My Attempt to Play Every Star Trek Game

[Cube1701]

Don't forget Starfleet Battles..

I opted against that one, due to it being unofficial, not using the "Star Trek" name, creating its own version of the universe and being a complicated game. I may look at it after doing the others (along with Federation Commander)

Also, in the Federation Trading Post in Berkley, there was a one off "Star Trek" video game that I played whenever I visited..
There's a video of the gameplay on YouTube, https://fb.watch/jQpfb7GPG4/

Now this one I hadn't found in my research. Thanks for the information!

Star Trek: Trivia Game

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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)

 

[MANT!]

I opted against that one, due to it being unofficial, not using the "Star Trek" name, creating its own version of the universe and being a complicated game. I may look at it after doing the others (along with Federation Commander)

Actually it was an official licensed game back in 1979..it deviated soon after, but you will play a version of it a bit later in your journey,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Starfleet_Command

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Star Trek: The Game

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

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

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

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

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.

 

[BillJ]

I have the 25th Anniversary game for the NES. Fun time.

 

[Kor]

I had a vague memory of possibly having 25th Anniversary for Windows on CD-ROM somewhere, but it turns out I actually have Judgment Rites. The game was originally released in 1993 on floppy discs. I have the 1995 CD-ROM release which came in the big box with an enamel pin and TCOTEOF on VHS. I got it second-hand, so naturally the pin and the VHS tape are missing. I haven't tried getting the game working on my modern PC. Maybe I'll give that a shot this week.

Kor

 

[Cube1701]

I haven't tried getting the game working on my modern PC. Maybe I'll give that a shot this week.

DOSbox is the tool needed to get it working. Installing some games isn't easy (I had great difficulty with some games - earlier games are just drag and drop but these need installing into it). If you don't mind spending a bit of money, GoG and Steam have 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites in their own pre-configured DOSbox.

 

[NCC-73515]

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.

I got stuck halfway into the game on a mission somewhere where you had to mix chemicals or something like that, but the space battles were so bad I was actually happy to drop it entirely

 

[Kor]

On another note, I see listings for the Konami LCD game on ebay at rather reasonable prices, like in the $20 to $25 range.

Kor

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: Judgement Rites

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

The sequel to the 25th Anniversary doesn’t get as much attention as the original, which is a shame as this is an improvement in every way.

Judgement Rites features an arching storyline trying most of the plots of each “episode” together, which I think works well for a video game. Each episode still feels like a complete story with its own individual plot, mysteries and setting. The away team also varies, so it’s nice that the rest of the crew (other than Spock and McCoy) get to do more in this game. This game was also the last completed project that had all of the main cast in it.

Combat returns, but now has an easier setting or can be disabled completely, although some dialogue is cut if you choose this. That said, some of the battles do just seem to be there for the sake of having a battle in each story, so it’s still good that you can turn off its weakest element.

The point and click portions are great, and there are no timers to worry about each time so you can solve them at your own pace. I did find a few times that some elements you need can be difficult to notice, for one story I was wondering around for ages because I didn’t realise that one computer panel was actually two (you needed to interact with both) and sometimes you won’t realise that the bottom of the screen is a path, but for the most part it’s solvable without really obscure solutions and sometimes there are even a couple of ways to do something.

Judgement Rites is a great game, and I highly recommend it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (NES)

• Original Release: 1993
• Developer: Imagineering
• Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
• Platform: NES

By far the most impressive thing about this game is how they’ve managed to fit so much stuff on just a D-pad, A, B, Select and Start. The controls aren’t good by any stretch, it’s just impressive that they could do so much with so few buttons.

In this, you command the crew of the Enterprise D. Well, four of them at least. Worf will turn on/off shields and weapons. Data will set courses for systems and orbit planets. La Forge will boost power to some systems and sort out repairs. O’ Brian is the most involved with controlling the transporter. Riker tells you the time. You use the D-pad to select who you want to give a command to and A to confirm.

Pressing the select button will put you in a mode where you fly the ship and shoot phasers/torpedoes. However, to change speed you have to go back to the command mode and press forward/back.

The game itself is random missions that generally involve flying somewhere, shooting stuff and then transporting. It’s a fairly dull combat simulator and not much more. When you beam stuff up (cargo or hostages), you get a nice little minigame, but that’s all there is.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Game Boy)

• Original Release: 1993
• Developer: Imagineering
• Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
• Platform: NES

While it’s quite often the case that the Game Boy got completely different versions of the games than the NES (25th Anniversary being one example), this is the exact same game as on the NES, just in black an white. There’s not much more to cover with this version, other than it being really good for a Game Boy conversion of a game – it’s just a shame that the game isn’t a good one.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Tiger)

• Original Release: 1993
• Developer: Tiger
• Publisher: Tiger
• Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

A very basic LCD game. You have to avoid asteroids while shooting at Romulans. These games are very rarely any good, and are almost impossible to see when playing.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Klingon Challenge

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

On the surface, this is another roll and move board game. The Enterprise has been taken over by a Klingon called Kavok. As the ship was undergoing upgrades, only a few unnamed crew are on board. It’s up to them to get access to the Enterprise computer and stop Kavok from starting a war between the Federation and the Klingons.

Do do this, they need to collect 5 isolinear chips and a phaser and get to the bridge. To do this, you need to collect computer access card by landing on spaces and hopefully drawing a card that mentions a specific room (or, if you’re lucky, any room) – however, some of these cards are just bonuses. Once you get to the mentioned room, you earn your next chip.

If the game was just rolling moving and doing what it says, it would be boring. But this is a VCR board game, which makes the experience a lot more fun (albeit a bit silly). While playing, you watch the footage and Kavok (played by Robert O’Reilly, known for playing Gowron) will pop up every now and then. He’ll address a player (usually the one currently moving, sometimes based on rank) who has to respond with “Yes Captain Kavok!” and then gets told what to do, which is usually getting trapped in a stasis field (so they can’t move), spinning the Klingon Dagger for a random chance or to EXPERIANCE BIJ!

While Kavok gets more and more excited to say the words, it just means drawing a Bij card and doing what it says. This will usually be something negative. Sometimes a “Low Level Malfunction” will pop up on screen when you EXPERIANCE BIJ which means you get a reward instead.

It’s a silly game, but fun. It’s easy to lose track of things, but the rules even expect this and say to quickly pick a random person and carry on playing because you’re against the clock. If time runs out, you’ll have to watch the Enterprise get destroyed.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Classic Games)

• Original Release: 1993
• Developer: Classic Games
• Publisher: Classic Games
• Original Platform: Board Game

This is similar to the previous board game from the same publisher: a board game where answering trivia questions gives you another clue. While the game is simple, there’s lots of different things that can happen so the host be referring to the rulebook a lot. One player is Starfleet Command and keeps track of what is going on, as well as reading questions for players to answer.

The aim of the game sounds simple: There are planets hidden in the sector, find and scan them and report to Starfleet Command. I tried a scenario with one sector and two planets and it took forever for someone to find one planet (we agreed that they won the game at that point). The sensor range of ships is quite small so they have to get quite close to the planets to discover them. On top of that, each of the three other players have their routes hidden from each other, so could all be exploring similar areas. I can’t imagine trying to play this game with all four sectors.

On a player’s turn, they pick a direction and speed and move in that direction. Starfleet Command then reads a question – the faster the ship is travelling, the more difficult the question it. Each question has consequences (damaging systems or getting teleported elsewhere by Q) and bonuses (mainly just taking another turn).

It’s a shame because all the grids and drawing implements give the impression of a much more interesting game – once again it will just be better to ask each other the trivia questions.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Game of the Galaxies

• Original Release: 1992
• Developer: Cardinal
• Publisher: Cardinal
• Original Platform: Board Game

Yet another roll and move Star Trek game, although at least this one has a nice board. The object of the game is to play as a character from The Next Generation (the game supports 6 players but there are 10 characters to choose from) to visit planets to collect treaties (you just land on the planet to get it).

Landing on blue spaces will give you cards that will move you around, make you lose or gain treaties or make you lose a turn. you start off with a Photon Torpedo card which lets you take a shortcut through an asteroid field.

Dabo

• Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993
• Developer: Cryptic
• Publisher: Perfect World
• Original Platform: Board Game

Dabo! This is playable in Star Trek Online, so I was able to use that version for the purposes of this. There’s not really a lot to talk about, it’s just a large slot machine/roulette wheel combo. You pick a position on the outside of the board, then the three rings spin. When the stop, the three symbols that line up with the positions you bet on determine your reward (or lack of reward).

Tongo

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

I manged to find some rules form Tongo that someone made based on all mentions of the game in the script of Deep Space Nine. It’s a Poker-like game with lots of random stuff happening with round cards, square cards, dice and betting. The rules I found used standard cards, while I found some imagery of Tongo cards and edited them to create numbered cards in four ranks.

The round cards are your personal hand, these are visible to only you. The square cards are placed on the floor (the spinner), mostly face down. Every single card is part of the game, and have have to move and manipulate them. However, they can only be moved when face down so you have to try and memorise where they are. On top of that, the board is then spun so people have to keep focused so they don’t lose track of which section the cards they need are on. The vertical cards are called the “floor” and are used in determining hand ranking while the horizontal ones are used for exchanging. Finally, the dice can be rolled if they are on the segment facing you. Everyone can use the dice, which count as any rank, but they can only be used to increase a hand and nor form one (for example, a dice can’t be used for a pair, but it can turn a pair into a three-of-a-kind).

Instead of betting, you pay for actions into the pot. Frist you can alter the buy/sell/exchange values, then pay to buy (flip face up), sell (flip face down) or exchange (swap with a card in the vertical row on the same or other section of the board). There are two ways of challenging other players: confront or acquire.

Confront means all players can use the cards in any of the floors, it doesn’t matter who they are facing. Acquire means everyone is forced to use the cards in the section in front of them. You score your hand based on the round cards you have, the card in the flop and the three dice.

Tongo is a very complicated poker, with individual rounds taking a long time – with potentially only a single round in the game. There’s a lot of card manipulation and trying to keep track of what is going on. Unfortunately, the version I’ve made in Tabletop Simulator isn’t fully functional, but I’m trying to figure out the scripting to make it work.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Advanced Holodeck Tutorial

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Imagineering
• Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
• Platform: Game Gear

When I first saw the name, I though it was a strange way of downplaying a game to make it sound not so good. But after playing the NES and Game Boy versions of this game (which didn’t have the subtitle), it’s actually a pretty fair description for the game.

The Game Gear version of this features a little splash screen explaining that it’s training missions on a holodeck at Starfleet Academy (that information was only in the manuals for the other versions), as well as some nice shots of the Enterprise D going to warp, with better use of colour throughout the game.

While the game still isn’t good, the Game Gear version is definitely the version of it.

 

[NCC-73515]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Klingon Challenge

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

On the surface, this is another roll and move board game. The Enterprise has been taken over by a Klingon called Kavok. As the ship was undergoing upgrades, only a few unnamed crew are on board. It’s up to them to get access to the Enterprise computer and stop Kavok from starting a war between the Federation and the Klingons.

Do do this, they need to collect 5 isolinear chips and a phaser and get to the bridge. To do this, you need to collect computer access card by landing on spaces and hopefully drawing a card that mentions a specific room (or, if you’re lucky, any room) – however, some of these cards are just bonuses. Once you get to the mentioned room, you earn your next chip.

If the game was just rolling moving and doing what it says, it would be boring. But this is a VCR board game, which makes the experience a lot more fun (albeit a bit silly). While playing, you watch the footage and Kavok (played by Robert O’Reilly, known for playing Gowron) will pop up every now and then. He’ll address a player (usually the one currently moving, sometimes based on rank) who has to respond with “Yes Captain Kavok!” and then gets told what to do, which is usually getting trapped in a stasis field (so they can’t move), spinning the Klingon Dagger for a random chance or to EXPERIANCE BIJ!

While Kavok gets more and more excited to say the words, it just means drawing a Bij card and doing what it says. This will usually be something negative. Sometimes a “Low Level Malfunction” will pop up on screen when you EXPERIANCE BIJ which means you get a reward instead.

It’s a silly game, but fun. It’s easy to lose track of things, but the rules even expect this and say to quickly pick a random person and carry on playing because you’re against the clock. If time runs out, you’ll have to watch the Enterprise get destroyed.

I have that one, and it's great

 

[daedalus5]

I like the graphics from Star Trek V. These are great posts!

 

[David cgc]

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Tiger)

• Original Release: 1993
• Developer: Tiger
• Publisher: Tiger
• Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

A very basic LCD game. You have to avoid asteroids while shooting at Romulans. These games are very rarely any good, and are almost impossible to see when playing.

I had this one. There was a second mode where you beamed down to the planet and had a shootout with Romulans on the ground.

I'm out of town a hand-me-down laptop, so I decided to revisit some experiments with retrocomputing using SheepShaver to emulate the Classic Mac OS ("classic" isn't a value judgement, it's how Apple distinguished it when OS X came out). I found a lot of childhood favorites as abandonware on the Macintosh Repository, like Glypha, Sim Ant, Glider, StuntCopter, Missions of the Reliant, Spacestation Pheta...

But I digress! I bring it up because it looks like you're going to miss one of the great unlicensed Star Trek games, "Rescue!" And you don't have to do a bunch of fiddly set-up to get it to work like I did, you can emulate it in your browser. Though you may want to do a bunch of fiddly set-up, I just tried the web emulation, and it was slow as molasses and the keyboard shortcuts didn't work. If you do give it a shot, bring up the in-game manual, and also, here's the information on secrets, easter eggs, and tips you'd get if you registered the game back in the '90s. Alternatively, there is one single YouTube video of the game in action, but the narration is a little... goofy.

I've been thinking I need to learn more about about game development, and Rescue! could be a good project to try and recreate. Quick gameplay, fairly complex interactions but not, like, unimaginably so, broad but limited amount of controls that would adapt nicely to a tablet-sized touch-screen...

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future’s Past

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

This one took a bit of getting used to due to some fiddly buttons and confusing menus. The Enterprise is monitoring Romulan Activity in the Neutral Zone and ends up in an epic quest to be chosen to be given an extremely powerful weapon – one that the Romulans and a new race called the Chodak.

The game starts off with a view of the Enterprise D bridge. Here you look around at the various stations. Some (like the Computer and Sensors) give you additional information, the Briefing Room has Picard explain the current objective to the crew (a really nice touch) and the main one – the conn lets you set a course. There are a lot of places to choose from, although there’s not much reason to visit most, not to mention that the game bugs you if you’re not doing the current objective.

While at warp, you may randomly encounter enemy ships. The focus on ship combat is a top-down view and is very basic and quite annoying. You’re also supposed to keep an eye out for a little notification that the enemy ship is surrendering (although there’s no penalty for blowing them up). When you get damaged, your ship’s systems will go down and you’ll have to assign resources to each one. You can go to a starbase to completely repair (which also creates a password to save the game), but I found that as most of the game it was navigation or engines that were down, you just had to leave the game for a few minutes and let the admiral yell at you for not doing the current objective.

When you go on an away mission, you get to pick your away team (in most cases). You’ll want to take Data on every possible mission as he has the best stats and can see in the dark, which is the only ability that makes a difference (and only on one mission). Some crew completely lack phasers (like Dr. Crusher). I found myself using Data, La Forge, Worf and a random ensign on most missions.

These missions involve a lot of shooting, some puzzle solving and a lot of aimlessly walking around the maze-like levels. There’s some interesting ideas here, as you can swap between the away team and take them separate routes or command them to follow one person.

I feel like a sequel for this could have had the potential to fix the issues with this game. There’s some good ideas, but ultimately isn’t executed very well.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Spectrum HoloByte
• Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte
• Platform: Mega Drive

This is a game heavily based on Future’s Past, but considering they both came out only a few months apart, there are a surprising amount of differences.

The game starts off with a lovely pixelated recreation of the opening of The Next Generation, which makes it feel even more like an episode of the show. There’s also a lot more dialogue in this game as the characters you meet have conversations with Picard instead of just a single paragraph at the end. Missions are mostly the game, but with slightly different layouts that make things look slightly more like actual locations, although they’re still difficult mazes. Using items is more fiddly due to the lack of shoulder buttons.

The combat is mostly the same, but ships seem to move a lot faster. This causes the sensor grid to zoom in an out a lot, which I found to be extremely nauseating. If you can put up with that, I do recommend this version due to the improved dialogue – with the exception of one change where the mission is something given to Picard and not the crew (the objective recaps now take place in the ready room instead of the briefing room).

Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: : Absolute Entertainment
• Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
• Platform: Game Gear

A game loosely based on Star Trek Generations. It uses the Advanced Holodeck Tutorial as a basis and adds more modes (although more minigames) to kind of tell the story. It starts off on the Enterprise B on it’s maiden voyage when it suddenly gets attacked by Tholians.

The ship combat is a very simplified version of the previous game. There’s no commands to give anyone, just turn and shoot. It’s also much easier as you rarely get hit, but combat still drags on. After this, you need to track a distress call by playing a minigame similar to Mastermind where you enter symbols and the game tells you how many are the correct symbol and how many are in the right place. The third minigame has you flying through squares, with another involving you laying down pipes. After doing a few of these a few times, the game cuts forward to the Enterprise D, skipping Kirk’s apparent death.

The Enterprise D section follows the same minigames, and adds some basic top-down on foot-sections where you shoot enemies as you run to Soren. You do a few at Amargosa Station, track the Klingon Bird of Prey, do a few more, blow up the Bird of Prey and get a message saying that the Enterprise had to crash on the planet but everyone is saved. Considering the game is called “Beyond the Nexus”, there’s nothing actually involving the Nexus.

However, you do get a screen saying that there’s a hidden final level, but can only access if you can name the ship that rescued the crew at the end of the film. This last mission is just another code breaking minigame followed by a final still of Picard and the description of “The Body of James T Kirk is laid to rest”, even though he’s not been mentioned since he fixed something on the Enterprise B.

Beyond the Nexus is a very easy minigame collection that poorly tells the story of Star Trek Generations. The most disappointing thing is that the Generations theme music isn’t even in the game.

There’s also a Game Boy version which is the exact same game but with fewer colours (it supports colour for the Super Game Boy, but still not as advanced as the Game Gear version).

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Interplay
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: SNES

I was quite impressed by this game. It’s a series of 20 simulations (plus some bonus ones) where you command a team of Starfleet Academy students. The main buttons are used for flying (thankfully you can turn off inverted controls) and weapons, with the L and R buttons being used to spin the ship, which is more control than previous games. Press the select button and the viewscreen will bring up a menu where you can give commands to your crew – sensors, red alert, hailing and things like that.

The missions start off with little focus on combat, one has you moving a radioactive asteroid from the planet, the most interesting one has you investigate a protostar which ends up with contact with a new species, others have you investigate missing/destroyed ships. A few of them let you complete your objective and leave an area without defeating the enemies there.

Each mission concludes with the lesson it was built to teach, and will also give you a score based on your performance, telling you anything you did wrong (I kept forgetting to cancel red alert when going back to starbase). If you fail and get a score of zero, you’re supposed to carry on finishing the current set of 5 missions and redoing all of them if you don’t reach 75% (or just use the passwords to reload the mission – which makes it strange that it isn’t just an option).

After you complete the 20 missions you get your final mission: deliver some supplies. When you start, you get hailed by a ship called the Kobayashi Maru, which is losing power but has stranded into the neutral zone. I was surprised that you aren’t forced into combat and I was able to choose the option of getting higher ups to ask the Klingons to help, as I don’t think the mission is worth starting a war over. You can also enter codes in the character creation (it’s just male/female and some pre-set names) to unlock names. If you play as James T. Kirk, you get to play an alternate version of the test.

While the later mission are mores combat focused, which still feels a bit clunky as you can only fire directly forwards, I found it to be a mostly enjoyable game. It also has some very early 3D, and they’ve done well with the limited resources of the SNES.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

An interactive tour of the USS Enterprise D, featuring the voices of Majel Barrett Roddenberry and Johnathan Frakes. There’s not a lot of “game” here, but it provides some nice views of all the main rooms of the Enterprise D, each room having multiple 360 degrees viewpoints to look at. There’s a lot of technical information to read and a couple of panels you can activate.

One thing I quite like is that when you change location, you get a video of walking to the corridor and into a turbolift. Makes everything feel more connected and like you’re on an actual tour of the ship.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Blinded by the Light

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Joe Edkin, Kim Yale
• Publisher: Tiger
• Platform: 2-XL Robot

The 2-XL Robot is an educational game that uses audio cassettes for “chose your own adventure” audio novels. Blinded by the Light is about a secret mission that Geordi La Forge is sent on, featuring the voice of LeVar Burton. Romulans have created a personal cloak and are testing it on a Federation place near where La Forge used to live, so he is chosen to try and stop it.

At points in the story, you get to choose what happens – the first one is if Georgi’s shuttle gets hit by a solar flare or a meteor storm. There are two main paths through this, both telling you that you failed to do something significant and to try again, so it’s a bit of a buzzkill at the end.

Star Trek: Generations (LCD)

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Toy Options
• Publisher: Toy Options
• Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

A British-made LCD game, there isn’t a lot of information on the LCD games this company made, but I found a couple of other ones, including ones based on Scalextric and Micro Machines. The images of both of those games look exactly the same, so I think this company designed some very generic games and hoped to get licensing to slap a different sticker and give it a different name.

This explains why the screenshot of this is just some spacemen and shuttles. It’s likely that this was designed as their generic “space game” for any future space-related licenses they got, although it doesn’t look like they ever got more after this one. The game is very basic. Spacemen are dropped from the top of the screen, you control the bottom shuttle and have to collect them.

Star Trek Customizable Card Game

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

I nearly skipped this game. I loaded it up in Tabletop Simulator and was greeted with thousands of cards and an extremely complicated rulebook that was over 110 pages long. It was extremely daunting. I received some encouragement that it wasn’t as scary as it sounds and managed to find a different version on Tabletop Simulator that came with pre-built decks and a simplified ruleset based on those starter decks – the 110 page rules covered many years of additions.

At the start of the match, you build the “board” out of mission cards, which represent locations. In more advanced games, these can form separate quadrant and some cards need to be next to each other. You then take turns adding dilemmas to these missions, these represent challenges that the crews will face.

Each turn you play one card, slowly building up your ships and their crews, along with other actions you can perform. You can then move your ship between locations (as long as they’re in range) and attempt missions, ending your turn by drawing one card.

On missions, cards will cause you to lose crew (temporary or permanently). If you manage to get through them all and then have enough crew to meet the requirements of the mission, you’ll score the points for the mission, the first to 100 wins. When you add more complicated cards, extra factions, alternate realities and all sorts of other stuff, then the game can get very complicated.

When collectable card games are typically combat based, I really enjoy how this feels to play, and that the missions aren’t just combat based, it’s about having the right people for the job. I don’t like collectable games, but if this game had released in playable packs with pre-made decks, then I would have loved it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Romulan Challenge

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: J. C. Game Design
• Publisher: MMG Ltd.
• Original Platform: Board Game

Yet another roll and move Star Trek board game. In this one, one planet is the “target” planet, drawn from a stack of cards. The movement mechanics are somewhat interesting: roll two dice (both D10s) and your movement is the difference between the two (so if you roll a 9 and a 1, you move 8). If you roll a double, you add the numbers together instead.

Once you move, you then use the numbers on the dice to consult the co-ordinates board to find out if you get nothing, a resource card (required to reach planets) or a command cards, which gives you a random order (move extra spaces, move to certain spaces, miss a turn, get resource cards). Some of these have trivia questions you have to solve in order to get the reward.

 

[NCC-73515]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future’s Past

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

This one took a bit of getting used to due to some fiddly buttons and confusing menus. The Enterprise is monitoring Romulan Activity in the Neutral Zone and ends up in an epic quest to be chosen to be given an extremely powerful weapon – one that the Romulans and a new race called the Chodak.

The game starts off with a view of the Enterprise D bridge. Here you look around at the various stations. Some (like the Computer and Sensors) give you additional information, the Briefing Room has Picard explain the current objective to the crew (a really nice touch) and the main one – the conn lets you set a course. There are a lot of places to choose from, although there’s not much reason to visit most, not to mention that the game bugs you if you’re not doing the current objective.

While at warp, you may randomly encounter enemy ships. The focus on ship combat is a top-down view and is very basic and quite annoying. You’re also supposed to keep an eye out for a little notification that the enemy ship is surrendering (although there’s no penalty for blowing them up). When you get damaged, your ship’s systems will go down and you’ll have to assign resources to each one. You can go to a starbase to completely repair (which also creates a password to save the game), but I found that as most of the game it was navigation or engines that were down, you just had to leave the game for a few minutes and let the admiral yell at you for not doing the current objective.

When you go on an away mission, you get to pick your away team (in most cases). You’ll want to take Data on every possible mission as he has the best stats and can see in the dark, which is the only ability that makes a difference (and only on one mission). Some crew completely lack phasers (like Dr. Crusher). I found myself using Data, La Forge, Worf and a random ensign on most missions.

These missions involve a lot of shooting, some puzzle solving and a lot of aimlessly walking around the maze-like levels. There’s some interesting ideas here, as you can swap between the away team and take them separate routes or command them to follow one person.

I feel like a sequel for this could have had the potential to fix the issues with this game. There’s some good ideas, but ultimately isn’t executed very well.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Spectrum HoloByte
• Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte
• Platform: Mega Drive

This is a game heavily based on Future’s Past, but considering they both came out only a few months apart, there are a surprising amount of differences.

The game starts off with a lovely pixelated recreation of the opening of The Next Generation, which makes it feel even more like an episode of the show. There’s also a lot more dialogue in this game as the characters you meet have conversations with Picard instead of just a single paragraph at the end. Missions are mostly the game, but with slightly different layouts that make things look slightly more like actual locations, although they’re still difficult mazes. Using items is more fiddly due to the lack of shoulder buttons.

The combat is mostly the same, but ships seem to move a lot faster. This causes the sensor grid to zoom in an out a lot, which I found to be extremely nauseating. If you can put up with that, I do recommend this version due to the improved dialogue – with the exception of one change where the mission is something given to Picard and not the crew (the objective recaps now take place in the ready room instead of the briefing room).

Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: : Absolute Entertainment
• Publisher: Absolute Entertainment
• Platform: Game Gear

A game loosely based on Star Trek Generations. It uses the Advanced Holodeck Tutorial as a basis and adds more modes (although more minigames) to kind of tell the story. It starts off on the Enterprise B on it’s maiden voyage when it suddenly gets attacked by Tholians.

The ship combat is a very simplified version of the previous game. There’s no commands to give anyone, just turn and shoot. It’s also much easier as you rarely get hit, but combat still drags on. After this, you need to track a distress call by playing a minigame similar to Mastermind where you enter symbols and the game tells you how many are the correct symbol and how many are in the right place. The third minigame has you flying through squares, with another involving you laying down pipes. After doing a few of these a few times, the game cuts forward to the Enterprise D, skipping Kirk’s apparent death.

The Enterprise D section follows the same minigames, and adds some basic top-down on foot-sections where you shoot enemies as you run to Soren. You do a few at Amargosa Station, track the Klingon Bird of Prey, do a few more, blow up the Bird of Prey and get a message saying that the Enterprise had to crash on the planet but everyone is saved. Considering the game is called “Beyond the Nexus”, there’s nothing actually involving the Nexus.

However, you do get a screen saying that there’s a hidden final level, but can only access if you can name the ship that rescued the crew at the end of the film. This last mission is just another code breaking minigame followed by a final still of Picard and the description of “The Body of James T Kirk is laid to rest”, even though he’s not been mentioned since he fixed something on the Enterprise B.

Beyond the Nexus is a very easy minigame collection that poorly tells the story of Star Trek Generations. The most disappointing thing is that the Generations theme music isn’t even in the game.

There’s also a Game Boy version which is the exact same game but with fewer colours (it supports colour for the Super Game Boy, but still not as advanced as the Game Gear version).

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Interplay
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: SNES

I was quite impressed by this game. It’s a series of 20 simulations (plus some bonus ones) where you command a team of Starfleet Academy students. The main buttons are used for flying (thankfully you can turn off inverted controls) and weapons, with the L and R buttons being used to spin the ship, which is more control than previous games. Press the select button and the viewscreen will bring up a menu where you can give commands to your crew – sensors, red alert, hailing and things like that.

The missions start off with little focus on combat, one has you moving a radioactive asteroid from the planet, the most interesting one has you investigate a protostar which ends up with contact with a new species, others have you investigate missing/destroyed ships. A few of them let you complete your objective and leave an area without defeating the enemies there.

Each mission concludes with the lesson it was built to teach, and will also give you a score based on your performance, telling you anything you did wrong (I kept forgetting to cancel red alert when going back to starbase). If you fail and get a score of zero, you’re supposed to carry on finishing the current set of 5 missions and redoing all of them if you don’t reach 75% (or just use the passwords to reload the mission – which makes it strange that it isn’t just an option).

After you complete the 20 missions you get your final mission: deliver some supplies. When you start, you get hailed by a ship called the Kobayashi Maru, which is losing power but has stranded into the neutral zone. I was surprised that you aren’t forced into combat and I was able to choose the option of getting higher ups to ask the Klingons to help, as I don’t think the mission is worth starting a war over. You can also enter codes in the character creation (it’s just male/female and some pre-set names) to unlock names. If you play as James T. Kirk, you get to play an alternate version of the test.

While the later mission are mores combat focused, which still feels a bit clunky as you can only fire directly forwards, I found it to be a mostly enjoyable game. It also has some very early 3D, and they’ve done well with the limited resources of the SNES.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

An interactive tour of the USS Enterprise D, featuring the voices of Majel Barrett Roddenberry and Johnathan Frakes. There’s not a lot of “game” here, but it provides some nice views of all the main rooms of the Enterprise D, each room having multiple 360 degrees viewpoints to look at. There’s a lot of technical information to read and a couple of panels you can activate.

One thing I quite like is that when you change location, you get a video of walking to the corridor and into a turbolift. Makes everything feel more connected and like you’re on an actual tour of the ship.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Blinded by the Light

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Joe Edkin, Kim Yale
• Publisher: Tiger
• Platform: 2-XL Robot

The 2-XL Robot is an educational game that uses audio cassettes for “chose your own adventure” audio novels. Blinded by the Light is about a secret mission that Geordi La Forge is sent on, featuring the voice of LeVar Burton. Romulans have created a personal cloak and are testing it on a Federation place near where La Forge used to live, so he is chosen to try and stop it.

At points in the story, you get to choose what happens – the first one is if Georgi’s shuttle gets hit by a solar flare or a meteor storm. There are two main paths through this, both telling you that you failed to do something significant and to try again, so it’s a bit of a buzzkill at the end.

Star Trek: Generations (LCD)

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Toy Options
• Publisher: Toy Options
• Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

A British-made LCD game, there isn’t a lot of information on the LCD games this company made, but I found a couple of other ones, including ones based on Scalextric and Micro Machines. The images of both of those games look exactly the same, so I think this company designed some very generic games and hoped to get licensing to slap a different sticker and give it a different name.

This explains why the screenshot of this is just some spacemen and shuttles. It’s likely that this was designed as their generic “space game” for any future space-related licenses they got, although it doesn’t look like they ever got more after this one. The game is very basic. Spacemen are dropped from the top of the screen, you control the bottom shuttle and have to collect them.

Star Trek Customizable Card Game

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

I nearly skipped this game. I loaded it up in Tabletop Simulator and was greeted with thousands of cards and an extremely complicated rulebook that was over 110 pages long. It was extremely daunting. I received some encouragement that it wasn’t as scary as it sounds and managed to find a different version on Tabletop Simulator that came with pre-built decks and a simplified ruleset based on those starter decks – the 110 page rules covered many years of additions.

At the start of the match, you build the “board” out of mission cards, which represent locations. In more advanced games, these can form separate quadrant and some cards need to be next to each other. You then take turns adding dilemmas to these missions, these represent challenges that the crews will face.

Each turn you play one card, slowly building up your ships and their crews, along with other actions you can perform. You can then move your ship between locations (as long as they’re in range) and attempt missions, ending your turn by drawing one card.

On missions, cards will cause you to lose crew (temporary or permanently). If you manage to get through them all and then have enough crew to meet the requirements of the mission, you’ll score the points for the mission, the first to 100 wins. When you add more complicated cards, extra factions, alternate realities and all sorts of other stuff, then the game can get very complicated.

When collectable card games are typically combat based, I really enjoy how this feels to play, and that the missions aren’t just combat based, it’s about having the right people for the job. I don’t like collectable games, but if this game had released in playable packs with pre-made decks, then I would have loved it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Romulan Challenge

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: J. C. Game Design
• Publisher: MMG Ltd.
• Original Platform: Board Game

Yet another roll and move Star Trek board game. In this one, one planet is the “target” planet, drawn from a stack of cards. The movement mechanics are somewhat interesting: roll two dice (both D10s) and your movement is the difference between the two (so if you roll a 9 and a 1, you move 8). If you roll a double, you add the numbers together instead.

Once you move, you then use the numbers on the dice to consult the co-ordinates board to find out if you get nothing, a resource card (required to reach planets) or a command cards, which gives you a random order (move extra spaces, move to certain spaces, miss a turn, get resource cards). Some of these have trivia questions you have to solve in order to get the reward.

ITM was amazing back then. You could also get a good 360 deg look at all the props, and push some buttons to launch a probe and initiate a core breach or something like that (It's been a while)

I have a lot of CCG cards, but never found anyone to play with

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Where's OG TOS three-dimensional ("Tri-D") chess?

 

[publiusr]

Not a game—but I liked the ship designer program

 

[NCC-73515]

Not a game—but I liked the ship designer program

Best soundtrack ever!

 

[Cube1701]

Where's OG TOS three-dimensional ("Tri-D") chess?

It got an official physical release in 1994, so I included it in that year. So it's in the next set of write ups (I'm much further ahead in playing these than I am posting, hoping to keep up a momentum of regular updates).

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Falomir Juegos)

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

A Star Trek board game that was only released in Spanish – using Google Translate I could work out how to play the game. It’s essentially a variation on Ludo, which does kind of fit with the shape of DS9. The rules, however, don’t fit such a simple roll and move game.

The objective is to get to “Ops”. Your staring space has the direction you move in and you will continue to move this way until you land on a white “P” square. The main arms of DS9 are heavily guarded, so you can’t move inside that way, instead you need to land on the “R” (for Runabout), which puts you on the LR spot to move into the centre. You then need to land on the P1 square to move further in – if you overshoot, you move back to the outer ring via the arms. Once in the middle, you keep circling until you land on your colour to progress inwards until you reach OPS.

Some tiles are marked “C”, which signifies Cardassians (the story is that you’re taking it back from them). This will cause you to miss turns but also collect attack tokens. If the person that reaches Ops have 5, they are the sole winner. If they have fewer, then other players are runner up alongside them.

Tridimensional Chess

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Irving A Feinberg
• Publisher: Franklin Mint
• Original Platform: Board Game

The game from The Original Series finally got an official release in 1994 from Franklin Mint. While the game looks great in Tabletop Simulator, it’s quite fiddly. I managed to find an Android app called “Tri D Chess” which has multiple rulesets and lets you play against an AI.

Tridimsnional Chess looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. The basic rules of Chess apply. The board is a bit longer and where the sections that overlap, you can choose which level you want to finish your move on. The small bords at the end can also be moved, but only when there’s a single playing piece on them. It’s an interesting chess variant, and one that is visually stunning to look at.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – A World for all Seasons
Original Release: N/A (In development 1994)
Developer: Spectrum HoloByte
Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte
Original Platform: 3DO
Not played: No leaked prototypes.

A choose-your-own adventure game with 3D characters and pre-rendered backgrounds. There was an article about it in Electronic Gaming Monthly, which has some screenshots, but not a lot of information about what the story was going to be about. It used some impressive 3D renders to use as 2D backgrounds, so only the characters were actually rendered by the 3DO console. These character models look like they were later used for cutscenes in A Final Unity.

The screenshots show off a very colourful alien city and a desolate looking world with interesting structures, along with some odd-looking aliens. The main rooms of the Enterprise D were also rendered, with a couple of views from the bridge, including one where you select options from the tactical console and an image of the viewscreen showing ship combat.

It looked like a very ambitious game, but the constant changes to the 3DO hardware before launch likely made development very difficult (the console had one game when it launched), and companies started dropping it as the Saturn and PlayStation arrived shortly after.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Hunt

• Original Release: N/A (In development 1994)
• Developer: Paramount Interactive
• Publisher: Paramount Interactive
• Original Platform: PC
• Not played: No leaked prototypes.

This one seemed like it was quite far in development when it was cancelled, background, art and animations were around “95%” complete according to someone who worked on the game.

The game takes place on DS9 where you can play as one of four characters: A human Federation officer called Lt. Delgado, a female Klingon called Garrudann, a male Ferengi called Bixtur or a male Banjoran called Salu Marn. You could interact with the crew from the TV show to solve an adventure. According to a description on the poster, the plot revolved around a thief with stolen treasure that had “mysterious power”, with Cardassians wanting to retrieve it for their own use and the Ferengi wanting to steal it for their own profit. You could interact with characters from the show which were claimed to be “realistically animated in stereo sound” (although it’s unknown if voice acting was recorded or even planned.

Deep Space Nine: The Hunt would have a lot of character interaction and an open-ended story structure, which presumably means multiple endings and possibly failure endings, as well as “cinematic special effects”. The poster even shows the box art for it, which had a unique box design which was later re-used for Deep Space Nine: Harbinger.

Out of all the cancelled Star Trek games, this is the one that I wish happened the most. Hopefully more information about the game can be uncovered, especially as so much art was completed.


Star Trek: The Next Generation: Borg Q-Uest
Original Release: N/A (In development 1994)
Developer: Decipher
Publisher: Decipher
Original Platform: Board Game
Not played: No leaked prototypes.

This was a sequel to Klingon Challenge and would have been another VCR board game. In this, Q sends three random Enterprise D crewmembers on a quest to retrieve the Orb of Knowledge, with the Borg arriving in one hour’s time. It featured John de Lancie as Q and was supposed to be light hearted, with Q wearing different costumes such as a referee, Data-like makeup, Starfleet Uniform and even a referee.

The game was near completion when it was cancelled, meaning all this footage of Q existed somewhere. A single image from the game was reused for the Customisable Card Game.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator (32X)

• Original Release: 1995
• Developer: High Voltage Software
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: Sega 32X

The missions of this are similar to the SNES game. It was made for the Sega 32X add-on for the Mega Drive. The biggest difference for this is the graphics, which look much cleaner and less pixelated and the 3D models have a lot more texture and detail to them.

Playing this game on a standard 3-button Mega Drive controller is a nightmare as you need to press combinations for basic features, but the 6-button is good – although using the face buttons to tilt instead of shoulder buttons isn’t as intuitive (that said, you rarely need to do it). The one thing I couldn’t work out to do is how to pause the game.

Another addition to this version is pool, which you can play against your fellow cadets (or a second player). There’s not really a lot to it, it’s just a standard top down pool game.

The control nitpicks aside, this is a really nice version of the game. The wider screen gives a bigger view. The bridge itself looks more like an actual starship bridge rather than the more video game look of the SNES one.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Crossroads of Time

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

This Deep Space Nine game for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive is a 2D platformer. There’s lots of running, jumping as well as shooting Bajorans, Cardassians and….bats, the ultimate “we can’t think of anything else” enemy type used in many licensed games of this era.

Like many of those games, this one isn’t very good. It has nice graphics and some really great music (although it really doesn’t fit the game), the levels are just confusing mazes with some backtracking to get keys, rooms and doors that look similar and some even have time limits. The story itself is decent, with a group of Bajoran extremists trying to destroy DS9, and they even create a story reason to jump into Sisko’s traumatic past (that said, it is a bit of a weak reason).

At the start of each chapter, you need to investigate around DS9, you get to explore the promenade and ops and talk to the characters. These parts of the game are great. It’s a shame that the game wasn’t more of a mystery and puzzle with a bit of platforming and shooting in between, instead of the opposite way around.

In previous write-ups, I’ve treated different versions as different games, but the differences here are much smaller. The biggest difference is the music. While the rocking tunes of the Mega Drive version don’t fit, the music is just as jarring in the SNES version but also sound awful. You can also shoot diagonally downwards, so there’s a small extra bit at the start of the Bajoran level where you shoot some rats.

 

[MANT!]

IF you can get "Star Trek the Next Generation A Final Unity" to work on your system, let me know how you did it.. I could NEVER get that sucker to work beyond Windows '98...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_–_A_Final_Unity

 

[NCC-73515]

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