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Cube Tries to Play Every Star Trek Game

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I enjoyed doing the Sonic one so much that I wanted to do more!

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These are the voyages of the starship Cube. My continuing mission: To explore strange new games. To seek out new fun and new gameplay. To boldly play where noone has played before.

This is my challenge of trying to play through all Star Trek games, both video games and board games. On top of all the official games, I will also be playing a few select home-made games, such as the original text-based Star Trek game from 1971 (no mods of other games will be counted, though).

 

Star Trek Game (1967)

  • Original Release: 1967
  • Developer: Julie Cooper
  • Publisher: Ideal Toys
  • Platform: Board Game

1967-02-1024x576.jpg

The first Star Trek boardgame, which I have recreated in Tabletop Simulator. If it wasn’t from the box design and the name on the board, you probably wouldn’t even guess that it’s Star Trek related, as the ships are just regular pawns and the design of the fuel ship art is a very strange design. There’s a Starfleet delta on the mission cards, but that’s about it.

The game is set in a solar system that consists of Earth and six planets names after Greek letters. Your mission is to visit three planets (a card will tell you which ones and the order) then return to Earth, first one to do so wins.

Each turn you will play a fuel card and move that amount of spaces either horizontally and vertically. You start off with cards numbered 1-10 but as you refuel you can pick our of what everyone has discarded, so you need to carefully plan your route. Your target is the “Orbit entrance point”, which you need to and on exactly to start landing – once you land on a planet, you can refuel by picking three cards.

After you’ve made a movement, you roll the dice and move one of the two fuel ships that many spaces. If you manage to get it to land next to you, you can draw a fuel card. This is rare, though, as players are constantly fighting to move it closer to them. If you run our of fuel, you move one space per turn, making it very slow progress.

It’s existence of the game is interesting, but it’s ultimately quite boring to play.

Star Trek (1971, Mike Mayfield)

  • Original Release: 1971
  • Developer: Mike Mayfield
  • Publisher: Self-Published
  • Platform: HP Basic
  • Version Played: Direct C# Port by Michael Birken (No enhancements)

1971-star-trek-001.jpg

The first Star Trek video game, made for the Sigma 7 and then ported to the HP 2000C minicomputer. These were devices that had no screens, but were instead connected to a printer and printed the new game game as you played.

This game was ported to many different systems, under a lot of different names such as Apple Trek, Tari Trek and Dragon Trek. I have chosen a couple that I will go through with significant changes, as the vast majority run the same, just ported to different systems, with the latest major version being released in 2023.

In this game, you need to destroy a set amount of Klingons in a few days. You need to explore the area, as well as dock at stations to repair yourself. Here is one of my complete failure attempts:

ENTER SEED NUMBER 12
INITIALIZING...

YOU MUST DESTROY 19 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 6 STARBASES

COMBAT AREA      CONDITION RED
   SHIELDS DANGEROUSLY LOW
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
            <*>         
   +++                   STARDATE  2900
                         CONDITION RED
                         QUADRANT  4,2 
                         SECTOR    5,1 
                *        ENERGY    3000
                         SHIELDS   0
                         PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
COMMAND 2
LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT 4,2 
-------------------
| 008 | 001 | 003 |
-------------------
| 007 | 101 | 008 |
-------------------
| 114 | 003 | 008 |
-------------------
COMMAND 0
COURSE (1-9) 8
WARP FACTOR (0-8) 5
118 UNIT HIT ON ENTERPRISE FROM SECTOR 2,2 
   (0 LEFT)

THE ENTERPRISE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THE FEDERATION WILL BE CONQUERED
THERE ARE STILL 19 KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERS

YOU MUST DESTROY 13 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 5 STARBASES

COMBAT AREA      CONDITION RED
   SHIELDS DANGEROUSLY LOW
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
                        
             *           STARDATE  3200
    *       +++          CONDITION RED
               <*>       QUADRANT  4,4 
 *                       SECTOR    6,4 
             *           ENERGY    3000
                         SHIELDS   0
             *     *     PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-
COMMAND 2
LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT 4,4 
-------------------
| 006 | 001 | 007 |
-------------------
| 008 | 106 | 002 |
-------------------
| 002 | 016 | 007 |
-------------------
COMMAND 0
COURSE (1-9) 5
WARP FACTOR (0-8) 3
273 UNIT HIT ON ENTERPRISE FROM SECTOR 5,3 
   (0 LEFT)

THE ENTERPRISE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THE FEDERATION WILL BE CONQUERED
THERE ARE STILL 13 KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERS

This game is very difficult, as you need to hunt for Klingons, navigate around and so lots of actual calculations to work out how to navigate as well as aim torpedoes. For such an old game, there is a surprising amount of detail in it, with enemies that attack you, systems that break, scanning and even a built-in calculator for torpedoes.

Your systems breaking are completely random, though, and something like your warp drive breaking can render a playthrough unwinnable as you won’t be able to find a starbase in time. Even without any damage, navigating around is very difficult as you need to set a direction and speed, and take into account both sector and quadrant locations.

Despite all this, there’s just something that’s a lot of fun about trying to do all this with such basic input, having to figure it all out yourself.  It’s a fascinating game and it’s definitely impressive for what it was originally made for.

Star Trek (1971, Bill Peterson)

  • Original Release: 1971
  • Developer: Bill Peterson
  • Publisher: Self-Published
  • Version Played: Version 32-9, modified by Don Daglow & James Underwood

star-trek-script-02-1024x564.jpg

A much lesser known Star Trek mainframe game, written in a form of BASIC used by the CDC 6000. Wikipedia credits Don Daglow with this. While he did revise it in 1972, the credits in the code say that it was originally made by Bill Peterson from Cal Tech.

This Star Trek game describes what it happening through dialogue with Spock, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov, with you entering commands to defeat enemies.

Each time you play, you get a slightly different story, all of them will lead to a battle against single enemy. You have to give commands (by typing numbers from a list of options) to position yourself, fire phasers/torpedoes and try to defeat the enemy.

By moving and using sensors, you’ll be given the position and bearings for both you and the enemy. It’s extremely difficult to use the coordinates to figure out where you are in relation to the enemy, as well as which direction you’re pointing and which weapons you can use.

If you sustain enough damage, Spock will mutiny and flee the area. I’ve seen this section of text a lot. The only time I won was by not fighting, but instead boarding the enemy ship.

There are a lot of ship names that are generated by the speed, I like that the seed number 47 gives you the Enterprise – a complete coincidence as the use of the number came about much later.

Star Trek (1972, For-Play)

  • Original Release: 1972
  • Developer: For-Play
  • Publisher: For-Play
  • Platform: Arcade
  • Version Played: PC port of Computer Space

computer-space.jpg

The first commercially released Star Trek game. Not only was this not officially licensed, but it’s also a clone of another arcade game called Computer Space. The only difference is that the controls are slightly reworked to use a joystick instead of buttons. As there’s no way for me to play the Star Trek version, I played a PC port of Computer Space as it’s the same game.

The game works exactly the same as the later and much more popular game Asteroids. Spin the ship around, use thrust to move and shoot. The aim is to destroy the two enemy ships more times than they destroy you. The game only lasts a couple of minutes.

Super Star Trek

  • Original Release: 1973-1975
  • Developer: Mary Cole, David Ahl, Bob Leedom
  • Publisher: Self-Published
  • Platform: Basic-Plus
  • Version Played: Direct LUA port by Emanuele Bolognesi

super-star-trek-2-1024x529.jpg

Super Star Trek is the first major enhancement of the 1971 Star Trek game. This makes the game much easier to decipher, with some information given via dialogue from the crew, and generally making everything much easier to visualise and making actions easier to perform. Permission was even supposedly given by Paramount to use the name Star Trek.

The regions are given names, and the icons for the Enterprise and Klingons use letters to help distinguish them better. That said, the game is still difficult, losing access to some functions is still a major hazard – I even lost access to damage control in one playthrough.

Super Star Trek is a really nice version of the original Star Trek game.

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14 minutes ago, Cube said:

If you sustain enough damage, Spock will mutiny and flee the area.

I'm no Star Trek nerd, but this made me laugh. Isn't this hilariously out of character?

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2 hours ago, Glen-i said:

I'm no Star Trek nerd, but this made me laugh. Isn't this hilariously out of character?

Nope. In fact Spock is put on trial for mutiny in the very first season of Star Trek.

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Legit looking forward to Prodigy: Supernova getting its turn here as if it isn't outright terrible I wouldn't mind giving it a go.

1 hour ago, Happenstance said:

Nope. In fact Spock is put on trial for mutiny in the very first season of Star Trek.

That's right! The two-parter where they repackaged the pilot episode.

His motivation/reasoning was sound as ever. 

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2 hours ago, Happenstance said:

Nope. In fact Spock is put on trial for mutiny in the very first season of Star Trek.

 

1 hour ago, darksnowman said:

That's right! The two-parter where they repackaged the pilot episode.

His motivation/reasoning was sound as ever. 

Welp, I've figured out how to say I've only watched a handful of movies and Lower Decks without actually saying that.

Cheers.

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On 3/14/2023 at 2:58 PM, Happenstance said:

Nope. In fact Spock is put on trial for mutiny in the very first season of Star Trek.

Why did he do that?

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1 minute ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Why did he do that?

To take his paralyzed/disfigured former captain back to a forbidden planet so he could live out his life normally.

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7 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

To take his paralyzed/disfigured former captain back to a forbidden planet so he could live out his life normally.

Sentimental sod. Throw that pointy-eared-quack in the brig.

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Star Trek Game (1974)

  • Original Release: 1974
  • Developer: Unknown
  • Publisher: Hasbro
  • Platform: Board Game

1974-star-trek-hasbro-1024x576.jpg


Luckily for me, this one had already been created on Tabletop Simulator, complete with working spinners.

Unfortunately, there is very little “game” here. You spin the spinner and move. Sometimes a space will make you do something, but most times now. Each player is on their own section of the board and the first to get around wins.

The game has two spinners: warp and impulse. For the path leading to/from the circle you need to use the warp one, for the circle you need to use the impulse one. Functionally, they’re no different (they both go form 1 to 8), but if you spin the wrong one, you miss a turn.

The design and artwork is nice, but that’s all the game has going for it.

Star Trek Game (1975)

  • Original Release: 1974
  • Developer: Bob Brechin
  • Publisher: Palitoy Bradgate
  • Platform: Board Game

1975-003-1024x576.jpg

Another roll and move Star Trek board game – this time from Palitoy Bradgate. In this, your quest is to capture two crystals from the surface of two planets and then blow up the Klingon ships.

While this game has standees of Kirk and Spock, you play as nameless crew – Kirk and Spock simply protect you from harm. The game starts off similar to Ludo where you have to roll a specific number to stat moving, then transport down to a planet: an ice planet with a strange monster called a Bluug, or a fiery planet with a giant spider: if either catch you, you’ll have to go back to the start of the planet.

Klingons are also chasing you, although they only take you back slightly. Other spaces will move you forwards, backwards or even send you back to the Enterprise to miss a turn and have to start again. Constantly restarting really feels like a drag. You can forfeit your turn to move Klingons instead if you want to slow down your opponents.

The board itself is really nice, with lovely design and a fun layout, but the gameplay is very poor.

Star Trek Phaser Battle

  • Original Release: 1976
  • Developer: Mego
  • Publisher: Mego
  • Platform: Electronic Handheld
  • Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

mego-phaser-battle.jpg

A basic game from Mego. This one keeps track of your score, and is very large and bulky. Stars will scroll past (the effect looks like the doctor Who opening) and sometimes enemies will appear. You need to line up your targeting and blast them.

Star Trek: Phaser Strike

  • Original Release: 1979
  • Developer: Milton Bradley
  • Publisher: Milton Bradley
  • Platform: Microvision

1979-phaser-strike.jpg


The Microvision was the first handheld console that came with interchangeable cartridges – the whole front of the unit peeled off and could be replaced with a new game. With it being so early, the display was limited, boasting a whole 16×16 pixels. Although there is something satisfying about these big chunky pixels.

In Star Trek: Phaser Strike, you destroy incoming ships by shooting from one of three different directions. Your shots are slow, so you have to time your shot based on where your enemy will be. It’s a very simple game, but for it’s format, it’s fun for a quick blast.

Star Trek Game (1979)

  • Original Release: 1979
  • Developer: Michael Gray
  • Publisher: Milton Bradley
  • Platform: Board Game

1979-milton093-1024x576.jpg


This board game definitely has some interesting ideas. It’s another one I had to recreate in Tabletop Simulator, although it doesn’t have the nice Enterprise shaped player pieces or the artwork on the cards (I found the text for the cards, but not the artwork). The board itself is lovely, looking like a display console showing a galaxy map. There’s some lovely artwork of the Enterprise, too, but that gets covered up by tiles.

The tiles feature warp paths in two colours. While in a sector, you can only swap between the two routes at your starbase or following the route to another sector. It creates a lot of thought when planning your route, especially later in the game as you need to land on explored systems exactly. The only downside is how movement is determined: rolling two dice and moving that amount.

Movement is the major part of the game, too. You get dealt four mission cards and need to complete three of them. The cards will have flavour text like “defeat Klingons” or “deliver serum” along with other instructions, but these don’t actually mean anything in terms of the game. You just need to discover these on the map and head to them.

As you move, you will reach unexplored stars. You can reach these without using your full movement. You draw a card to discover what is there. Three cards will send you back to your home base (something another player can do if they land directly on your space), but the rest are different kinds of stars, outposts or advanced civilisations. Once a system has explored, however, you can only land on it with an exact role – which makes it harder to complete a mission if you weren’t the one to discover it.

If you roll a double, you can move an opponent instead of you, however this just hurts both of you and isn’t very useful, even as a player has finished three of their missions and is heading back to their base.

Despite so much depending on the roll to move mechanic, this is a pretty decent board game. It would be interesting to build upon this with some different movement mechanics.

Star Trek Make-A-Game Book

  • Original Release: 1979
  • Developer: Bruce Nash, Greg Nash
  • Publisher: Wanderer Books
  • Platform: Board Game

1979-make-a-game-book-1024x576.jpg

A board game that you make yourself from a book. This is more about the construction, as you’re following a pre-set design instead of developing your own board game. Someone has already done the hard work developing this for Tabletop Simulator.

The game itself is a very basic roll and move. Spaces will earn you deflector shield components, others will make you lose them. Once you have all six, you can reach the bridge and need to get an exact roll – overshoot and you have to go all the way around the board again. It’s a pretty poor game.

One curious thing is that the board itself is missing part of it. There is supposed to be a corridor to the bridge that is completely missing – so you just have to imagine a couple of spaces there.

Star Trek Starfleet Game

  • Original Release: 1979
  • Developer: McDonald’s
  • Publisher: McDonald’s
  • Platform: Board Game

1979sg-screen-01-1024x576.jpg


A tiny little roll and move game. This was part of the first ever themed McDonald’s Happy Meal, promoting the launch of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The game is obviously quite basic, but it’s short and sweet. There are multiple paths to choose from, so it’s slightly more involved than some games.

Star Trek 3.5

  • Original Release: 1982
  • Developer: Lance Micklus, David H Summons
  • Publisher: Adventure International
  • Platform: Atari 8-Bit

1980-star-trek-3-5.jpg

This is another version of the 1971 Star Trek game. This adds a lot more visualisation, a larger galaxy and more types of areas to encounter.

The Enterprise and Klingons now look like ships, and the game displays a list of actions each time so you don’t have to jot them down separately. The galaxy is now much bigger, with quadrants in three dimensions. Navigation has been altered a lot. You can choose between impulse (moving within a sector) and warp (moving to different sectors). Within a sector, the speed determines how many squares you move. For warping, you enter the coordinates of the system you want to go to and the speed (which determines how many stardates pass). You also get a really nice animation.

You also see torpedo paths animated out, making it clearer what is happening in battles. Another significant change is how damage works, as you can repair systems without navigating to a starbase, which is useful when sensors are completely down and you’re flying blind.

Overall, this is a really nice version of Star Trek.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

  • Original Release: 1982
  • Developer: GCE
  • Publisher: GCE
  • Platform: Vectrex

1982-vetres-002-1.jpg


Made for the very unique vector-based console called the Vectrex. This console is made up of white lines on a black background. In order to add colour and a HUD, you have to put plastic sheets on top of the screen.

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, you turn in a 360 degree angle, blasting enemy ships. Torpedoes will get fired towards you and you can either dodge by turning away so the torpedo is no longer on screen or by holding down the shield button to block them. Your shields have limited capabilities, so you’ll need to connect to a space station to recharge.

The game is simple but a lot of fun. It’s not the most “Star Trek” game, something the developers also thought as it was sold in some regions under the names “Space Ship” or “Harmageddon”
 

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Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator

  • Original Release: 1983
  • Developer: Sam Palahnuk
  • Publisher: Sega
  • Original Platform: Arcade

1983-sos-1024x815.jpg

The first official Star Trek arcade game, developed by Sega with a release in two forms: a stand up cabinet and a sit down machine. The graphics are similar to the Vectrex game, using neat lines.

The game gives you both a top down view and a first person view. The objective is to destroy all enemy ships in sa h area. You can recharge shield and restock on torpedoes at stsrbases, although some of these will be targeted by the Kllingons.

It’s a fun little game.

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator (C64)

  • Original Release: 1984
  • Developer: Sam Palahnuk
  • Publisher: Sega
  • Original Platform: Commodore 64

1983-star-trek-c64.jpg

Sega made multiple home ports of the arcade game Strategic Operations Simulator, so I decided to check one out. The Commodore 64 version looked the best graphically, so I went with that. It’s pretty much the same game, although now the first person view has a visible viewscreen border and the ships have a texture to them, with views from all angles.

It’s a really nice version of the original arcade game.

Star Trek Adventure

  • Original Release: 1983
  • Developer: D. Birdi,J. Birdi
  • Publisher: Superior Software
  • Original Platform: BBC Micro

1983-star-trek-adventure.jpg

The first Star Trek text-based adventure game. There’s not much story to this one: the Enterprise is disabled and Kirk is the only one left on the Ship. Spock is in the hands of Klingons and you need to find components to repair the ship. There’s very little dialogue throughout the course of the game, instead the focus is on items.

Kirk can only carry a few things at a time, so most of the game is working out when you need the items and where you need to move them to in order to prepare. For one section, Kirk gets poisoned. However, to reach that point you need other items so can’t carry the medicine form sickbay with you. However, if you leave the item in sickbay, you will die before you can get there. You need to know what is going to happen ahead of time, so you can take the medicine a bit closer to where you need to be.

It’s all entirely trial and error.

Star Trek II Video Game Watch

  • Original Release: 1983 (Possibly)
  • Developer: Collins
  • Publisher: Collins
  • Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
  • Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

collins-wrist.png

I’ve found conflicting information on when this was released, with some places stating 1992. I think it was released in the early 80s in Hong Kong.

Enemies orbit the Enterprise in a circle and you have to aim missiles to shoot them. The game also functions as a digital watch.

Collins-StarTrekIIWatch.jpg

Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator

  • Original Release: 1983
  • Developer: Forest Brown, David F. Tepool, Wm. John Wheeler
  • Publisher: FASA
  • Original Platform: Board Game

1983-combat-simulator-1024x576.jpg

This is a very heavy and detailed tactical board game. I barely managed to scrape by with the tutorial scenario, and there are a lot more rules that get introduced afterwards.

While it’s not something I look for in board games, the amount of detail is impeccable and great for people who want to manage every tiny aspect of their ship. Power distribution is important, as well as weapon arcs and your position. There are multiple types of phasers, torpedoes and all sorts. There’s an immense amount of depth, which is great for people who like it, and I suspect that this goes far beyond what any of the Star Trek video games will do.

This game had multiple versions up until 1986.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Atari)

  • Original Release: Cancelled (announced 1983)
  • Developer: Milton Bradley
  • Publisher: Milton Bradley
  • Platform: Atari 2600
  • Not played: No prototypes known to exist.

ST_I_Atari_game.jpg

Milton Bradley announced a game based on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for Atari 2600, VCS and other home consoles. The goal was to destroy the Klingon mothership. It also features flying through black holes to face unknown dangers.

Star Trek II: In Search of Spock

  • Original Release: Cancelled
  • Developer: Sega
  • Publisher: Sega
  • Platform: Atari 2600
  • Not played: No prototypes known to exist.

st3-atari.jpg

In 1983, Sega announced two Star Trek games for the Atari 2600: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Due to the video game crash, these games were never released. The only official information we have are the original announcement and a poster which has the wrong name.

I did track down a thread on the Atari Age forums and found some information from someone who tested the Search for Spock game, and described a top down game similar to Asteroids, but this could have been Strategic Operations Simulator.

It seems likely that instead of making new games, they instead ported their arcade game to different platforms.

Struggle For The Throne: Star Trek III

  • Original Release: 1984
  • Developer: David F. Tepool, Jordan Weisman
  • Publisher: FASA
  • Original Platform: Board Game

1984sr-struggle-01-1024x576.jpg

Struggle for the Throne is a Klingon-themed board game. It’s a game about scheming and subterfuge to begin with, then turns into full on war. You start off with a small fleet and can request more from the Emperor (determined by playing influence cards and a dice roll). The other Klingon houses can also badmouth your name and cost you fleets. Your only goal is to get rid of all enemy fleets.

While Klingons would claim that this has no honour and is what Romulans would do, it really does fit in well with how we see Klingons act in the show.

At the start of the game, there are no ways to directly attack other Klingons – the Emperor keep things in line. At some point, a player can play the “Emperor is dead” card. Players then twist their action cards to the other side and an all out civil war breaks out, with the new actions being direct confrontations.

It’s a really neat and unique concept, and fits well with the Klingons.

 

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Quote

st3-atari.jpg

As a fan of old school Trek movies? This poster makes my brain hurt...

It's basically that meme where you put a wrong picture/quote/quote reference together... except it's actual official art!

Edited by Dcubed
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Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

  • Original Release: 1984
  • Developer: William Cardwell, David F. Tepool
  • Publisher: FASA
  • Original Platform: Board Game
  • Not played: Couldn’t find enough information online to recreate.

1984-sfs-001.jpg

Most of the information I can find on how this plays is from a review on BoardGameGeek. The object of the game is to find Spock and escape, but the planet is falling apart. Each player has their own secret beam up coordinates and they need to find Spock and take him there to win.

From the sounds of it from the review, the rubble is a bit too aggressive and people don’t have enough movement points to complete their objective, which leads no no players winning.

Star Trek III: Starship Duel

  • Original Release: 1984
  • Developer: Jordan Weisman
  • Publisher: FASA
  • Original Platform: Board Game
  • Not played: Couldn’t find enough information online to recreate.

1984-sd-screen-02.jpg

A quick tactical board game. This is all about both ships moving around each other, trying to target while avoiding the weapons of the other. It came in two versions: USS Enterprise Vs Klingon Bird of Prey and USS Reliant Vs Klingon L-9.

The main component of the game is a three layer navigation wheel, one shows the enemy’s move, another is where you’re targeting and the top shows your position. You also have a control board where you chose the power level of each section of shield and what weapons you are using.

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Micromosaics
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Original Platform: Apple II
  • Version Played: DOS

00-kobiashi-alternative.png

The manual is a very important requirement for playing this: There’s a big backstory, plus it lists the systems and planets you can visit. Even with the manual, it took a while to get used to playing the game. Unlike most text adventure games, the text you write isn’t your actions, instead you’re playing as Kirk and the text is what Kirk is saying to other people, giving them commands. Kirk’s actions are done via the Function buttons.

The game starts with the Enterprise out of power and a quick jaunt on a planet to learn how the game works to reach a species called the Orna that can fix the Enterprise. From there on, you’re free to explore the systems mentioned in the manual (or put in your own coordinates) with the mission to find the USS Heinlein (a ship that Sulu is in command of).

Some of the planets are side quests, while others will present you with clues and new information. The planets are varied, from a medieval planet where you have to kill a dragon to a Dyson sphere with communities in areas (I found out the hard way that travelling between locations requires a spacesuit.

The way the game works reminded me a bit of The Outer Wilds, a time loop game where you have to learn how its universe functions. You can use knowledge from previous games to skip sections, although you do get a higher score if you do everything in one run.

I had a lot of fun with this, there’s a lot to like about it.

Star Trek: The Adventure Game

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Greg Costikyan, Doug Kaufman
  • Publisher: West End Games
  • Original Platform: Board Games
  • Not played: Couldn’t find enough information online to recreate.

1985-star-trek-adventure.jpg

With a quick glance at the board, this looks like it could be another war game, but it’s the complete opposite: there is no direct confrontation happening. Instead, the Federation and Klingons are trying to recruit planets to their side. This is done via the story book, where you encounter a mini choose-your-own adventure story to determine what happens.

The game is also asymmetrical, with the Klingon player playing as sleeper agents and write their position in secret. It sounds like it would be a very fun game.

Star Trek III: Kobayashi Maru

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Doug Kaufman
  • Publisher: West End Games
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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This is part of a pack of three solitaire games in one. I was expecting three very simplistic games, but was very wrong – these games are quite hefty indeed, to the point that I decided they were worth their own article each.

Kobayashi Maru is – as the rules state it – a modified version of the Kobayashi Maru test that can be won (without cheating). You have to search through an area filled with gas clouds, trying to check between Klingons and trying to find buoys that lead to the Kobayashi Maru. Each turn you need to plan how your power is distributed, as well as assign your crew, and damage will slowly take its toll on what you can do.

It’s a tough game, and really in depth, but also really well made. It’s available on both Vassal and Tabletop Simulator.

Star Trek III: The Sherwood Syndrome

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Greg Costikyan
  • Publisher: West End Games
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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The second game in the Star Trek III collection of solitaire games. A member of the Federation is messing about with a planet that oddly resembles the Sherwood forest during the tales of Robin Hood. He’s posing as their king, taking advantage of the people. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise need to rescue the population by having them overthrow their king, but without arousing suspicion.

You control the crew of the Enterprise, trying to recruit units to your cause, by either freeing them from prison or convincing them to join you. You need to be careful how you act, as actions such as beaming to and form the Enterprise will cause the “witchcraft” levels to increase, and you’ll lose the game if you interfere with the people too much in ways they don’t understand.

I found this game a bit fiddly, but I thought it was nice that a board game felt like an episode of the show.

Star Trek III: Free Enterprise

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Greg Costikyan
  • Publisher: West End Games
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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The final game that comes in the Star Trek III collection of solitaire games. This is a profit-driven game. The Klingons and Federation are trying to convince a new species to join their ranks, and they want to see who is best at making a profit. Certain planets want goods (in a certain colour) that are produced by other planets.

To do this, you need to use your six shuttles to land on planets and manage cargo space to sell on other planets. Your shuttles can be damaged by the Klingons, potentially killing your crew. Named crew have one life, while you have an unlimited amount of unnamed redshirts.

This one starts out fun, but the simplicity of it makes it drag on a bit due to the length of the game.

Star Trek: The Enterprise⁴ Encounter

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, Peter Olotka
  • Publisher: West End Games
  • Original Platform: Board Games
  • Not played: Couldn’t find enough information online to recreate.

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A story-based board game. Trelane, the Squire of Gothos splits the Enterprise into four duplicates, with the crew split between them. Each team needs to find a member from each division in order to win, doing so by completing “Adventure Cards”.

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

  • Original Release: 1986
  • Developer: Trans Fiction Systems
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Original Platform: DOS

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Compared to The Kobayashi Alternative, this is a much more standard text-based adventure game. After a brief battle with a Romulan Bird of Prey, which you can’t target unless you ask Spock for help (the only clue to needing Spock is that your new science officer is terrified), the Enterprise needs to make slow repairs, but is out of food. The nearest Federation ship is a few years away, so your only hope is the nearby planet.

When you land, you find out about a prophecy that the Enterprise crew are supposed to be part of, so you have to solve this new mystery as well as food on this desert planet.

While it’s nice to have a big of focus on one planet, the lack of exploring different places makes this feel more generic. You also need to often perform actions that the manual and help don’t specify, such as overloading a phaser. A large part of the game also involves trading, but the items you receive are random, so you need to repeat the action until you have what you need.

This has an interesting story, but the game itself isn’t that good.

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Holy crap! There are a LOT of Star Trek board games and text adventures!

You're gonna be at this for a while... :laughing:

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Star Trek: Trivia Game

  • Original Release: 1986
  • Developer: Scott Miller
  • Publisher: Apogee
  • Platform: DOS

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A fairly basic trivia game covering The Original Series. It comes in 10 volumes, each with 100 questions each. Volume 1 starts with logical questions, while volume 10 seems to have some more obscure stuff that requires you to remember specific numbers or which members of the crew were on the bridge at the start of certain episodes. The presentation is fairly basic, but effective.

 

Star Trek: The Rebel Universe

  • Original Release: 1987
  • Developer: Mike Singleton
  • Publisher: Firebird Software
  • Original Platform: Amiga ST

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The Rebel Universe certainly has ambition. It provides a large region of space to explore called the Quarantine Zone, where the Klingons have managed to mind control Federation crews using special dilithum. As a result, everyone in this area is hostile to you. There are multiple ways to win the game, such as destroying, components for the mind control system, jamming Klingon communications or finding and releasing a virus to keep Klingons peaceful.

Unfortunately, the interface for the game is terrible. You swap between different panels to control different aspects of the ship, but it is extremely clunky and you have to often return to the “bridge” screen to select who you need. The smaller screens also don’t update with important information and some are just the same image that don’t reflect the right information, so you have to constantly move back and forth.

There’s definitely a lot of ambition with The Rebel Universe, it’s tedious to play.

Star Trek: First Contact

  • Original Release: 1988
  • Developer: Micromosaics
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Original Platform: Apple II
  • Version Played: DOS

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Using similar systems to The Kobayashi Alternative, First Contact (not to be confused with the episode or film of the same name) refines some of its systems, making walking around much easier as it shows which rooms you’re heading to. It also displays who you are speaking to, so you aren’t constantly giving commands to the wrong people.

The story involves taking some diplomats to a planet for negotiations, however this is just a ruse for a secret mission to make first contact with a new species who are sending out a signal (the Federation don’t want the Klingons to notice). But while the transportation of diplomats is just supposed to be a simple thing, a murder happens that you need to solve.

The exploration element of The Kobayashi Alternative is gone, and this is a much more linear adventure. Events will progress at certain times, so you can miss important moments, so you need to prioritise what you want to look into. The story is a decent one, with a few locations and different problems at each, but doesn’t have the wonder of The Kobayashi Alternative.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (DOS)

  • Original Release: 1985
  • Developer: Micromosaics
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Original Platform: Apple II
  • Version Played: DOS

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This is a collection of minigames loosely based on Star Trek V. Wormhole teaches you how to fly the ship, as you have to avoid debris in a wormhole while collecting crystals. In Minefield, it teaches you how to use the ship’s weapons as you have to destroy a circle of mines before they reach the Enterprise. Hand-to-hand combat is a simple Street Fighter-style fighting game where you block and punch. Finally, there is “BoP Simulator” where you fight a Klingon bird of prey.

In “normal game”, you play through each one of these modes, connected via images that tell the story of Star Trek V. These are probably the best part of the game, with some lovely looking pictures showing the story.

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Another highlight is the copy protection mechanic, which requires you to use the manual to translate Klingon phrases. Because of this, I know that Ghaj Qab How Wani’ is spoken in every Star Wars film.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (NES)

  • Original Release: N/A (In development 1989)
  • Developer: Bandai
  • Publisher: Bandai
  • Original Platform: NES

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If you don’t remember a NES game based on The Final Frontier, you’re not going crazy: this game was cancelled and was never released. A four state prototype was discovered so we can see what the game would look like.

Like a lot of movie-based games, this is a side scrolling shooter. You start off as Sulu as he fights his way through Paradise. It has the difficulty you would expect from a NES movie tie-in game, with lots of projectiles flying in arcs. That said, this isn’t as frustrating as most of them. This first level is a pretty basic kill enemies and move to the right level.

Next you play as Scotty in a more open level. You need to find enemies that have bombs in order to collect them, the objective being blowing up a door to get to Kirk, Spock and McCoy. If you travel down the level, there’s a section you can’t get back up without the aid of rocket boots.

The third level is an Enterprise level, and a terrible one due to the controls. You need to blow up asteroids and then a bird of prey.

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Finally, you play as Kirk on the creation planet. This is another liner level, but has basic platforming segments that work just fine (a lot of movie tie-in NES games have terrible platforming mechanics). The aim is to get to and defeat the entity that Sybok (Spock’s former classmate) believes to be “Got” (no, I haven’t made any mistakes, this is what the text of the game says) with a boss fight at the end.

If this got finished, it would have been a decent (albeit frustrating) game. I think Bandai were aiming to create a level for each member of the crew.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Transinium Challenge

  • Original Release: 1989
  • Developer: TRANS Fiction Systems
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Original Platform: DOS

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This one is pretty terrible. While previous DOS games have had nice graphics, this one wanted to have animation so much that it opted for extremely ugly graphics in order to do so. The animations are bizarre, too, mostly consisting of Riker looking around confused.

Riker has been put in charge of the Enterprise. Picard is still there and the game would have been no different if you played as the Captain instead, so I’m not entirely sure why you play as Riker. None of the character’s personalities come out in the writing anyway. Riker’s mission is to stop some terrorist attacks.

To get things done, you have to continuously talk to people waffle on about nothing important, wander around a bit and chase ships around by moving between planets and asteroids because their position is random. The game is mainly boring, repetitive tasks. While the text-based games have quite big stories, this one feels like it would just be the cold opening of an episode.

This game also has combat with a turn-based mechanics where you can evade, shoot or alter position. It would be interesting to try it properly, but there’s only one fight in the game and the enemy ship keeps running away, requiring you to randomly check locations so you can fight it again.

Klin Zha

  • Original Release: 1989
  • Developer: John M. Ford, Len Loyd
  • Publisher: Self Published
  • Original Platform: Board Games

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A Klingon chess-like game that was described in the Star Trek book The Final Reflection by John M. Ford (who helped develop the three Star Trek III Solitaire Games) and then developed into a full game by fans.

There are pieces with different movement rules, the most important of which is the “Goal”. This can’t move on its own, but can be moved by other pieces. The object of the game is to kill your opponent’s goal or to block them from being able to move. Each player sets up their pieces on one segment of the triangular board, with the third being empty space that can be moved into.

The game encourages to play like a Klingon, flaunting your goal for honour and glory. There’s nothing but shame if you play like a P’takh and hide your goal behind the blockade’s shields.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Trivia

  • Original Release: 1990
  • Developer: George Broussard
  • Publisher: Micro F/X Software
  • Platform: DOS

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Another basic trivia game, this time based on the first few seasons of The Next Generation. The latest episode I encountered a question for was the season 3 episode “The Price”.

Visual Star Trek

  • Original Release: 1990
  • Developer: Unknown (Possibly John Saxton)
  • Publisher: Self-Published
  • Platform: DOS

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A version of the 1971 Star Trek game that has very little information about it – the only reference to who made it is on Trek Core, where it lists John Saxon followed by a question mark. In terms of major versions of the first Star Trek game, this one seems very overlooked, which is unfortunate.

This version boasts a more visual style along with mouse controls. Navigating is now as simple as dragging the mouse from the ship to where you need to go, and long range sensors are always active. On top of stars, there are also planets which can be mined for dilithium that can be turned into energy.

There are also a few additional hazards: gravity wells from black holes, tribbles and supernovae. My ship got infested with tribbles and systems slowly stopped working, but I never figured out how to get rid of them. However, these can be turned on an off, along with other options such as choice in the length and difficulty of the game.

Star Trek (Konami LCD)

  • Original Release: 1991
  • Developer: Konami
  • Publisher: Konami
  • Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
  • Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

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This LCD game seems quite rare, with not much information on it. There is lots of information on Konami’s Star Trek 25th Anniversary LCD, but this one is mostly forgotten about. I did find a description which says that the goal is to blast your way through asteroids in order to fire a fusion control missile at the star to stop it exploding.

The Alcor Trivia Pro Classic Star Trek

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Unknown (Possibly John Saxton)
  • Publisher: Self-Published
  • Platform: DOS

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This trivia game has a lot more features than the previous ones. The major one is multiplayer, where people take turns answering questions to compete for a high score. There are quite a few options to choose from, such as number of players, number of questions, timers, if the game reveals the correct answer if you get it wrong and “casino rules” where you can bet a portion of points that you’ll get the next question right.

The questions are all based on The Original Series. Some are about the episode, some are about the production (one was for the budget of The Cage, with four very similar numbers as options). I did notice one slight error: when asked about what division wears red shirts, Engineering was apparently wrong (it said security, which is also correct).

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Another highlight is the copy protection mechanic, which requires you to use the manual to translate Klingon phrases. Because of this, I know that Ghaj Qab How Wani’ is spoken in every Star Wars film.

That’s a fantastic idea for anti-piracy protection! Legit cool!

… though I suppose if you were a super, ultra Trekkie nerd, you’d probably know enough Klingon off by heart that you could probably bypass the need for the manual altogether, so… maybe not as effective as it is neat.

Man, there are a LOT of Klingon-based Star Trek games aren’t there? Still, it beats seeing the Borg get recycled endlessly I suppose.

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On 16/04/2023 at 12:17 AM, Dcubed said:

Man, there are a LOT of Klingon-based Star Trek games aren’t there? Still, it beats seeing the Borg get recycled endlessly I suppose.

I think it allowed them to just go all out fighting without it being odd for the Federation (that said, there are games like that with Starfleet).

 

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Interplay
  • Publisher: Interplay
  • Platform: DOS

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With very impressive production values, not only does this have a great visual style, but it’s also fully voiced with the full cast of The Original Series. It’s a point and click adventure game much closer to the likes of Monkey Island than previous games, which is a style that suits Star Trek extremely well

25th Anniversary comprises of 7 missions, which all feel like they could have been original episodes, with some interesting stories and some returning characters, and one is even a sort of prequel to Wrath of Khan. Although I did find that slightly odd because it starts with a Federation facility with a virus outbreak that only affected Romulans, with Spock saying it should be safe for everyone to beam over. I thought this was strange because of the link between Romulans and Vulcans and, sure enough, Spock gets ill, creating a timer for this mission (something I don’t like in games like this, I like slowly investigating everything). That said, the main parts of the mission are overall great.

Throughout the game you also get involved in ship combat. These parts of the game are horrible to control and are frustrating. The game would be better off with a simpler system where you give commands to your crew. One particularly annoying one involves a cloaked ship and you just have to hope that they don’t cloak too much to recharge shields – some of these battles are overly long.

Overall, 25th Anniversary is a really good Star Trek game, and it would be really nice to see a refreshed version that changes the ship combat and fixes some annoyances (like silencing repeated voice lines).

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (NES)

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Interplay
  • Publisher: Ultra
  • Platform: DOS

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While this shares the same name as the MS DOS game, this is not a console port of the 25th Anniversary. This is a completely different game, with its own gameplay, levels and even story. The story is fairly simple: The Enterprise has fallen though gravitational anomaly and ended up in an unknown region of space. They have to find dilithium crystals and make their way back home.

The game starts off pretty terribly. It feels like a shooter and exploring the first area you’ll be shot at by plants and probably killed by tiny worms. Once you figure out the game properly, there’s actually not that much shooting involved at all beyond the first level, instead the game is about exploring, finding items and working out how to use them.

Once you finish the rather tedious first level, you’re given a lot of planets to explore. Most of these are ones you either can’t land on or are just empty worlds, but it still gives the impression of a bigger world – a lot of planets are just bits of rock, after all, only a few planets contain missions that further the game. One of these is a really fun level set on a planet of rogue traders. There’s even a time travel mission where you have to save a planet that was destroyed due to the actions of Dr. McCoy.

While it has a very rough start, this surprisingly becomes quite enjoyable.

Star Trek 25th Anniversary (Game Boy)

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Visual Concepts
  • Publisher: Ultra
  • Platform: DOS

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Another game for the 25th Anniversary, and another one with its own story with its own version of the episode “The Doomsday Machine”. The Doomsday Machine is heading for Federation space. The Federation built a superweapon to destroy it, but the Klingons stole and split it into 12 parts on three planets. You have to find the pieces and destroy The Doomsday Machine.

In the space sections of the game, you have a map of the area and you can essentially choose which obstacles you face: asteroids, Klingons, Romulans, Tholians or Space Amoebas. These take you into a 2D scrolling thing where they all function the same with minor differences. You move to the right, avoiding and blasting obstacles. The Tholians are the most difficult due to their “webs”. Repeat this for the area until you reach the planet. There are four sections like this.

Once you reach a planet, you land on what looks like a randomly generated jumbled mess, but the layout is the same each time. You need to navigate these mazes, looking at your tricorder for directions, to collect four parts of the weapon. There are also enemies that are best avoided. You can shoot them, but if you run out of phaser energy you can soft-lock the game and have to die or restart the level.

This is a pretty terrible game. The space sections are fine but get repetitive before you finish the first one, and the ground sections are just a horrible mess.

Star Trek 25th Anniversary (LCD)

  • Original Release: 1991
  • Developer: Konami
  • Publisher: Konami
  • Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
  • Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

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An electronic handheld game to celebrate the 25th anniversary. The goal of this one is to rescue people from a Klingon Bird of Prey. The game has two parts. In the first, you rotate a single slither of shield around the Enterprise as you build up energy to fire a torpedo, then you align with the gap in the BoP’s shield to beam people up.

The Enterprise gets damage so you need to keep an eye out for Spock popping up in the corner to help you repair the ship.

Pair Match

  • Original Release: 1985 (Used as a game in Star Trek in 1992)
  • Developer: Bandai
  • Publisher: Bandai
  • Original Platform: Electronic Handheld

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While this game was originally released in 1985, it originally had nothing to do with Star Trek. It’s a very cool-looking electronic handheld game. The game itself is quite simple: it’s a version of the card game pairs, but each block plays a sound that matches with another. It’s much, much harder to remember location compared to standard playing cards.

The device was originally used as a “call waiter” prop in Ten Forward on the Enterprise D, however in the 1992 episode “Ethics”, Troi and Alexander use the device to play a game, thus turning Pair Match into a Star Trek game.

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Star Trek: The Game

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Classic Games
  • Publisher: Classic Games
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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With a fancy looking game board, I expected a lot more from this game. The goal is simply to visit four planets and return to the starbase (the two close planets count as one). You roll the dice and move that many spaces. At the end of the turn another player draws a card (based on how far through the game you are) and asks you a question. If you get it right, you take another turn – if your knowledge of Star Trek (TOS and the movies) is exceptional, you can just keep taking turns until you win the game.

Some spaces will make you move in certain ways or send you to specific spaces and others that slow you down. Some spaces will make you lose functions like warp and phasers. Phasers don’t do anything, but if you lose all engines you have to rely on another player to drag you back to starbase. They get tokens that can be used to repair their own ship functions. The rules also make a big deal that some questions can make you lose functions, but it relates to just two questions out of over 1000.

The game would be more enjoyable if you ditch the board and asked each other questions.

Star Trek: The Final Frontier (Board Game)

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Toys & Games Limited
  • Publisher: Toys & Games Limited
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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A very basic and very random roll and move game. You get given four random planets that you have to travel to before returning to Earth. As a result, some players will need to travel longer distances than others. Each turn you roll the dice and move that many spaces. If you land on a starfleet icon, you draw a card for a random action like have another turn, move X spaces or miss two turns.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Brand Makers)

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Brand Makers International
  • Publisher: Brand Makers International
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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A roll and write game where you have to go around the board to reach “docking ports”. Once there, you draw a character from a stack of cards. If it’s someone you already have, you put them back. If you land on another player, you can take one of their cards. Your goal is to collect the five main characters of The Next Generation: Picard, Beardless Riker, Worf, and Tasha Yar.

Keep in mind that this game was produced during season 5 of The Next Generation, and Tasha doesn’t even appear in the promotional images used for the board and box – plus Riker has a beard in those. This game is also a carbon copy of a Robin Hood game made by the same people, right down to the board layout. This is easily the laziest Star Trek game.

Terrace

  • Original Release: 1992
  • Developer: Anton Dresden, Buzz Siler
  • Publisher: Herbko
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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An abstract board game that was popular on the USS Enterprise D. This came out in 1992 and was first seen in “Hero Worship”. The box for Terrace even got updated mentioning that it appears in The Next Generation, along with a Windows 3.1 video game that also mentions TNG.

Terrace is a multi-level board game. Pieces can move as much as they want on the same level, can move up one space straight or diagonal but can only move down in a straight line. You take your own pieces by moving downwards onto an opponents piece, but your piece must be the same size or larger.

The aim of the game is to either take your opponents “T” piece or to get yours to the opposite side of the board. There’s a lot of strategy to this.

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Star Trek: Judgement Rites

  • Original Release: 1993
  • Developer: Interplay
  • Publisher: Interplay
  • Platform: DOS

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

1993-tng-game-1024x576.jpg

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

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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

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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).

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Tongo

  • Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993
  • Developer: luminous1, Dean Jones
  • Publisher: Self-Published
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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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

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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.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future’s Past

  • Original Release: 1994
  • Developer: Spectrum HoloByte
  • Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte
  • Platform: SNES

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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

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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

Star-Trek-Generations-Beyond-the-Nexus-U

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

Star-Trek-Starfleet-Academy-Starship-Bri

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

tech-man-002.jpg

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

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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.

generations-lcd.jpg

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.

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Star Trek Customizable Card Game

  • Original Release: 1994
  • Developer: Decipher
  • Publisher: Decipher
  • Original Platform: Board Game

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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

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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.

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Ignore this, was asking about Dabo but spelt it as Dabbo

Edited by EEVILMURRAY

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Bit late catching up on this, but I just wanted to say congrats on the recreation of Tongo! Looks great! It's always really cool when you see in-show games get recreated as actual fleshed out games! :D

Also yeah, the SNES version of Starfleet Academy is mad impressive.  It's nothing like the proper PC release of course (which incidentally is probably my favourite Star Trek game ever made), but it's a huge accomplishment for the SNES nonetheless; and not a single Super FX chip in sight!

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2 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Also yeah, the SNES version of Starfleet Academy is mad impressive.  It's nothing like the proper PC release of course (which incidentally is probably my favourite Star Trek game ever made), but it's a huge accomplishment for the SNES nonetheless; and not a single Super FX chip in sight!

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. 

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23 hours ago, Dcubed said:

Also yeah, the SNES version of Starfleet Academy is mad impressive.  It's nothing like the proper PC release of course (which incidentally is probably my favourite Star Trek game ever made), but it's a huge accomplishment for the SNES nonetheless; and not a single Super FX chip in sight!

Oh wow! Could've sworn that was being used going by that screenshot. Mad props!

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Falomir Juegos)

  • Original Release: 1994
  • Developer: Falomir Juegos
  • Publisher: Falomir Juegos
  • Original Platform: Board Game

1994-ds90screen-02-1024x576.jpg

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

borg-q-uest.jpg

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

starfleet-ac-br-sim-32x.png

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

ds9-crossroads.png

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.

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20 hours ago, Cube said:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Crossroads of Time

  • Original Release: 1995
  • Developer: Novotrade
  • Publisher: Playmates
  • Platform: SNES, Mega Drive
  • Version Played: Mega Drive

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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.

 

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