the game. The overall objective is to trap the enemy Q on a planet you control for one turn. There’s also a more advanced game which adds some more steps and changes the objective. The first new step is the auction phase, which is where events come into play. For good events, you take turns bidding. For negative events, you both bid in secret. There’s also a “Special” phase where you use the bonus abilities of characters – the Borg Queen, for example can assimilate opponent pieces. You can also generate more control points to spend next turn or generate Q points. These Q points are the path to victory in the advanced game. ConQuest Online is a well thought out strategy game and it’s a shame that the game is server dependant and doesn’t allow for setting up your own matches. It also means that you are stuck with just using the starter Federation pieces when playing against the AI – you can’t get more pieces or the packs from the other factions. Star Trek: Klingon Academy Original Release: 2000 Developer: 14 Degrees East Publisher: Interplay Platform: PC Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully enjoy the full extinct of this game due to my colourblindness. The interface colours, while fitting in with the Klingon style, makes it almost impossible for me to read any of the words in the HUD. Even lowering the resolution to make the HUD appear larger didn’t help, so I had to refer to the manual for the list of button presses I needed for the interface system in order to play. Klingon Academy a follow on from Starfleet Academy, with similar gameplay. The bridge view is removed, instead offering a first person or third person view of the ship. While it was nice to look at, it was better playing in the first person view anyway. Klingon Academy introduces a “Verbal Orders System”, which uses all the number keys to give a large list of commands, requiring 3 or 4 button presses. It’s not very easy to do while in the middle of combat using a joystick to fly around. You can order your helm officer to fly, but they’ll crash the ship. It’s a shame as there’s a lot of advanced tactics buried deep in this system. You can send marines to capture enemy ships overload shields and weapons for a short boost but risking damage and subsystem targeting – this feature would be better refined in Bridge Commanded, aided by your officers not being awful at piloting the ship. The piloting issues also extend to the enemy. While Klingons are known for ramming as a last resort, the Federation (well, simulated Federation) in this seem to love it, with collisions running a lot of missions. You have even more options available to you by using nearby phenomena such as gas giants and planetary rings to your advantage. It’s a shame that there’s so much depth, yet most battles end up slowly pummelling each other while circling close with you trying to avoid getting rammed. Throughout the game you’ll be treated to a ton of live action clips starring Christopher Plummer and David Warner as Chang and Gorkon, who do a wonderful job and the game gives a great insight into Klingons, as well as serving as a prequel to The Undiscovered Country. There’s a lot to like about Klingon Academy, it’s just a shame about the interface and enemy AI. Star Trek: New Worlds Original Release: 2000 Developer: 14 Degrees East Publisher: Interplay Platform: PC A few months after Star Trek Armada came out, we got another real time strategy game set in the Star Trek universe. This is a more traditional ground based one similar to Command & Conquer. Star Trek isn’t exactly known for large scale ground combat, so this takes a lot of liberties. It’s set in a new solar system thar suddenly appeared after a Romulan’s weapons test went wrong. As the location happens to be on an intersection of Federation, Klingon and Romulan territory, it’s a good opportunity for them to colonise this new world and kill each other for its resources. You eventually encounter a race that already lives on the planet, so you kill them, too. With all these random ground vehicles, recognisable Star Trek elements and designs are few and far between. The best thing about this game is the camera. There’s a lot of options for moving the camera around and looking at the fully 3D landscape. It seems odd to praise a camera, but I’m having a hard time thinking of other good things to say about this game, other than the opening and ending FMV cutscenes. The gameplay is extremely tedious. One major RTS element this game throws out is the fog of war system. You can see the landscape of the whole area, but can only see objects near your units. This means that you have absolutely no idea which parts of the map you have previously explored. Units are also very slow at responding and it can take minutes for them to travel where they need to go. This game really needed speed options due to how long everything takes. To make matters worse, these very long missions have to be completed in one go, as there’s no save feature at all – only which missions you’ve unlocked. There are also six different resources to manage, as well as moving officers to locations to complete objectives. Star Trek: Starfleet Command II: Empires at War Original Release: 2000 Developer: Taldren Publisher: Interplay Platform: PC Version played: Orion Pirates v2.564 In order to get this to work, I had to play a version of the standalone expansion Orion Pirates, released in 2001. This version has all the content from the base game added, but also some graphical enhancements – but the important thing is that it’s still the original gameplay. For the most part, it’s the same game as the first. People who know the game extremely well will probably notice various balance changes and additional features, but the game is so in depth that it’s still beyond my understanding. The second game does introduce some new races (including one originally created for the Star Fleet Battles board game) and a new campaign mode. In the campaign mode, you explore hex tiles until you encounter missions, some are optional while others you must play before moving on. It all looks very impressive, with different hubs for your race and other races, ships moving around and races that are allied with you, but almost all of this is fluff to make it appear interesting and doesn’t impact the game: you just move around and encounter random missions. For people who like the depth of the combat in this, this version is definitely a really good version to play. You can pick scenarios, modify them or accept the campaign for what it is and have fun with the random missions. Star Trek: Starship Creator Warp II Original Release: 2000 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC This is an updated version of the first Starship Creator. It includes some of the ships from the first game with only one new addition: a Klingon Bird of Prey. In this version, you can set your 5 digit prefix code. That’s pretty much it for the ship creator side of things. This version does come with a lot more missions to complete, along with a way to create your own missions. Although this is the most boring part of the game and is only there to run in the background to slowly get more credits to spend on ship part and crew.
  10. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

    Got this for father's Day, started playing last night, just reached the surface. I like the new powers and navigating the sky map takes a lot more thought. The building is a bit fiddly but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I keep wanting to use the ABXY buttons to rotate whole holding R, it just feels more natural, and I keep throwing weapons instead of rotating. That said, I haven't properly used the Switch in over a year, so hopefully I'll get more used (I just find they due to different control methods, the switch buttons aren't memorable). The ascened is an interesting power, one I'm going to forget about a lot before realising I can use it for puzzles (I've even already done it), but again, it's getting used to it more. Really enjoying it so far despite the fiddlyness.
  11. Star Trek: Starfleet Command Original Release: 1999 Developer: Quicksilver / 14 Degrees East Publisher: Interplay Platform: PC This ship combat game is based on the board game Star Fleet Battles (which licensed designs from Star Trek but is officially not Star Trek). This game has a lot to it. There are six races: Federation, Klingon, Romulans, Gorn, Lyran and Hydran, each with their own ships and campaign – every faction even has its own unique HUD and menu interface, a lot of effort clearly went into this game. The same is true with the gameplay itself, there’s an immense amount of depth, so much you can do with how the weapons work, power distribution, using the transporter in offensive ways, having shuttles help you in combat and so much more. For someone who wants to feel like they’re fully managing a ship on their own, this is the kind of game for them. I personally did not enjoy it at all, with everything feeling extremely slow and sluggish, with battles feeling like endurance tests of not getting bored. It’s not the game’s fault, really. It does what it sets out to do and does it well, it just really isn’t my kind of thing. Star Trek: Hidden Evil Original Release: 1999 Developer: Presto Publisher: Activision Platform: PC This was the first one that was a nightmare to get running. Even though it’s on GoG, it requires audio hardware acceleration to be turned off, which isn’t an option on Windows 11. In the end, I had to install Windows 10 on a partition to get it working. Was it worth it? Definitely not. Hidden Evil starts out quite promising. You play as Ensign Sovok, a human that was raised by Vulcans and is the first human to have mastered the Vulcan neck pinch (which you use in the stealth sections of the game). He serves on a station near Ba’ku, that has discovered ancient ruins near where the Son’a are settling, and they have requested Picard to look into it. Leaving the Enterprise E and everyone but Data behind Picard has Sovok take him to Ba’ku to investigate, although the Son’a soon start a rebellion. The game is played form a stationary camera. The controls aren’t as bad as I expected, and worked well when mapped to a controller. Aiming isn’t easy, so you’ll just flail and spam the shoot button until you hit something. There’s a few basic puzzles, but most of the game is just roaming around, occasionally shooting things. There’s a lot of pointless back and forth and padding to the game – which is astonishing for a game that is shorter than Insurrection. The plot starts to pick up when you discover one of the ancient beings: one of the aliens from The Chase. Then, just as things get interesting, she’s immediately disposed of and instead the real villain is revealed: a big organic blob that spews out insect soldiers. Given time, this thing could overrun the entire galaxy. Romulans take her and then you have two really boring missions aimlessly roaming corridors on a Romulan space station and the Enterprise E – somehow they made exploring the Enterprise boring (also, only Picard and Data still talk to you on the Enterprise). Hidden Evil feels like a game that had big plans, but the developers didn’t have the budget to do what they want. As a result, it feels like they gave up on their own story half way through this short game. Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion Original Release: 1999 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC The interface of this is the same as the Encyclopaedia. This has information on every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, including background information and the complete script for each episode. There is also a trailer for all episodes. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion Original Release: 1999 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC The interface of this is the same as the Encyclopaedia. This has information on every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, including background information and the complete script for each episode. There is also a trailer for all episodes. Star Trek: Trivia Challenge Original Release: 1999 Developer: Sound Source Publisher: Sound Source Platform: PC The sequel to Star Trek: The Game Show, this is worse in every possible way. John De Lancie as Q is gone as the host, and we instead have an extremely obnoxious guy that comes off as a bit creepy and very annoying. Deep Space Nine and Voyager have also been ditched. You can choose to have a quiz about The Original Series, The Next Generation or play a round of both. In each round, you have four questions in four categories. Half of the categories are puns which often don’t make sense. The questions, as well as the possible answers, often feel rather immature – there are multiple questions about the “Red Shirts always die” joke (with the “correct” answer being a joke rather than an actual event) and a surprising number of questions include sexist remarks towards women, including one where you are asked what Uhura would do if you whispered the Swahili phrase “sisi ngono” in her ear. It essentially means “let’s have sex” with the answer being Uhura laughing and giving you a friendly slap. While The Game Show is a lot of fun, this one is really not worth playing at all. UNO: Star Trek Original Release: 1999 Developer: Jim Keifer Publisher: Mattel Platform: Board Game The popular game Uno where you’re trying to get rid of all your cards. This plays the same as the traditional Uno, but it has four unique wild cards. Mind Meld lets you look at the next player’s hand, Live Long and Prosper lets you discard your entire hand and draw the same number of cards, Beam Me Up, Scotty can cancel the impact a card has on you and Double Tribble forces the next player to double the number of cards in their hand. There was a second version of this released by Fundex, which only had the “Beam Me Up” extra wild card. Star Trek Adventure: Serie Classica Original Release: 1999 Developer: Jim Keifer Publisher: Mattel Platform: Board Game Not played: Very little information available. This game had a lot of ambition. It licensed all Trek shows, but despite having Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway on the box, is focused entirely on The Original Series. You can play as either the Federation, Klingons, Gorn or Romulans with the main game focusing on an away mission, where you will face lots of dangers, overcome tests and fight enemies, but your ship will still have to face dangers of its own. It looks like a very in depth board game, but there’s no way to know with the information available on the internet. Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 1999) Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Original Platform: PC Not played: No leaked prototypes. A point and click adventure game that boasted some very interesting graphics. It featured the whole cast from The Original Series (although due to declining health, Maurice LaMarche took over from DeForest Kelly part way through development). It was going to have six chapters, each focusing on a different member of the crew with an interconnected plot. It revolved around peace talks on Vulcan between them and Romulans, with the Romulan ambassador being murdered. There are a few videos of cutscenes and a couple of trailers, but this YouTube video shows how the game would have played: I've also recently discovered some old online browser games, so I'm posting them out of order. Star Trek: First Contact: Battle The Borg Original Release: 1996 Developer: StarTrek.com Publisher: StarTrek.com Platform: Shockwave I could only play a demo of this browser game, but the full game is probably more of the same thing, just with different map layouts or more Borg. You roam through the corridors of the Enterprise E, shooting Borg. After every shot, you need to remodulate phasers. The game is made of pre-rendered backgrounds, so turning will “snap” to the direction. There are a few side routes to explore, although if you play the game properly you won’t get to see much, as the game ends when you’ve killed a small number of Borg. You can just run past them to see the full “map”, which consists of a few small sections that repeat endlessly. For a quick distraction online, it’s not the worst game. Namadra V Corridor Original Release: 1997 Developer: StarTrek.com Publisher: StarTrek.com Platform: Shockwave This Shockwave game from the Star Trek website puts you in the role of a Starfleet Academy Cadet tasked with completing a simulation where your ship is trapped in the deadly Namadra V Corridor. Not only are Klingons trying to attack you, but parts of the corridor will wear down your shields and hull. You need to get to the end of the corridor across different difficulty levels. To move, you must press one of the six directions and set how many hexes to move (although it’s quicker to press “engage” multiple times than set a number). You want to try and stay in empty space as much as possible, but may have to go through some blue tiles (which zap your shields) – but stay away from the red ones as they’ll blow you up. You can also fire a probe in any direction which will reveal tiles until it reaches an obstacle. It’s a very simple game that’s a bit annoying to control, but is fun for what it is. This game (and the whole Star Trek website) was initially exclusive people that used MSN as their internet provider. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Odo’s Investigation Original Release: 1997 Developer: StarTrek.com Publisher: StarTrek.com Platform: Shockwave This Shockwave game from the Star Trek website is a holodeck simulation to test your detective skills. You have 30 minutes to solve a crime by asking witnesses around the station followed by asking the three suspects a total of four questions between them. Every time you change location, it takes 2 minutes, then talking to a witness takes 4 minutes. Unless you get lucky, you won’t be able to solve in on your first try as you need to find the one witness that disagrees with a question later on. Witnesses are also in different locations each time, so you need to remember who you talked to. That said, even though Odo tells you off for accusing with no evidence if you get the suspect wrong, you don’t actually need to encounter the key witness for a correct answer, so you can get it right by random choice. You can even skip straight to accusing without talking to any witnesses. Of course, this ruins the game, but I imagine people did it to submit high scores after they had played. There are three different scenarios in this, although instead of progressing through them, the scenario is picked randomly at the start.
  12. General Retro Discussion

    https://grimacesbirthday.com/ This McDonald's browser game is slightly more than it initially looks. It looks a bit like it's trying to be a Game Boy Colour game...but it actually is one. It's a brand new GBC game running in an emulator. People have managed to extract the ROM and it works on actual hardware, too.
  13. Sonic Superstars

    Looks interesting, hopefully coop doesn't make the levels too empty when playing alone. It's a bit random how a new Sonic and Star Trek gane were both announced on the same day.
  14. Star Trek: Starship Creator Original Release: 1998 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC This game lets you create your own starships. You start off with a popular starship class, such as Constitution, Galaxy, Intrepid or Defiant and then modify it in phases. The first phase is appearance, letting you toggle between different nacelles, hulls and saucers. Next up is the name, followed by internal systems that affect the stats. One you’ve built a ship, you can send it on missions. The missions are fully automatic, so you just sit back and watch your creation at work (or put it in “stealth” mode and do something else). While quite limited, it’s nice to see your creations flying around. I focused on three ships: the first was a Constitution class USS USS Columbia (I didn’t realise it automatically added the USS part), designed to look like a Constitution mixed with the NX class. Then a really silly looking Defiant, the Potato class USS Spud. Finally, a really cool looking Intrepid I called the USS Pathfinder. Monopoly: Star Trek The Next Generation Original Release: 1998 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game A Star Trek: The Next Generation themed version of Monopoly. These versions of Monopoly don’t do anything with the actual theme, it’s just the basic game with different pictures and player pieces. If you’ve played one licences Monopoly, you’ve played them all (other a small amount of special ones). Monopoly is a terrible roll-and-move trading game. The mechanics were originally designed with a runaway winner in mind to demonstrate how bad landlords are, only for the game to be stolen by someone else and mass produced. The game is also often made worse by people incorporating “house rules”, such as putting fine/tax money under “free parking” – something that just makes the game drag even longer. Almost everything you do is determined by rolling two dice. For the first few turns round the board, there is property you can either buy or send to auction (a rule most people forget) and the it’s the case of trying not to land on ren, although as it’s all dice based, there’s to tactics for doing so, other than not paying to leave jail early (it’s actually beneficial to stay in jail). There’s also a lot of negotiating and trading properties with other players to try and create sets. In order to buy houses and hotels. This version of Monopoly had something special promised: if you linked all four planned versions of Star Trek Monopoly, you can link them together via the wormhole in the corner of the board, but only one of these versions existed and it’s still just Monopoly, just one that drags on even more. Star Trek Deep Space Nine & The Next Generation: The Board Game Original Release: 1998 Developer: Component Game Systems Publisher: Component Game Systems Platform: Board Game While the names suggest that these are different games, they’re part of the same system and are compatible with each other. These are the “Core Sets”, with plans for releasing additional starter kids (new factions) and reinforcement packs. The system for these games is called the “Component Games System” and was initially made for Babylon 5: The Board Game (which seems like it was quite popular), before expanding into more franchises. The company shut down shortly after the Star Trek core sets were released, so none of the additional stuff was made. I do find the names of the games odd as they send the message that these are just basic individual cheap tie-in games. It needed a subtitle to indicate that they’re part of the same system. The game itself is a 4x game. A turn consists of the following: bookkeeping (checking victory, gaining money, paying for repairs), building new ships and bases, moving then combat. It seems like a fairly typical game of the genre. There are different scenarios to choose from in the form of different map layouts, either a singular map or, if you want a proper DS9 experience, you can set up the gamma quadrant separately, using the wormhole to move between maps. For testing it out, I could only find images of a limited amount of pieces, but was able to put together a small 2-player Maquis Vs Dominion game (and even then, I had to borrow a few map tiles from the imagery of the Babylon 5 game – the games use the same rules so you could probably combine them). The game is fine, but doesn’t really do anything special with the genre. Star Trek: Insurrection: Son’a Ambush Adventure Original Release: 1998 Developer: Last Unicorn Games Publisher: Last Unicorn Games Platform: Board Game This board game was given out with Issue Inquest Games Magazine #46 (February 1999), and utilises the simple combat system from Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game. The goal of the game is to get at least one Ba’ku to the cave (although I added the extra challenge of seeing how many you can rescue). Drones will try to capture the Ba’ku while Son’a soldiers will attack the Enterprise crew (Picard, Data, Crusher, Worf and Troi). More drones appear at the end of each turn (which can be very dangerous, as if they land on a crew member, the crew member is lost), with three soldiers appearing on turn three. You can only shoot at enemies one or to spaces away. Each crew member rolls a different number of dice (although onl the highest number is counted). The default you need to hit is an 8 for one square away or 10 for two squares away, you can also fire at additional targets, each one adding to the score you need to hit. The character’s phaser skill is added to the roll. One dice is the “Drama” dice. If this lands on a 6, you use both that and the next highest roll. Everything is mostly down to Data, with Worf backing him up. If you can get them to be the main wall between the drones and the Ba’ku, you’re set, with Picard, Troi and Crusher getting any stragglers. I ended up getting all but one of the Ba’ku to the cave on my first try, with the very start of the game being the most difficult part. If you lose Data early on, you pretty much have no chance at stopping the drones from taking all of the Ba’ku. Durotta Original Release: 1991 (appeared in Star Trek in 1998) Developer: Blaise Muller Publisher: Gigamic Original Platform: Board Game Durotta is what the game Quarto will be called in the 24th century. Based on the Voyager Season 5 opening episode “Night”, with Tom Paris opening the game with the “Novakovich gambit”. The object of Durotta is to place a piece in order to form a line of 4 with a single matching characteristic. These characteristics are: Tall/Short, Round/Square, Light/Dark and Full/Hollow. As long as one characteristic is consistent across 4 in a row, you’ll win. For example: if you place a tall piece to form a row of four tall pieces, you win, even if they are all a mixture of light and dark. What makes the game special is that you don’t choose what piece you play: your opponent does, which makes the game incredibly strategic as you have to think about what moves your opponent can make when deciding what piece to hand them, but also keep an eye on the remaining pieces when placing one as you don’t want to force yourself to give your opponent the winning piece. We see Tom and B’elanna passing each other the pieces, so it seems like they were following the actual rules of the game (even if they made up names for moves). I only tried this game because of it’s appearance in Voyager, but I really love it. It’s a brilliant game, and the mini version (the one I got) is nice and portable – it also looks fantastic and makes for a great display piece. Star Trek First Contact: Aftermath Original Release: N/A (In development 1998) Developer: MicroProse Publisher: MicroProse Original Platform: PC Not played: No leaked prototypes. After making the Generations game, MicroProse set to work on a game for First Contact. Instead of retelling the events of the film, they opted to make a direct sequel: the Borg Queen had managed to copy her brain to the Enterprise’s computer, and the Enterprise kept some of the Borg (for either study, release or prisoners, it’s not clear). A few months after First Contact, this copy of the queen takes control of the Borg on the ship and starts assimilating. The whole game would have been set on the Enterprise E (although from the screenshots, the holodeck was also used), with parts of the game being random to encourage replayability. You directly controlled all 7 of the main cast, swapping between them at will. You could also give them tasks, such as researching technology to stop the Borg.. There was an additional tactical interface where you order around 49 other crewmembers. The game itself would have taken around 5 hours for a successful campaign, although from the sounds of the game I would imagine some playthroughs might get to a point where beating the Borg would be impossible (due to bad planning), requiring a restart. It sounded like an interesting idea, but was cancelled when a deal with Activision was made for Star Trek games. Star Trek: Birth of The Federation Original Release: 1999 Developer: MicroProse Publisher: Hasbro Interactive Platform: PC Birth of the Federation is a turn based 4x strategy game (think of a turn-based Stellaris). You can play as the Federation (although it’s just humans), Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians of Ferrengi. My first attempt ended in tragedy my science ship was lost to a neutron star pretty much straight away, then a major accident happened at another colony and I seemed to not have the dilithium required to build more. I used the game to learn the other parts of the game ready for the next game. The start of the game is all about colonising systems, sustaining them (either manually or using the handy auto builder). Spacedocks are the most important element as they expand your reach, letting you colonise more star systems. Once you encounter other races, you can offer messages of peace, friendship, give gifts, demand goods or declare war. Unfortunately, the diplomacy is the weakest element. With the major races, it’s pretty much buying time before war, while with minor races if you’re lucky or throw enough money at them, you can get a system and possibly a couple of ships added to your faction as they join you. There are two game types: control 60% of the galaxy or wipe out two factions that are set as your rivals. At some point, you’re going to need to take over systems owned by other factions, and you can only do so by wiping out all life in the system, which seems a bit overboard. This will anger other factions, so the game seems to be building up your recourses and ships enough to take on everyone near the end. The final part of the games (either winning or losing) seems anti-climatic, as it seems to be having a fleet bomb a defenceless planet. Ship battles can be fought though a turn-based tactical screen, with some tactics working well over others. It mainly comes down to having more and better ships, though. Birth of a Federation has a lot of depth, and I suspect would have been great when it came out. The genre has evolved a lot since then, so I wouldn’t recommend it now.
  15. Star Trek: Generations Original Release: 1997 Developer: MicroProse Publisher: MicroProse Platform: PC This game is definitely intriguing. It very loosely follows the story of Star Trek Generations, with Soren trying to destroy stars in order to change the path of the mysterious energy ribbon called the Nexus. In this game, Soren needs to destroy multiple starts to get what he wants, and you need to stop him – you can even prevent him from destroying the Amargosa star. Most of the game is played in a first person view. The controls definitely feel very dated, but are one of the things that makes the game interesting. The directional buttons move forward/backwards and turns while the mouse aims the cursor. On the bottom of the screen, you control your inventory, scanning and map. The big square in the middle will show you objects you can interact with when you get close to them, which is a really nice touch. On the top of the screen, your phaser will aim at that part of the screen. It’s very different to the first person controls we’re used to now. In these levels you’ll shoot through enemies and solve puzzles. Sometimes, you’ll even beam down in disguise and can do a lot before you have to resort to shooting. The graphics are extremely charming and are surprisingly nice to look at. When you get hurt a lot, you’ll be beamed up and the mission will have failed – however, you can fail a few missions before you lose the game. Between missions, you’ll use Stellar Cartography to scan planets and stars in order to work out where you next have to go. You’ll also sometimes encounter enemy ships and use a pretty poor interface to fight them with. All the good parts are in the missions. The missions are quite interesting. One has you infiltrate a Romulan base as Troi, one involves Crusher investigating a living planet and fighting giant antibodies (it reminds me a bit of the Voyager episode “Macrocosm” and the Chodak from Future’s Past/Final Unity even pop up. Eventually, you’ll reach Veridian III. As Geordi is never captured in this game, things play out differently. Picard ends up in the Nexus (which is just a flashing blank screen as he asks Kirk for help), then Kirk delays Soren and falls off a bridge. Soren then beams to the Enterprise and initiates a warp core overload. After separating the saucer, Picard beams to the stardrive section and stops Soren from destroying the saucer (although he does enough damage that it has to crash land) before finding an escape pod with a sleeping Spot and watching the stardrive section blow up in a very impressive cutscene that looks like it’s actually using the studio models. Although that’s not the only ending – you can actually fully defeat Soren. He brings a large fleet with him to Veridian III, but if you manage to disable his ship, he’ll self-destruct. The Enterprise D warps off unscathed and Kirk will still be in the Nexus. Star Trek: Captain’s Chair Original Release: 1997 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC Another interactive CD-ROM, this time focusing on the bridges of the original Enterprise, Enterprise D, Defiant, Voyager and Enterprise E (plus a hidden Klingon Bird of Prey bridge). Each bridge has a lot of locations to view from (in 360 degrees) and you can zoom into every single panel on the bridge. Some of them have buttons you can press, and even a couple of simple games. Sulu, Worf, Sisko, Janeway and Riker all give tours of the bridges, talking about each station. Janeway’s tour is the most fascinating, as it’s written from the perspective of before the ship launched, so the only other character mentioned is Harry Kim (none of the other people officially assigned to Voyager are part of the main cast). It’s also referred to “The Voyager” a lot, which sounds odd. Kotra Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1997 Developer: Abayomi, Dean Jones Publisher: Self-Published Original Platform: Board Game A Cardassian board game seen in the DS9 episode “Empok Nor”, a game about “about bold strategy and decisive action” according to Garak. I manged to find some rules on DeviantArt and have made a few changes to them myself. When you attack an opponent piece, you have to attack it with a piece that is the same or higher rank, or else you’ll use yours. The key thing, however, is that you can’t see what ranks any of the pieces are as they’re printed on the bottom of each piece. You can check yours whenever you want, and both pieces are revealed when an attack happens – so you’ll know what the winner is, but you’ll have to keep track of it yourself. The aim of the game is to attack your opponents capital piece. One clue regarding this is that the capital piece can’t move, so you’ll be keeping an eye for pieces your opponent doesn’t touch – but also be wary as there are also mine pieces that also can’t move and will take out both themselves and any piece attacking them (except for the Garresh, a low ranking piece that can defuse mines). While taking the opponent’s capital ends the game, the winner is the player who got the most pieces based on points earned during the game and the pieces you have captured. The capital is worth a lot of points, but if you aren’t careful you can still lose. Star Trek: Voyager: Retribution Original Release: N/A (In development 1997) Developer: Looking Glass Publisher: Viacom Original Platform: PC Not played: No leaked prototypes. This was an adventure game based on Star Trek Voyager and likely would have played similar to Seep Space Nine: Harbinger. The plot involved an away team being captured by the Kazon and over the three chapters, you would encounter two new races. It was supposed to feature the full cast of the show, but ended up getting cancelled. Lots of the sets were faithfully recreated in 3D for the game, likely with the intention to be used for screenshots and converted into the backdrops for the game (the models are far too detailed for computers). It looks like a lot of Voyager was completed, along with an alien ship and planet. The artist, Mark Lizotte, had access to the set blueprints and spent two days on the sets measuring and checking colours against samples to get them spot on. In response to the game being cancelled, a few of the developers (including the game’s writer, Ken Levine) left the company and formed Irrational Games, making System Shock 2 and BioShock. Star Trek Pinball Original Release: 1998 Developer: Sales Curve Publisher: Interplay Platform: PC A very basic pinball game. It features three tables (one exclusive to two players), which are designed to be like real life tables (though not based on actual ones) rather than taking advantage of being a video game. The tables are fairly generic and don’t really make much use of the Star Trek license other than imagery. The two main tables both have the same problem – they have a ramp or button directly above the centre of t Star Trek: The Next Generation: Klingon Honor Guard Original Release: 1998 Developer: MicroProse Publisher: MicroProse Platform: PC This game is an interesting bit of gaming history: the first game ever released using the Unreal engine, coming out before Unreal itself. It uses a beta version of the engine, so is quite buggy, and the gameplay often feels exactly like Unreal, as it’s a first person shooter that uses a lot of the same code – the movement, some level elements (such at mine carts attached to rails above them) and enemy AI are straight from Unreal. You play as a new recruit for the Klingon Honor Guard when your training gets interrupted because the Klingon High Council has been bombed, with Gowron injured. Kurn (Worf’s brother, played by Tony Todd) and a Dahar Master send you on a quest to work out who is behind it. Naturally, this involves killing lots of enemies, which mainly consist of Klingons and Andorian pirates. The graphics are good for the time, although most of the game is dark and full of browns, a lot of the levels merge together. A lot of levels are confusing mazes where you spend most of your time hunting for hard to see keys or buttons to progress. A few standout ones are set on space stations and ships. Because the structure is confined by the outside shape, the layouts make a lot more sense. The game has a lot of levels, and most of them end up merging together. When not aimlessly walking around, the game is a lot of fun. Stabbing foes with a bat’leth is enjoyable, with lots of colourful blood spraying around (there are no humans in the game so it avoids having red blood). Most of the other weapons are fairly boring, with the exception of a disc weapon which launces a bouncing disc that destroys entire rooms of enemies. You can also find some gadgets to use, such as a deployable camera (never found a use for it) and mag boots, which are vital for going on spacewalks in some levels. Klingon Honour Guard is fun in parts, but often frustrating. I feel like it goes on a bit too long, with the most enjoyable levels being close to each other in the middle of the game. It also doesn’t really capture the feel of the Star Trek universe. You see Klingons and Andorians, but they don’t really act like them. The main character also repeatedly shouts “I will cut you up like gach” at your foes, which I found odd because Klingons eat them alive, so there’s no cutting up. Star Trek: The Game Show Original Release: 1998 Developer: Sound Source Publisher: Sound Source Platform: PC A trivia game with some good production values, as it’s hosted by Q and Q. Q is played by John de Lancie with another Q as his sidekick (played by Karen Cornwell, this is her only acting role). All the questions and answers are read out, so there’s plenty of voice acting from the two, including plenty of quips. There’s even an annoying audience member that blurts out the answer if you run out of time. The quiz is split into four sections: Alpha Quadrant, Beta Quadrant, Gamma Quadrant and Delta Quadrant. The show covers TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and the movies. In the Alpha Quadrant, the questions are about the characters in Star Trek. A wheel will spin and land on a division and you’ll be asked a question about someone from it. There’s plenty of variety and some interesting questions. In Beta Quadrant, the game reveals five clues one at a time and you need to type in the answer, either an alien race or a character’s name. The clues are quite well worded and there are some very obscure characters. Gamma Quadrant focuses on command problems and how situations in the shows were solved. There’s also some interactivity as you can forfeit a question and send it to another player. Getting a question wrong will get you negative points in this round, so you don’t want to just guess. The final round, Delta Quadrant, has five different styles, one chosen at random in each game, each loosely based on each of the shows (with the fifth representing the films). While most of the questions are interesting and delve into a lot of deep Trek references, I did find one mistake: a question asks what Scotty used to construct the tank for carrying whales. Plexiglass wasn’t an option – instead the game wanted transparent aluminium (which Scotty traded the formula in order to get the Plexiglass). Overall, this is a very entertaining trivia game.
  16. Star Trek: Borg Original Release: 1996 Developer: Simon & Schuster Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC The second interactive movie game. This follows Cadet Furlong who is being sent to a starbase ahead of a Borg invasion 10 years after the Battle of Wolf 359. Wishing he was fighting the Borg instead, as he lost his father at the Battle of Wolf 359, the cadet ends up being visited by Q. Q offers him a chance at saving his father and sends the cadet to the past, taking the place of the security officer and Q taking place of the medic. The whole game is made up of live action footage, and John de Lancie gets plenty of screen time and is wonderful through the whole thing. The cast of new characters are also really good, too. At points in the “film” you get to make choices or solve puzzles, with Q resetting you if you mess up. I found that I much preferred picking the “wrong” options so I could see all the footage – you can never get tired of Q teasing you. Because of Q resetting things, I think this works better than the Klingon game. I also really like that they make use of the bad choices as you sometimes need information from them to progress though the correct path. Unfortunately, the game is a lot of hassle to get working on a modern PC, so unless it gets easier, I would recommend watching the game on YouTube instead – treat it as an extra episode of Star Trek, as that’s what it essentially is. Deep Space Nine Entertainment Utility Original Release: 1996 Developer: Sound Source Publisher: Sound Source Platform: PC This is a collection of resources for Windows 3.1/95 PCs. It features system sounds, wallpapers and a screensaver. It also features a jigsaw puzzle with four puzzles. Star Trek Voyager Entertainment Utility Original Release: 1996 Developer: Sound Source Publisher: Sound Source Platform: PC This is a collection of resources for Windows 3.1/95 PCs. It features system sounds, wallpapers and a screensaver. It also features a jigsaw puzzle with four puzzles. Star Trek: First Contact Portable Arcade Game Original Release: 1996 Developer: MGA Publisher: MGA Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. An LCD game based on First Contact. By far the best thing about this is the case of the device, which is a shiny Starfleet combadge. The game itself has the Enterprise E blasting lots and lots of Borg Cubes. From the looks of the various imagery and video I cand find, I do wonder if this is the same coding as the Grandstand LCD but with different sprites. Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Dice Game Original Release: 1994 Developer: Dan Verssen Publisher: Five Rings Original Platform: Board Game Not played: Not enough information to recreate. While I was able to recreate some of the dice used in this in Tabletop Simulator, I can’t find enough information on all the starter dice or all the needed symbols to make a version that can be played. For the Collectible Dice Game, you had to buy two starter packs (the main two were Enterprise E and Borg Sphere) each game came with what you needed for one player. Some dice represent shields and status which you change manually, while others you roll to determine their strength. You could get booster packs to have alternative dice with different values to use instead. You had dice that reflected the four areas of shields, the warp core output and integrity and power reserves. Then you had movement, repair and weapon dice for your main actions. Each ship also had special and command dice with unique abilities. It sounds like it would be a fairly in-depth game and could use different dice to take more risks – for example, a phaser that does a lot more damage, but is far more likely to miss. Star Trek: The Card Game Original Release: 1994 Developer: Jeff Grubb, Don Perrin, Margaret Weis Publisher: Fleer Original Platform: Board Game While this is another collectible card game, this is much less in depth than the Customizable Card Game. This one focuses on The Original series where each player takes turns trying to complete missions. The missions, plots and outcomes are cards and if the current player chooses not to play one, the opponent gets to add one. Opponents can also add challenges to make things more difficult for you – but then your rewards for completing them are also increased. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are also not in anyone’s deck. Instead, they are part of the “core crew” (along with the Enterprise) that both players can select for missions, although at the cost of experience. Completing missions will earn you experience and the goal is to be the first to gather 25 experience. Star Trek: Battle of the Borg Original Release: 1996 Developer: Playmates Publisher: Playmates Original Platform: Board Game Not played: No prototypes Playmates internal product data showed off this Star Trek board game in development for release with the upcoming Star Trek film (which would have been First Contact). The artwork for the box must have been made before the Enterprise E was officially show, so they used a Galaxy class ship instead. The information on the box mock-up is all placeholder text, but one feature of the board game was that the mini-figures that came with the came would be poseable. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Original Release: 1997 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Platform: PC A game that will be sharing a name with a Star Trek show. Starfleet Academy is sort of a reimagining of Starfleet Academy Bridge Simulator on SNES/32X, as it features the same style of gameplay and some of the same cadets, but with a new story, new characters and a completely different set of missions. The first things that strikes you is the live action cutscenes. These often look odd as none of the actors were filmed on set, they were instead filmed separately and imposed onto the backgrounds. The cutouts can be very rough at times, but its somehow still very charming, especially as everyone is taking it seriously, including William Shatner, Walter Koenig, and George Takei in their last official live action appearances. You also get to make choices which impacts your ratings – if you don’t make the right ones, you won’t get to play a bonus mission at the end of the game. The game uses a mixture of a joystick (or controller) and keyboard and it works quite well, even if it takes a bit of getting used to. It offers a lot more control than the SNES/32X games, but at the same time it also feels like you’re doing everything yourself instead of commanding a crew. The combat is still only forward phasers/torpedoes, but it feels a lot more fluid than any of the previous space combat, and it helped out by a full screen view that displays all needed information. While this further separates you from the crew, it’s very much required for playing the game. The missions are almost entirely combat related, with a few where you can avoid encounters. None of the missions paritcuarly stood out to me, other than one where you casually pass through the Galactic Barrier with a really nice cutscene. Starfleet Academy is an interesting game, especially with the cutscenes. The gameplay can be frustrating at times (especially as you can very quickly have systems knocked out, a big pain if it’s impulse or weapons), but for the most part it’s fun to play.
  17. Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity Original Release: 1995 Developer: Spectrum HoloByte Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte Platform: MS-DOS This feels like a Next Generation movie. It’s a point and click adventure that starts off with a few loose plot points and missions that all start coming together as the Federations, Romulans and a newly discovered race called the Chodak (who also appear in Future’s Past with a similar plot) race to find a device that can alter reality anywhere in the galaxy. It’s all voiced by the cast of The Next Generation, with all the main crew getting pivotal moments in the story (although Troi’s main input is astrology, her empath and counselling isn’t really used in the game). The game has multiple levels of depth and control. On the Enterprise, you can choose to manually alter repair teams and power output or let La Forge handle it for you. In ship combat, you can control the Enterprise manually or delegate it to Worf. Although the combat is very broken on modern systems, so letting Worf handle it is the only option (the system looks quite in depth). Ships exploding also tends to crash he game, so be sure to save, but luckily the Enterprise D mainly faces stripped down Romulan warbirds and Worf handles them with ease – although one odd thing about this game is that every enemy self destructs once defeated. On away missions, you can also manually select an away team or let the game choose for you. While the first is nice for hearing different dialogue, you often need a specific character to perform a task and going back to the Enterprise and returning is a big faff, so it’s best to stick to the game’s recommendation. I think it rotates the cast quite nicely so they all have a part to play. For the point and click puzzles, they start off great with lots of interactions that make sense, unfortunately the game devolves to extremely obscure solutions and objects you interact with can blend in with the background. It even has multiple moments where you can fail the game, but the game doesn’t tell you and lets you carry on. Although sometimes there are multiple solutions. There’s one part where you get to solve a puzzle if you pick up a random bit of metal (a paper clip), other wise you’ll have to shoot some sensors. Even with those issues, A Final Unity is a great game and is well worth it for the story. It’s a shame that this hasn’t gotten a re-release that makes it easier to play (installing the game is a faff) and fixes up a few of the issues. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Grandstand LCD) Original Release: 1995 Developer: Grandstand Publisher: Grandstand Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. Another obscure Star Trek LCD game. This one looks like it was sold under both the Grandstand and Tiger names, both with the same design. It’s also different to the previous Tiger handheld, although a similar idea. In this you just have to dodge to blow up asteroids. Star Trek Omnipedia Original Release: 1995 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC Also Known as: Star Trek Encyclopaedia Version played: Encyclopaedia 3.0 Originally released under the name Star Trek Omnipedia before being renamed Star Trek Encyclopaedia. I “played” the 3.0 version of this, covering everything up to the DS9 episode “The Adversary”. There are a few images and short videos. While the LCARS interface is nice, it isn’t easy to navigate or search. Trivial Pursuit The Sci-Fi Master Game: Star Trek Edition Original Release: 1994 Developer: Telstar Video Publisher: Telstar Video Original Platform: Board Game Not played: Too expensive to get second hand (plus converting the VHS) A VHS add-on to Trivial Pursuit. This features clips and questions from the original series plus the six films. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Harbinger Original Release: 1996 Developer: Stormfront Studios Publisher: Viacom New Media Platform: MS-DOS DS9 Harbinger is a Myst-style adventure game. Each part of the level is made up of still images, with you clicking the edge of the screen to move around and turn in very limited places. This allows the game to look very impressive visually, especially in screenshots. The 3D models of the characters look vert impressive for the time and everyone is wonderfully voice acted, using the original cast of DS9. You play a diplomat named Bannick, called to DS9 to assist an ambassador in speaking with a new alien race called the Scythians. These aliens speak in an unusual manner and nobody other than the ambassador has been able to figure it out. As you reach DS9, you get attacked by drones (in an impressive FMV cutscene) and crash land. The drones stat building up to attack DS9. To make matters worse, when you visit the ambassador you discover that he has been murdered. You need to solve the murder, work out how to talk to the Scythians and find a way to stop the drones. The part of the game on DS9 is great (once you get your head around navigating the station), with lots of conversation options and an intriguing mystery. Puzzles are mostly self-enclosed, leaving you to focus more on the narrative mystery. In a few parts of the game, you have to man the weapons of DS9 (and a runabout). These sections are just click to shoot, but are surprisingly difficult and not fun at all. The latter half of the game, once you leave DS9, is much more of a challenging puzzle game like Myst, where you have to navigate a maze (not easy due to how you move, working out how to ger around DS9 was difficult enough), and is very much a chore, especially as you have large periods with no talking. That said, working out how to trick the AIs in charge and talking to them towards the ends is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get the full cast of DS9 for this game, so O’Brien and Bashir are said to be on a mission (Worf hasn’t joined the cast yet). You do get to spend plenty of time with Sisko, Odo, Dax, Quark and Kira, though, so there’s still a lot of interaction with the crew. Star Trek: Klingon Original Release: 1996 Developer: Simon & Schuster Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC This is an interactive movie game, where you watch clips before being presented with a choice. Where you click on (or choosing not to click) will either end the game or let you proceed. This is presented as a holonovel made by Gowron (Robert O’Reilly), where he wants to teach weaklings about how to be a true Klingon so you can be a worthy opponent. In the holonovel, you take the place as a Klingon boy on his Rite of Ascension when his father stops an assassination attempt on Gowron. You then embark on a journey to find out who is behind everything. The game aspect of this is quite poor, as all but the right option lead to someone shouting at you and the game resetting to just before – the Borg game is much more creative in terms of using the interactive movie mechanic. The story, however, is interesting with some fun moments. It’s a good insight into Klingon culture. On YouTube, there are two ways of watching this: if you want to enjoy the story, you can watch the “correct path” version, which turns it into a fun Klingon episode of Star Trek. You can also watch a version with all the failure clips, with lots of wonderful overacting. Star Trek: Klingon Language Lab Original Release: 1996 Developer: Simon & Schuster Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC Released alongside Star Trek: Klingon, this software is an introduction to the Klingon language. It features Robert O’Reilly as Gowron who reads out all the Klingon words and phrases – each one has a video of him saying it, too. It has right categories, each with its own quiz to test your skills, which seem on a similar level to Duolingo. It also features a section that helps you with the individual phonemes. While there’s only a limited amount of words and phrases, it’s a decent introductory language tool.
  18. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Falomir Juegos) Original Release: 1994 Developer: Falomir Juegos Publisher: Falomir Juegos Original Platform: Board Game A Star Trek board game that was only released in Spanish – using Google Translate I could work out how to play the game. It’s essentially a variation on Ludo, which does kind of fit with the shape of DS9. The rules, however, don’t fit such a simple roll and move game. The objective is to get to “Ops”. Your staring space has the direction you move in and you will continue to move this way until you land on a white “P” square. The main arms of DS9 are heavily guarded, so you can’t move inside that way, instead you need to land on the “R” (for Runabout), which puts you on the LR spot to move into the centre. You then need to land on the P1 square to move further in – if you overshoot, you move back to the outer ring via the arms. Once in the middle, you keep circling until you land on your colour to progress inwards until you reach OPS. Some tiles are marked “C”, which signifies Cardassians (the story is that you’re taking it back from them). This will cause you to miss turns but also collect attack tokens. If the person that reaches Ops have 5, they are the sole winner. If they have fewer, then other players are runner up alongside them. Tridimensional Chess Original Release: 1994 Developer: Irving A Feinberg Publisher: Franklin Mint Original Platform: Board Game The game from The Original Series finally got an official release in 1994 from Franklin Mint. While the game looks great in Tabletop Simulator, it’s quite fiddly. I managed to find an Android app called “Tri D Chess” which has multiple rulesets and lets you play against an AI. Tridimsnional Chess looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. The basic rules of Chess apply. The board is a bit longer and where the sections that overlap, you can choose which level you want to finish your move on. The small bords at the end can also be moved, but only when there’s a single playing piece on them. It’s an interesting chess variant, and one that is visually stunning to look at. Star Trek: The Next Generation: A World for all Seasons Original Release: N/A (In development 1994) Developer: Spectrum HoloByte Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte Original Platform: 3DO Not played: No leaked prototypes. A choose-your-own adventure game with 3D characters and pre-rendered backgrounds. There was an article about it in Electronic Gaming Monthly, which has some screenshots, but not a lot of information about what the story was going to be about. It used some impressive 3D renders to use as 2D backgrounds, so only the characters were actually rendered by the 3DO console. These character models look like they were later used for cutscenes in A Final Unity. The screenshots show off a very colourful alien city and a desolate looking world with interesting structures, along with some odd-looking aliens. The main rooms of the Enterprise D were also rendered, with a couple of views from the bridge, including one where you select options from the tactical console and an image of the viewscreen showing ship combat. It looked like a very ambitious game, but the constant changes to the 3DO hardware before launch likely made development very difficult (the console had one game when it launched), and companies started dropping it as the Saturn and PlayStation arrived shortly after. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Hunt Original Release: N/A (In development 1994) Developer: Paramount Interactive Publisher: Paramount Interactive Original Platform: PC Not played: No leaked prototypes. This one seemed like it was quite far in development when it was cancelled, background, art and animations were around “95%” complete according to someone who worked on the game. The game takes place on DS9 where you can play as one of four characters: A human Federation officer called Lt. Delgado, a female Klingon called Garrudann, a male Ferengi called Bixtur or a male Banjoran called Salu Marn. You could interact with the crew from the TV show to solve an adventure. According to a description on the poster, the plot revolved around a thief with stolen treasure that had “mysterious power”, with Cardassians wanting to retrieve it for their own use and the Ferengi wanting to steal it for their own profit. You could interact with characters from the show which were claimed to be “realistically animated in stereo sound” (although it’s unknown if voice acting was recorded or even planned. Deep Space Nine: The Hunt would have a lot of character interaction and an open-ended story structure, which presumably means multiple endings and possibly failure endings, as well as “cinematic special effects”. The poster even shows the box art for it, which had a unique box design which was later re-used for Deep Space Nine: Harbinger. Out of all the cancelled Star Trek games, this is the one that I wish happened the most. Hopefully more information about the game can be uncovered, especially as so much art was completed. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Borg Q-Uest Original Release: N/A (In development 1994) Developer: Decipher Publisher: Decipher Original Platform: Board Game Not played: No leaked prototypes. This was a sequel to Klingon Challenge and would have been another VCR board game. In this, Q sends three random Enterprise D crewmembers on a quest to retrieve the Orb of Knowledge, with the Borg arriving in one hour’s time. It featured John de Lancie as Q and was supposed to be light hearted, with Q wearing different costumes such as a referee, Data-like makeup, Starfleet Uniform and even a referee. The game was near completion when it was cancelled, meaning all this footage of Q existed somewhere. A single image from the game was reused for the Customisable Card Game. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator (32X) Original Release: 1995 Developer: High Voltage Software Publisher: Interplay Platform: Sega 32X The missions of this are similar to the SNES game. It was made for the Sega 32X add-on for the Mega Drive. The biggest difference for this is the graphics, which look much cleaner and less pixelated and the 3D models have a lot more texture and detail to them. Playing this game on a standard 3-button Mega Drive controller is a nightmare as you need to press combinations for basic features, but the 6-button is good – although using the face buttons to tilt instead of shoulder buttons isn’t as intuitive (that said, you rarely need to do it). The one thing I couldn’t work out to do is how to pause the game. Another addition to this version is pool, which you can play against your fellow cadets (or a second player). There’s not really a lot to it, it’s just a standard top down pool game. The control nitpicks aside, this is a really nice version of the game. The wider screen gives a bigger view. The bridge itself looks more like an actual starship bridge rather than the more video game look of the SNES one. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Crossroads of Time Original Release: 1995 Developer: Novotrade Publisher: Playmates Platform: SNES, Mega Drive Version Played: Mega Drive This Deep Space Nine game for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive is a 2D platformer. There’s lots of running, jumping as well as shooting Bajorans, Cardassians and….bats, the ultimate “we can’t think of anything else” enemy type used in many licensed games of this era. Like many of those games, this one isn’t very good. It has nice graphics and some really great music (although it really doesn’t fit the game), the levels are just confusing mazes with some backtracking to get keys, rooms and doors that look similar and some even have time limits. The story itself is decent, with a group of Bajoran extremists trying to destroy DS9, and they even create a story reason to jump into Sisko’s traumatic past (that said, it is a bit of a weak reason). At the start of each chapter, you need to investigate around DS9, you get to explore the promenade and ops and talk to the characters. These parts of the game are great. It’s a shame that the game wasn’t more of a mystery and puzzle with a bit of platforming and shooting in between, instead of the opposite way around. In previous write-ups, I’ve treated different versions as different games, but the differences here are much smaller. The biggest difference is the music. While the rocking tunes of the Mega Drive version don’t fit, the music is just as jarring in the SNES version but also sound awful. You can also shoot diagonally downwards, so there’s a small extra bit at the start of the Bajoran level where you shoot some rats.
  19. Definitely great for the SNES. There's another version of it that looks even better (although on more advanced but cobbled together hardware that nobody bought). The Starfleet Academy and Future's Past games on SNES both seem like precursors to PC games - elements of their plots and ideas were re-used in much bigger games.
  20. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future’s Past Original Release: 1994 Developer: Spectrum HoloByte Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte Platform: SNES This one took a bit of getting used to due to some fiddly buttons and confusing menus. The Enterprise is monitoring Romulan Activity in the Neutral Zone and ends up in an epic quest to be chosen to be given an extremely powerful weapon – one that the Romulans and a new race called the Chodak. The game starts off with a view of the Enterprise D bridge. Here you look around at the various stations. Some (like the Computer and Sensors) give you additional information, the Briefing Room has Picard explain the current objective to the crew (a really nice touch) and the main one – the conn lets you set a course. There are a lot of places to choose from, although there’s not much reason to visit most, not to mention that the game bugs you if you’re not doing the current objective. While at warp, you may randomly encounter enemy ships. The focus on ship combat is a top-down view and is very basic and quite annoying. You’re also supposed to keep an eye out for a little notification that the enemy ship is surrendering (although there’s no penalty for blowing them up). When you get damaged, your ship’s systems will go down and you’ll have to assign resources to each one. You can go to a starbase to completely repair (which also creates a password to save the game), but I found that as most of the game it was navigation or engines that were down, you just had to leave the game for a few minutes and let the admiral yell at you for not doing the current objective. When you go on an away mission, you get to pick your away team (in most cases). You’ll want to take Data on every possible mission as he has the best stats and can see in the dark, which is the only ability that makes a difference (and only on one mission). Some crew completely lack phasers (like Dr. Crusher). I found myself using Data, La Forge, Worf and a random ensign on most missions. These missions involve a lot of shooting, some puzzle solving and a lot of aimlessly walking around the maze-like levels. There’s some interesting ideas here, as you can swap between the away team and take them separate routes or command them to follow one person. I feel like a sequel for this could have had the potential to fix the issues with this game. There’s some good ideas, but ultimately isn’t executed very well. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past Original Release: 1994 Developer: Spectrum HoloByte Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte Platform: Mega Drive This is a game heavily based on Future’s Past, but considering they both came out only a few months apart, there are a surprising amount of differences. The game starts off with a lovely pixelated recreation of the opening of The Next Generation, which makes it feel even more like an episode of the show. There’s also a lot more dialogue in this game as the characters you meet have conversations with Picard instead of just a single paragraph at the end. Missions are mostly the game, but with slightly different layouts that make things look slightly more like actual locations, although they’re still difficult mazes. Using items is more fiddly due to the lack of shoulder buttons. The combat is mostly the same, but ships seem to move a lot faster. This causes the sensor grid to zoom in an out a lot, which I found to be extremely nauseating. If you can put up with that, I do recommend this version due to the improved dialogue – with the exception of one change where the mission is something given to Picard and not the crew (the objective recaps now take place in the ready room instead of the briefing room). Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus Original Release: 1994 Developer: : Absolute Entertainment Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: Game Gear A game loosely based on Star Trek Generations. It uses the Advanced Holodeck Tutorial as a basis and adds more modes (although more minigames) to kind of tell the story. It starts off on the Enterprise B on it’s maiden voyage when it suddenly gets attacked by Tholians. The ship combat is a very simplified version of the previous game. There’s no commands to give anyone, just turn and shoot. It’s also much easier as you rarely get hit, but combat still drags on. After this, you need to track a distress call by playing a minigame similar to Mastermind where you enter symbols and the game tells you how many are the correct symbol and how many are in the right place. The third minigame has you flying through squares, with another involving you laying down pipes. After doing a few of these a few times, the game cuts forward to the Enterprise D, skipping Kirk’s apparent death. The Enterprise D section follows the same minigames, and adds some basic top-down on foot-sections where you shoot enemies as you run to Soren. You do a few at Amargosa Station, track the Klingon Bird of Prey, do a few more, blow up the Bird of Prey and get a message saying that the Enterprise had to crash on the planet but everyone is saved. Considering the game is called “Beyond the Nexus”, there’s nothing actually involving the Nexus. However, you do get a screen saying that there’s a hidden final level, but can only access if you can name the ship that rescued the crew at the end of the film. This last mission is just another code breaking minigame followed by a final still of Picard and the description of “The Body of James T Kirk is laid to rest”, even though he’s not been mentioned since he fixed something on the Enterprise B. Beyond the Nexus is a very easy minigame collection that poorly tells the story of Star Trek Generations. The most disappointing thing is that the Generations theme music isn’t even in the game. There’s also a Game Boy version which is the exact same game but with fewer colours (it supports colour for the Super Game Boy, but still not as advanced as the Game Gear version). Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator Original Release: 1994 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Platform: SNES I was quite impressed by this game. It’s a series of 20 simulations (plus some bonus ones) where you command a team of Starfleet Academy students. The main buttons are used for flying (thankfully you can turn off inverted controls) and weapons, with the L and R buttons being used to spin the ship, which is more control than previous games. Press the select button and the viewscreen will bring up a menu where you can give commands to your crew – sensors, red alert, hailing and things like that. The missions start off with little focus on combat, one has you moving a radioactive asteroid from the planet, the most interesting one has you investigate a protostar which ends up with contact with a new species, others have you investigate missing/destroyed ships. A few of them let you complete your objective and leave an area without defeating the enemies there. Each mission concludes with the lesson it was built to teach, and will also give you a score based on your performance, telling you anything you did wrong (I kept forgetting to cancel red alert when going back to starbase). If you fail and get a score of zero, you’re supposed to carry on finishing the current set of 5 missions and redoing all of them if you don’t reach 75% (or just use the passwords to reload the mission – which makes it strange that it isn’t just an option). After you complete the 20 missions you get your final mission: deliver some supplies. When you start, you get hailed by a ship called the Kobayashi Maru, which is losing power but has stranded into the neutral zone. I was surprised that you aren’t forced into combat and I was able to choose the option of getting higher ups to ask the Klingons to help, as I don’t think the mission is worth starting a war over. You can also enter codes in the character creation (it’s just male/female and some pre-set names) to unlock names. If you play as James T. Kirk, you get to play an alternate version of the test. While the later mission are mores combat focused, which still feels a bit clunky as you can only fire directly forwards, I found it to be a mostly enjoyable game. It also has some very early 3D, and they’ve done well with the limited resources of the SNES. Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual Original Release: 1994 Developer: Imergy Publisher: Simon & Schuster Platform: PC An interactive tour of the USS Enterprise D, featuring the voices of Majel Barrett Roddenberry and Johnathan Frakes. There’s not a lot of “game” here, but it provides some nice views of all the main rooms of the Enterprise D, each room having multiple 360 degrees viewpoints to look at. There’s a lot of technical information to read and a couple of panels you can activate. One thing I quite like is that when you change location, you get a video of walking to the corridor and into a turbolift. Makes everything feel more connected and like you’re on an actual tour of the ship. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Blinded by the Light Original Release: 1994 Developer: Joe Edkin, Kim Yale Publisher: Tiger Platform: 2-XL Robot The 2-XL Robot is an educational game that uses audio cassettes for “chose your own adventure” audio novels. Blinded by the Light is about a secret mission that Geordi La Forge is sent on, featuring the voice of LeVar Burton. Romulans have created a personal cloak and are testing it on a Federation place near where La Forge used to live, so he is chosen to try and stop it. At points in the story, you get to choose what happens – the first one is if Georgi’s shuttle gets hit by a solar flare or a meteor storm. There are two main paths through this, both telling you that you failed to do something significant and to try again, so it’s a bit of a buzzkill at the end. Star Trek: Generations (LCD) Original Release: 1994 Developer: Toy Options Publisher: Toy Options Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. A British-made LCD game, there isn’t a lot of information on the LCD games this company made, but I found a couple of other ones, including ones based on Scalextric and Micro Machines. The images of both of those games look exactly the same, so I think this company designed some very generic games and hoped to get licensing to slap a different sticker and give it a different name. This explains why the screenshot of this is just some spacemen and shuttles. It’s likely that this was designed as their generic “space game” for any future space-related licenses they got, although it doesn’t look like they ever got more after this one. The game is very basic. Spacemen are dropped from the top of the screen, you control the bottom shuttle and have to collect them. Star Trek Customizable Card Game Original Release: 1994 Developer: Decipher Publisher: Decipher Original Platform: Board Game I nearly skipped this game. I loaded it up in Tabletop Simulator and was greeted with thousands of cards and an extremely complicated rulebook that was over 110 pages long. It was extremely daunting. I received some encouragement that it wasn’t as scary as it sounds and managed to find a different version on Tabletop Simulator that came with pre-built decks and a simplified ruleset based on those starter decks – the 110 page rules covered many years of additions. At the start of the match, you build the “board” out of mission cards, which represent locations. In more advanced games, these can form separate quadrant and some cards need to be next to each other. You then take turns adding dilemmas to these missions, these represent challenges that the crews will face. Each turn you play one card, slowly building up your ships and their crews, along with other actions you can perform. You can then move your ship between locations (as long as they’re in range) and attempt missions, ending your turn by drawing one card. On missions, cards will cause you to lose crew (temporary or permanently). If you manage to get through them all and then have enough crew to meet the requirements of the mission, you’ll score the points for the mission, the first to 100 wins. When you add more complicated cards, extra factions, alternate realities and all sorts of other stuff, then the game can get very complicated. When collectable card games are typically combat based, I really enjoy how this feels to play, and that the missions aren’t just combat based, it’s about having the right people for the job. I don’t like collectable games, but if this game had released in playable packs with pre-made decks, then I would have loved it. Star Trek: The Next Generation – Romulan Challenge Original Release: 1994 Developer: J. C. Game Design Publisher: MMG Ltd. Original Platform: Board Game Yet another roll and move Star Trek board game. In this one, one planet is the “target” planet, drawn from a stack of cards. The movement mechanics are somewhat interesting: roll two dice (both D10s) and your movement is the difference between the two (so if you roll a 9 and a 1, you move 8). If you roll a double, you add the numbers together instead. Once you move, you then use the numbers on the dice to consult the co-ordinates board to find out if you get nothing, a resource card (required to reach planets) or a command cards, which gives you a random order (move extra spaces, move to certain spaces, miss a turn, get resource cards). Some of these have trivia questions you have to solve in order to get the reward.
  21. Star Trek Masturbatathon

    https://roddenberry.x.io/ There's also a ton of Enterprise bridges that you can walk around, they look amazing (to enable walking around, you need to be on a desktop using a Chrome-based browser).
  22. Star Trek Masturbatathon

    She hasn't had any.
  23. Star Trek: Judgement Rites Original Release: 1993 Developer: Interplay Publisher: Interplay Platform: DOS The sequel to the 25th Anniversary doesn’t get as much attention as the original, which is a shame as this is an improvement in every way. Judgement Rites features an arching storyline trying most of the plots of each “episode” together, which I think works well for a video game. Each episode still feels like a complete story with its own individual plot, mysteries and setting. The away team also varies, so it’s nice that the rest of the crew (other than Spock and McCoy) get to do more in this game. This game was also the last completed project that had all of the main cast in it. Combat returns, but now has an easier setting or can be disabled completely, although some dialogue is cut if you choose this. That said, some of the battles do just seem to be there for the sake of having a battle in each story, so it’s still good that you can turn off its weakest element. The point and click portions are great, and there are no timers to worry about each time so you can solve them at your own pace. I did find a few times that some elements you need can be difficult to notice, for one story I was wondering around for ages because I didn’t realise that one computer panel was actually two (you needed to interact with both) and sometimes you won’t realise that the bottom of the screen is a path, but for the most part it’s solvable without really obscure solutions and sometimes there are even a couple of ways to do something. Judgement Rites is a great game, and I highly recommend it. Star Trek: The Next Generation (NES) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Imagineering Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: NES By far the most impressive thing about this game is how they’ve managed to fit so much stuff on just a D-pad, A, B, Select and Start. The controls aren’t good by any stretch, it’s just impressive that they could do so much with so few buttons. In this, you command the crew of the Enterprise D. Well, four of them at least. Worf will turn on/off shields and weapons. Data will set courses for systems and orbit planets. La Forge will boost power to some systems and sort out repairs. O’ Brian is the most involved with controlling the transporter. Riker tells you the time. You use the D-pad to select who you want to give a command to and A to confirm. Pressing the select button will put you in a mode where you fly the ship and shoot phasers/torpedoes. However, to change speed you have to go back to the command mode and press forward/back. The game itself is random missions that generally involve flying somewhere, shooting stuff and then transporting. It’s a fairly dull combat simulator and not much more. When you beam stuff up (cargo or hostages), you get a nice little minigame, but that’s all there is. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Game Boy) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Imagineering Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: NES While it’s quite often the case that the Game Boy got completely different versions of the games than the NES (25th Anniversary being one example), this is the exact same game as on the NES, just in black an white. There’s not much more to cover with this version, other than it being really good for a Game Boy conversion of a game – it’s just a shame that the game isn’t a good one. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Tiger) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Tiger Publisher: Tiger Original Platform: Electronic Handheld Not played: Too expensive to get second hand. A very basic LCD game. You have to avoid asteroids while shooting at Romulans. These games are very rarely any good, and are almost impossible to see when playing. Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Klingon Challenge Original Release: 1994 Developer: Decipher Publisher: Decipher Original Platform: Board Game On the surface, this is another roll and move board game. The Enterprise has been taken over by a Klingon called Kavok. As the ship was undergoing upgrades, only a few unnamed crew are on board. It’s up to them to get access to the Enterprise computer and stop Kavok from starting a war between the Federation and the Klingons. Do do this, they need to collect 5 isolinear chips and a phaser and get to the bridge. To do this, you need to collect computer access card by landing on spaces and hopefully drawing a card that mentions a specific room (or, if you’re lucky, any room) – however, some of these cards are just bonuses. Once you get to the mentioned room, you earn your next chip. If the game was just rolling moving and doing what it says, it would be boring. But this is a VCR board game, which makes the experience a lot more fun (albeit a bit silly). While playing, you watch the footage and Kavok (played by Robert O’Reilly, known for playing Gowron) will pop up every now and then. He’ll address a player (usually the one currently moving, sometimes based on rank) who has to respond with “Yes Captain Kavok!” and then gets told what to do, which is usually getting trapped in a stasis field (so they can’t move), spinning the Klingon Dagger for a random chance or to EXPERIANCE BIJ! While Kavok gets more and more excited to say the words, it just means drawing a Bij card and doing what it says. This will usually be something negative. Sometimes a “Low Level Malfunction” will pop up on screen when you EXPERIANCE BIJ which means you get a reward instead. It’s a silly game, but fun. It’s easy to lose track of things, but the rules even expect this and say to quickly pick a random person and carry on playing because you’re against the clock. If time runs out, you’ll have to watch the Enterprise get destroyed. Star Trek: The Next Generation (Classic Games) Original Release: 1993 Developer: Classic Games Publisher: Classic Games Original Platform: Board Game This is similar to the previous board game from the same publisher: a board game where answering trivia questions gives you another clue. While the game is simple, there’s lots of different things that can happen so the host be referring to the rulebook a lot. One player is Starfleet Command and keeps track of what is going on, as well as reading questions for players to answer. The aim of the game sounds simple: There are planets hidden in the sector, find and scan them and report to Starfleet Command. I tried a scenario with one sector and two planets and it took forever for someone to find one planet (we agreed that they won the game at that point). The sensor range of ships is quite small so they have to get quite close to the planets to discover them. On top of that, each of the three other players have their routes hidden from each other, so could all be exploring similar areas. I can’t imagine trying to play this game with all four sectors. On a player’s turn, they pick a direction and speed and move in that direction. Starfleet Command then reads a question – the faster the ship is travelling, the more difficult the question it. Each question has consequences (damaging systems or getting teleported elsewhere by Q) and bonuses (mainly just taking another turn). It’s a shame because all the grids and drawing implements give the impression of a much more interesting game – once again it will just be better to ask each other the trivia questions. Star Trek: The Next Generation Game of the Galaxies Original Release: 1992 Developer: Cardinal Publisher: Cardinal Original Platform: Board Game Yet another roll and move Star Trek game, although at least this one has a nice board. The object of the game is to play as a character from The Next Generation (the game supports 6 players but there are 10 characters to choose from) to visit planets to collect treaties (you just land on the planet to get it). Landing on blue spaces will give you cards that will move you around, make you lose or gain treaties or make you lose a turn. you start off with a Photon Torpedo card which lets you take a shortcut through an asteroid field. Dabo Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993 Developer: Cryptic Publisher: Perfect World Original Platform: Board Game Dabo! This is playable in Star Trek Online, so I was able to use that version for the purposes of this. There’s not really a lot to talk about, it’s just a large slot machine/roulette wheel combo. You pick a position on the outside of the board, then the three rings spin. When the stop, the three symbols that line up with the positions you bet on determine your reward (or lack of reward). Tongo Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993 Developer: luminous1, Dean Jones Publisher: Self-Published Original Platform: Board Game I manged to find some rules form Tongo that someone made based on all mentions of the game in the script of Deep Space Nine. It’s a Poker-like game with lots of random stuff happening with round cards, square cards, dice and betting. The rules I found used standard cards, while I found some imagery of Tongo cards and edited them to create numbered cards in four ranks. The round cards are your personal hand, these are visible to only you. The square cards are placed on the floor (the spinner), mostly face down. Every single card is part of the game, and have have to move and manipulate them. However, they can only be moved when face down so you have to try and memorise where they are. On top of that, the board is then spun so people have to keep focused so they don’t lose track of which section the cards they need are on. The vertical cards are called the “floor” and are used in determining hand ranking while the horizontal ones are used for exchanging. Finally, the dice can be rolled if they are on the segment facing you. Everyone can use the dice, which count as any rank, but they can only be used to increase a hand and nor form one (for example, a dice can’t be used for a pair, but it can turn a pair into a three-of-a-kind). Instead of betting, you pay for actions into the pot. Frist you can alter the buy/sell/exchange values, then pay to buy (flip face up), sell (flip face down) or exchange (swap with a card in the vertical row on the same or other section of the board). There are two ways of challenging other players: confront or acquire. Confront means all players can use the cards in any of the floors, it doesn’t matter who they are facing. Acquire means everyone is forced to use the cards in the section in front of them. You score your hand based on the round cards you have, the card in the flop and the three dice. Tongo is a very complicated poker, with individual rounds taking a long time – with potentially only a single round in the game. There’s a lot of card manipulation and trying to keep track of what is going on. Unfortunately, the version I’ve made in Tabletop Simulator isn’t fully functional, but I’m trying to figure out the scripting to make it work. Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Advanced Holodeck Tutorial Original Release: 1994 Developer: Imagineering Publisher: Absolute Entertainment Platform: Game Gear When I first saw the name, I though it was a strange way of downplaying a game to make it sound not so good. But after playing the NES and Game Boy versions of this game (which didn’t have the subtitle), it’s actually a pretty fair description for the game. The Game Gear version of this features a little splash screen explaining that it’s training missions on a holodeck at Starfleet Academy (that information was only in the manuals for the other versions), as well as some nice shots of the Enterprise D going to warp, with better use of colour throughout the game. While the game still isn’t good, the Game Gear version is definitely the version of it.
  24. What Have You Bought?

    Some figures (well, they were bought for me). Got a couple left to collect.
  25. Star Trek Masturbatathon

    They really need to announce Star Trek Legacy now.
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