My Attempt to Play Every Star Trek Game

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity

• Original Release: 1995
• Developer: Spectrum HoloByte
• Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte
• Platform: MS-DOS

This feels like a Next Generation movie. It’s a point and click adventure that starts off with a few loose plot points and missions that all start coming together as the Federations, Romulans and a newly discovered race called the Chodak (who also appear in Future’s Past with a similar plot) race to find a device that can alter reality anywhere in the galaxy. It’s all voiced by the cast of The Next Generation, with all the main crew getting pivotal moments in the story (although Troi’s main input is astrology, her empath and counselling isn’t really used in the game).

The game has multiple levels of depth and control. On the Enterprise, you can choose to manually alter repair teams and power output or let La Forge handle it for you. In ship combat, you can control the Enterprise manually or delegate it to Worf. Although the combat is very broken on modern systems, so letting Worf handle it is the only option (the system looks quite in depth). Ships exploding also tends to crash he game, so be sure to save, but luckily the Enterprise D mainly faces stripped down Romulan warbirds and Worf handles them with ease – although one odd thing about this game is that every enemy self destructs once defeated.

On away missions, you can also manually select an away team or let the game choose for you. While the first is nice for hearing different dialogue, you often need a specific character to perform a task and going back to the Enterprise and returning is a big faff, so it’s best to stick to the game’s recommendation. I think it rotates the cast quite nicely so they all have a part to play.

For the point and click puzzles, they start off great with lots of interactions that make sense, unfortunately the game devolves to extremely obscure solutions and objects you interact with can blend in with the background. It even has multiple moments where you can fail the game, but the game doesn’t tell you and lets you carry on. Although sometimes there are multiple solutions. There’s one part where you get to solve a puzzle if you pick up a random bit of metal (a paper clip), other wise you’ll have to shoot some sensors.

Even with those issues, A Final Unity is a great game and is well worth it for the story. It’s a shame that this hasn’t gotten a re-release that makes it easier to play (installing the game is a faff) and fixes up a few of the issues.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Grandstand LCD)

• Original Release: 1995
• Developer: Grandstand
• Publisher: Grandstand
• Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

Another obscure Star Trek LCD game. This one looks like it was sold under both the Grandstand and Tiger names, both with the same design. It’s also different to the previous Tiger handheld, although a similar idea. In this you just have to dodge to blow up asteroids.

Star Trek Omnipedia

• Original Release: 1995
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC
• Also Known as: Star Trek Encyclopaedia
• Version played: Encyclopaedia 3.0

Trivial Pursuit The Sci-Fi Master Game: Star Trek Edition

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Telstar Video
• Publisher: Telstar Video
• Original Platform: Board Game
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand (plus converting the VHS)

A VHS add-on to Trivial Pursuit. This features clips and questions from the original series plus the six films.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Harbinger

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Stormfront Studios
• Publisher: Viacom New Media
• Platform: MS-DOS

DS9 Harbinger is a Myst-style adventure game. Each part of the level is made up of still images, with you clicking the edge of the screen to move around and turn in very limited places. This allows the game to look very impressive visually, especially in screenshots. The 3D models of the characters look vert impressive for the time and everyone is wonderfully voice acted, using the original cast of DS9.

You play a diplomat named Bannick, called to DS9 to assist an ambassador in speaking with a new alien race called the Scythians. These aliens speak in an unusual manner and nobody other than the ambassador has been able to figure it out. As you reach DS9, you get attacked by drones (in an impressive FMV cutscene) and crash land. The drones stat building up to attack DS9. To make matters worse, when you visit the ambassador you discover that he has been murdered. You need to solve the murder, work out how to talk to the Scythians and find a way to stop the drones.

The part of the game on DS9 is great (once you get your head around navigating the station), with lots of conversation options and an intriguing mystery. Puzzles are mostly self-enclosed, leaving you to focus more on the narrative mystery.

In a few parts of the game, you have to man the weapons of DS9 (and a runabout). These sections are just click to shoot, but are surprisingly difficult and not fun at all.

The latter half of the game, once you leave DS9, is much more of a challenging puzzle game like Myst, where you have to navigate a maze (not easy due to how you move, working out how to ger around DS9 was difficult enough), and is very much a chore, especially as you have large periods with no talking. That said, working out how to trick the AIs in charge and talking to them towards the ends is a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t get the full cast of DS9 for this game, so O’Brien and Bashir are said to be on a mission (Worf hasn’t joined the cast yet). You do get to spend plenty of time with Sisko, Odo, Dax, Quark and Kira, though, so there’s still a lot of interaction with the crew.

Star Trek: Klingon

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Simon & Schuster
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

This is an interactive movie game, where you watch clips before being presented with a choice. Where you click on (or choosing not to click) will either end the game or let you proceed.

This is presented as a holonovel made by Gowron (Robert O’Reilly), where he wants to teach weaklings about how to be a true Klingon so you can be a worthy opponent. In the holonovel, you take the place as a Klingon boy on his Rite of Ascension when his father stops an assassination attempt on Gowron. You then embark on a journey to find out who is behind everything.

The game aspect of this is quite poor, as all but the right option lead to someone shouting at you and the game resetting to just before – the Borg game is much more creative in terms of using the interactive movie mechanic. The story, however, is interesting with some fun moments. It’s a good insight into Klingon culture. On YouTube, there are two ways of watching this: if you want to enjoy the story, you can watch the “correct path” version, which turns it into a fun Klingon episode of Star Trek. You can also watch a version with all the failure clips, with lots of wonderful overacting.

Star Trek: Klingon Language Lab

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Simon & Schuster
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

Released alongside Star Trek: Klingon, this software is an introduction to the Klingon language. It features Robert O’Reilly as Gowron who reads out all the Klingon words and phrases – each one has a video of him saying it, too. It has right categories, each with its own quiz to test your skills, which seem on a similar level to Duolingo.

It also features a section that helps you with the individual phonemes. While there’s only a limited amount of words and phrases, it’s a decent introductory language tool.

 

[daedalus5]

Ah, fond memories of A Final Unity, klingon and Harbinger.

 

[NCC-73515]

AFU was great and just got tedious by the end. Klingon led to many funny clips (some below), and I once scored 100% on one of the language lab phrases (speak into a mic and it tells you how good you were)

 

[Owain Taggart]

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

This was one of the first PC games I bought with my own money back in the day, and you weren't kidding about the UI being terrible. I couldn't figure out what I was doing and I never did end up very far into it. You don't get any feedback for what some of the clicks are doing and everything about it feels very random as a result.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Game of the Galaxies

I actually have a physical copy of this. I think it was published by a Canadian company, and there isn't terribly much information about it, but the design of the version I have looks much nicer, with an image of a galaxy comprising most of the background. The player pieces were oddly designed, consisting of clear plastic tubes that you'd shove the cardboard character cutouts into. And it also had these clear glass pieces that felt oddly out of place in a Trek game.

 

[Cube1701]

The player pieces were oddly designed, consisting of clear plastic tubes that you'd shove the cardboard character cutouts into

They were supposed to represent "shuttles".

Star Trek: Borg

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Simon & Schuster
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

The second interactive movie game. This follows Cadet Furlong who is being sent to a starbase ahead of a Borg invasion 10 years after the Battle of Wolf 359. Wishing he was fighting the Borg instead, as he lost his father at the Battle of Wolf 359, the cadet ends up being visited by Q. Q offers him a chance at saving his father and sends the cadet to the past, taking the place of the security officer and Q taking place of the medic.

The whole game is made up of live action footage, and John de Lancie gets plenty of screen time and is wonderful through the whole thing. The cast of new characters are also really good, too. At points in the “film” you get to make choices or solve puzzles, with Q resetting you if you mess up. I found that I much preferred picking the “wrong” options so I could see all the footage – you can never get tired of Q teasing you.

Because of Q resetting things, I think this works better than the Klingon game. I also really like that they make use of the bad choices as you sometimes need information from them to progress though the correct path. Unfortunately, the game is a lot of hassle to get working on a modern PC, so unless it gets easier, I would recommend watching the game on YouTube instead – treat it as an extra episode of Star Trek, as that’s what it essentially is.

Deep Space Nine Entertainment Utility

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Sound Source
• Publisher: Sound Source
• Platform: PC

This is a collection of resources for Windows 3.1/95 PCs. It features system sounds, wallpapers and a screensaver. It also features a jigsaw puzzle with four puzzles.

Star Trek Voyager Entertainment Utility

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Sound Source
• Publisher: Sound Source
• Platform: PC

This is a collection of resources for Windows 3.1/95 PCs. It features system sounds, wallpapers and a screensaver. It also features a jigsaw puzzle with four puzzles.

Star Trek: First Contact Portable Arcade Game

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: MGA
• Publisher: MGA
• Original Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

An LCD game based on First Contact. By far the best thing about this is the case of the device, which is a shiny Starfleet combadge. The game itself has the Enterprise E blasting lots and lots of Borg Cubes. From the looks of the various imagery and video I cand find, I do wonder if this is the same coding as the Grandstand LCD but with different sprites.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Dice Game

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Dan Verssen
• Publisher: Five Rings
• Original Platform: Board Game
• Not played: Not enough information to recreate.

While I was able to recreate some of the dice used in this in Tabletop Simulator, I can’t find enough information on all the starter dice or all the needed symbols to make a version that can be played.

For the Collectible Dice Game, you had to buy two starter packs (the main two were Enterprise E and Borg Sphere) each game came with what you needed for one player. Some dice represent shields and status which you change manually, while others you roll to determine their strength. You could get booster packs to have alternative dice with different values to use instead.

You had dice that reflected the four areas of shields, the warp core output and integrity and power reserves. Then you had movement, repair and weapon dice for your main actions. Each ship also had special and command dice with unique abilities. It sounds like it would be a fairly in-depth game and could use different dice to take more risks – for example, a phaser that does a lot more damage, but is far more likely to miss.

Star Trek: The Card Game

• Original Release: 1994
• Developer: Jeff Grubb, Don Perrin, Margaret Weis
• Publisher: Fleer
• Original Platform: Board Game

While this is another collectible card game, this is much less in depth than the Customizable Card Game. This one focuses on The Original series where each player takes turns trying to complete missions. The missions, plots and outcomes are cards and if the current player chooses not to play one, the opponent gets to add one. Opponents can also add challenges to make things more difficult for you – but then your rewards for completing them are also increased.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are also not in anyone’s deck. Instead, they are part of the “core crew” (along with the Enterprise) that both players can select for missions, although at the cost of experience. Completing missions will earn you experience and the goal is to be the first to gather 25 experience.

Star Trek: Battle of the Borg

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: Playmates
• Publisher: Playmates
• Original Platform: Board Game
• Not played: No prototypes

Playmates internal product data showed off this Star Trek board game in development for release with the upcoming Star Trek film (which would have been First Contact). The artwork for the box must have been made before the Enterprise E was officially show, so they used a Galaxy class ship instead.

The information on the box mock-up is all placeholder text, but one feature of the board game was that the mini-figures that came with the came would be poseable.


Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

• Original Release: 1997
• Developer: Interplay
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: PC

A game that will be sharing a name with a Star Trek show. Starfleet Academy is sort of a reimagining of Starfleet Academy Bridge Simulator on SNES/32X, as it features the same style of gameplay and some of the same cadets, but with a new story, new characters and a completely different set of missions.

The first things that strikes you is the live action cutscenes. These often look odd as none of the actors were filmed on set, they were instead filmed separately and imposed onto the backgrounds. The cutouts can be very rough at times, but its somehow still very charming, especially as everyone is taking it seriously, including William Shatner, Walter Koenig, and George Takei in their last official live action appearances. You also get to make choices which impacts your ratings – if you don’t make the right ones, you won’t get to play a bonus mission at the end of the game.

The game uses a mixture of a joystick (or controller) and keyboard and it works quite well, even if it takes a bit of getting used to. It offers a lot more control than the SNES/32X games, but at the same time it also feels like you’re doing everything yourself instead of commanding a crew. The combat is still only forward phasers/torpedoes, but it feels a lot more fluid than any of the previous space combat, and it helped out by a full screen view that displays all needed information.

While this further separates you from the crew, it’s very much required for playing the game. The missions are almost entirely combat related, with a few where you can avoid encounters. None of the missions paritcuarly stood out to me, other than one where you casually pass through the Galactic Barrier with a really nice cutscene.

Starfleet Academy is an interesting game, especially with the cutscenes. The gameplay can be frustrating at times (especially as you can very quickly have systems knocked out, a big pain if it’s impulse or weapons), but for the most part it’s fun to play.

 

[David cgc]

While this further separates you from the crew, it’s very much required for playing the game. The missions are almost entirely combat related, with a few where you can avoid encounters.

Special shout-out to one of the last missions, where you fight a Klingon knock-off of the M5 with a penchant for trick-shots, and in the finest tradition of Jim Kirk, you can talk it into destroying itself by pointing out that it's rendered combat obsolete and guaranteed that no Klingon will ever have a glorious death in battle again.

 

[NCC-73515]

SFA also had a great Ron Jones soundtrack!

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: Generations

• Original Release: 1997
• Developer: MicroProse
• Publisher: MicroProse
• Platform: PC

This game is definitely intriguing. It very loosely follows the story of Star Trek Generations, with Soren trying to destroy stars in order to change the path of the mysterious energy ribbon called the Nexus. In this game, Soren needs to destroy multiple starts to get what he wants, and you need to stop him – you can even prevent him from destroying the Amargosa star.

Most of the game is played in a first person view. The controls definitely feel very dated, but are one of the things that makes the game interesting. The directional buttons move forward/backwards and turns while the mouse aims the cursor. On the bottom of the screen, you control your inventory, scanning and map. The big square in the middle will show you objects you can interact with when you get close to them, which is a really nice touch. On the top of the screen, your phaser will aim at that part of the screen. It’s very different to the first person controls we’re used to now.

In these levels you’ll shoot through enemies and solve puzzles. Sometimes, you’ll even beam down in disguise and can do a lot before you have to resort to shooting. The graphics are extremely charming and are surprisingly nice to look at. When you get hurt a lot, you’ll be beamed up and the mission will have failed – however, you can fail a few missions before you lose the game.

Between missions, you’ll use Stellar Cartography to scan planets and stars in order to work out where you next have to go. You’ll also sometimes encounter enemy ships and use a pretty poor interface to fight them with. All the good parts are in the missions.

The missions are quite interesting. One has you infiltrate a Romulan base as Troi, one involves Crusher investigating a living planet and fighting giant antibodies (it reminds me a bit of the Voyager episode “Macrocosm” and the Chodak from Future’s Past/Final Unity even pop up.

Eventually, you’ll reach Veridian III. As Geordi is never captured in this game, things play out differently. Picard ends up in the Nexus (which is just a flashing blank screen as he asks Kirk for help), then Kirk delays Soren and falls off a bridge. Soren then beams to the Enterprise and initiates a warp core overload. After separating the saucer, Picard beams to the stardrive section and stops Soren from destroying the saucer (although he does enough damage that it has to crash land) before finding an escape pod with a sleeping Spot and watching the stardrive section blow up in a very impressive cutscene that looks like it’s actually using the studio models.

Although that’s not the only ending – you can actually fully defeat Soren. He brings a large fleet with him to Veridian III, but if you manage to disable his ship, he’ll self-destruct. The Enterprise D warps off unscathed and Kirk will still be in the Nexus.

Star Trek: Captain’s Chair

• Original Release: 1997
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

Another interactive CD-ROM, this time focusing on the bridges of the original Enterprise, Enterprise D, Defiant, Voyager and Enterprise E (plus a hidden Klingon Bird of Prey bridge). Each bridge has a lot of locations to view from (in 360 degrees) and you can zoom into every single panel on the bridge. Some of them have buttons you can press, and even a couple of simple games.

Sulu, Worf, Sisko, Janeway and Riker all give tours of the bridges, talking about each station. Janeway’s tour is the most fascinating, as it’s written from the perspective of before the ship launched, so the only other character mentioned is Harry Kim (none of the other people officially assigned to Voyager are part of the main cast). It’s also referred to “The Voyager” a lot, which sounds odd.

Kotra

• Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1997
• Developer: Abayomi, Dean Jones
• Publisher: Self-Published
• Original Platform: Board Game

A Cardassian board game seen in the DS9 episode “Empok Nor”, a game about “about bold strategy and decisive action” according to Garak. I manged to find some rules on DeviantArt and have made a few changes to them myself.

When you attack an opponent piece, you have to attack it with a piece that is the same or higher rank, or else you’ll use yours. The key thing, however, is that you can’t see what ranks any of the pieces are as they’re printed on the bottom of each piece. You can check yours whenever you want, and both pieces are revealed when an attack happens – so you’ll know what the winner is, but you’ll have to keep track of it yourself.

The aim of the game is to attack your opponents capital piece. One clue regarding this is that the capital piece can’t move, so you’ll be keeping an eye for pieces your opponent doesn’t touch – but also be wary as there are also mine pieces that also can’t move and will take out both themselves and any piece attacking them (except for the Garresh, a low ranking piece that can defuse mines).

While taking the opponent’s capital ends the game, the winner is the player who got the most pieces based on points earned during the game and the pieces you have captured. The capital is worth a lot of points, but if you aren’t careful you can still lose.

Star Trek: Voyager: Retribution
Original Release: N/A (In development 1997)
Developer: Looking Glass
Publisher: Viacom
Original Platform: PC
Not played: No leaked prototypes.

This was an adventure game based on Star Trek Voyager and likely would have played similar to Seep Space Nine: Harbinger. The plot involved an away team being captured by the Kazon and over the three chapters, you would encounter two new races. It was supposed to feature the full cast of the show, but ended up getting cancelled.

Lots of the sets were faithfully recreated in 3D for the game, likely with the intention to be used for screenshots and converted into the backdrops for the game (the models are far too detailed for computers). It looks like a lot of Voyager was completed, along with an alien ship and planet. The artist, Mark Lizotte, had access to the set blueprints and spent two days on the sets measuring and checking colours against samples to get them spot on.

In response to the game being cancelled, a few of the developers (including the game’s writer, Ken Levine) left the company and formed Irrational Games, making System Shock 2 and BioShock.

Star Trek Pinball

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: Sales Curve
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: PC

A very basic pinball game. It features three tables (one exclusive to two players), which are designed to be like real life tables (though not based on actual ones) rather than taking advantage of being a video game. The tables are fairly generic and don’t really make much use of the Star Trek license other than imagery.

The two main tables both have the same problem – they have a ramp or button directly above the centre of the table, which means that the ball would very often just drop down the middle with no hope of stopping it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Klingon Honor Guard

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: MicroProse
• Publisher: MicroProse
• Platform: PC

This game is an interesting bit of gaming history: the first game ever released using the Unreal engine, coming out before Unreal itself. It uses a beta version of the engine, so is quite buggy, and the gameplay often feels exactly like Unreal, as it’s a first person shooter that uses a lot of the same code – the movement, some level elements (such at mine carts attached to rails above them) and enemy AI are straight from Unreal.

You play as a new recruit for the Klingon Honor Guard when your training gets interrupted because the Klingon High Council has been bombed, with Gowron injured. Kurn (Worf’s brother, played by Tony Todd) and a Dahar Master send you on a quest to work out who is behind it. Naturally, this involves killing lots of enemies, which mainly consist of Klingons and Andorian pirates.

The graphics are good for the time, although most of the game is dark and full of browns, a lot of the levels merge together. A lot of levels are confusing mazes where you spend most of your time hunting for hard to see keys or buttons to progress. A few standout ones are set on space stations and ships. Because the structure is confined by the outside shape, the layouts make a lot more sense. The game has a lot of levels, and most of them end up merging together.

When not aimlessly walking around, the game is a lot of fun. Stabbing foes with a bat’leth is enjoyable, with lots of colourful blood spraying around (there are no humans in the game so it avoids having red blood). Most of the other weapons are fairly boring, with the exception of a disc weapon which launces a bouncing disc that destroys entire rooms of enemies. You can also find some gadgets to use, such as a deployable camera (never found a use for it) and mag boots, which are vital for going on spacewalks in some levels.

Klingon Honour Guard is fun in parts, but often frustrating. I feel like it goes on a bit too long, with the most enjoyable levels being close to each other in the middle of the game. It also doesn’t really capture the feel of the Star Trek universe. You see Klingons and Andorians, but they don’t really act like them. The main character also repeatedly shouts “I will cut you up like gach” at your foes, which I found odd because Klingons eat them alive, so there’s no cutting up.

Star Trek: The Game Show

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: Sound Source
• Publisher: Sound Source
• Platform: PC

A trivia game with some good production values, as it’s hosted by Q and Q. Q is played by John de Lancie with another Q as his sidekick (played by Karen Cornwell, this is her only acting role). All the questions and answers are read out, so there’s plenty of voice acting from the two, including plenty of quips. There’s even an annoying audience member that blurts out the answer if you run out of time. The quiz is split into four sections: Alpha Quadrant, Beta Quadrant, Gamma Quadrant and Delta Quadrant. The show covers TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and the movies.

In the Alpha Quadrant, the questions are about the characters in Star Trek. A wheel will spin and land on a division and you’ll be asked a question about someone from it. There’s plenty of variety and some interesting questions. In Beta Quadrant, the game reveals five clues one at a time and you need to type in the answer, either an alien race or a character’s name. The clues are quite well worded and there are some very obscure characters.

Gamma Quadrant focuses on command problems and how situations in the shows were solved. There’s also some interactivity as you can forfeit a question and send it to another player. Getting a question wrong will get you negative points in this round, so you don’t want to just guess.

The final round, Delta Quadrant, has five different styles, one chosen at random in each game, each loosely based on each of the shows (with the fifth representing the films).

While most of the questions are interesting and delve into a lot of deep Trek references, I did find one mistake: a question asks what Scotty used to construct the tank for carrying whales. Plexiglass wasn’t an option – instead the game wanted transparent aluminium (which Scotty traded the formula in order to get the Plexiglass).

Overall, this is a very entertaining trivia game.

 

[Tuskin38]

the Chodak showing up in the various 90s games was interesting.

 

[Yistaan]

the Chodak showing up in the various 90s games was interesting.

They weren't even consistent though, basically being blue blobs in shells in the PC games and then humanoid frogs (I think? Is Kermit a Chodak?) in the console games.

25th Anniversary, Judgement Rites, and A Final Unity are classics that still arguably haven't really been beat since, and it's a shame that Final Unity doesn't seem to have a digital rerelease (I wonder if there are rights issues).

I tried Star Trek Resurgence but it's just not the same as the 90s trilogy I just mentioned. They basically took the grimdark Telltale formula where you have the illusion of choice and it all ends horribly anyway no matter what you chose (I don't think this is spoiling too much)--isn't this the sort of thing that put Telltale out of business despite all their heavy hitting licensing agreements? I know the devs are former Telltale but you'd think they'd shake up the formula a bit. Plus I just can't get used to the time pressure in dialogue choices. I am SO glad in retrospect that this was never a thing during the 1990s adventure game heyday.

 

[NCC-73515]

3 of my favorites

Generations was my first full game. SorAn floating in space, with Picard saying that was not his intention, was great. This was the first and so far also the only time you got to explore parts of the D in an official interactive 3D recreation. Crawl through the jeffries tube and get a TFF reference. You can launch the escape pod with Spot, but also another one and Spot meows angrily when you shoot him/her with your phaser. At one point you can see the giant nacelles with their bussards outside the window. Engineering is recreated, you can get Earl Grey from the replicators, it was just glorious. You could also see the (damaged) forward torpedo launch bay.
The living planet was another highlight, you have to get into the bloodstream to get to the heart, where Soran has his underwaterblood base. Beverly essentially has to rub her whole body with green slime to get through membranes.
The Romulan base is really cool to explore undercover, and in the 2nd mission there you can take a cannon and destroy a scout ship
It also had the first full recreation of a Klingon BoP, with all rooms fully explorable and making sense. Later, if Amargosa is still intact, you can blow a whole group of attacking Klingons into space
The idyllic planet with the cute turtles and the crater lake with its island was as beautiful as it was frustrating. Walking on the bottom of the lake as Data and taking the geyser ride back upstairs was a lot of fun. But I hate aggressive plants!
Veridian III made me wanna throw my mouse through the screen when I again missed that long jump! There was no way to save during missions. I wonder if the sonic monks were supposed to be the solanagen guys from Subspace Schisms. It was funny when Kirk says the natural hot tubs in the cave had the perfect temperature and they gave you health back
If you're used to Doom and its relatives from back then, the controls are no problem. It's even better than Doom with that mouse aiming control, basically something between the old Doom controls and the later mouse view controls from Quake and HL.
The Chodak will appear again in BotF. Their planet has good and bad shrooms . It's funny that you could use those shells as Picard, imagine him crawling into one of those and floating around

Some screenshots showing the nice artwork it had in the textures and loading screens:
https://gaming.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=47&page=1

The best part in Captain's Chair were those fullscreen detailed LCARS screens and consoles. You could take a detailed look at all of them!

The betleH in KHG is even more fun when you throw it across the room! This one had the second fully realized BoP to explore, and even a completely walkable battlecruiser, inside and out! Walking on the hull of such a majestic ship at warp was a sight to behold. Other locations were nice as well, you got to visit Rura Penthe and what is left of Praxis. In zero G the enemies kept rotating and their weightless blood kept spilling

 

[Char Kais]

Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity
Original Release: 1995
Developer: Spectrum HoloByte
Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte
Platform: MS-DOS

Fantastic game. Partially written by Naren Shankar who would become the showrunner of "The Expanse".
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Naren_Shankar.

This game is first and foremost a point-and-click adventure but it had a full 3D ship-to-ship combat game mode. Much better than the ship-to-ship combat game mode in the two previous TOS adventure games.
If I remember correctly you can almost completely avoid ship-to-ship combat with the correct dialogue choices. There is only two unavoidable ship-to-ship combat scene (You can turn on an autoplay function (delegate tactical control to Worf) and you don#t have to control the enterprise yourself).
But this game mode, which was completely separate from the point-and-click adventure and that you can skip, was still there and it was enjoyable to play.

You could just play the ship-to-ship combat mode and ignore the storyline. Fly around the Enterprise, and fight warbirds. If you did fly deep into Romulan space, they would confront you with three D'deridex class warbirds at once. It was possible to defeat them if you were good enough.

I can not find a single video on YouTube of ship-to-ship combat without autoplay turned on.

Star Trek: Generations

Original Release: 1997
Developer: MicroProse
Publisher: MicroProse
Platform: PC

Generations is a weird game.
It's not like a Doom clone first-person shooter. I think the designers wanted to make a first-person action-adventure like System Shock from 94.
Objectively is not good. It was technically outdated in 97.
But I liked the approach the game took, an alternate extended version of the movie story.
The Klingon and Romulan infiltration missions are great. Great atmosphere overall.

The living planet was another highlight

I would not call it a "highlight".
Fantastic and very imaginative concept but a frustrating realization.

I wonder if the sonic monks were supposed to be the solanagen guys from Subspace Schisms.

I don't think so. The design of the aliens is very different.
You can teleport to a secret base of the aliens and the interior design of that base also does not look like anything from "Schisms".

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: Starship Creator

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

This game lets you create your own starships. You start off with a popular starship class, such as Constitution, Galaxy, Intrepid or Defiant and then modify it in phases. The first phase is appearance, letting you toggle between different nacelles, hulls and saucers. Next up is the name, followed by internal systems that affect the stats.

One you’ve built a ship, you can send it on missions. The missions are fully automatic, so you just sit back and watch your creation at work (or put it in “stealth” mode and do something else).

While quite limited, it’s nice to see your creations flying around. I focused on three ships: the first was a Constitution class USS USS Columbia (I didn’t realise it automatically added the USS part), designed to look like a Constitution mixed with the NX class. Then a really silly looking Defiant, the Potato class USS Spud. Finally, a really cool looking Intrepid I called the USS Pathfinder.

Monopoly: Star Trek The Next Generation

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: Hasbro
• Publisher: Hasbro
• Platform: Board Game

A Star Trek: The Next Generation themed version of Monopoly. These versions of Monopoly don’t do anything with the actual theme, it’s just the basic game with different pictures and player pieces. If you’ve played one licences Monopoly, you’ve played them all (other a small amount of special ones).

Monopoly is a terrible roll-and-move trading game. The mechanics were originally designed with a runaway winner in mind to demonstrate how bad landlords are, only for the game to be stolen by someone else and mass produced. The game is also often made worse by people incorporating “house rules”, such as putting fine/tax money under “free parking” – something that just makes the game drag even longer.

Almost everything you do is determined by rolling two dice. For the first few turns round the board, there is property you can either buy or send to auction (a rule most people forget) and the it’s the case of trying not to land on ren, although as it’s all dice based, there’s to tactics for doing so, other than not paying to leave jail early (it’s actually beneficial to stay in jail).

There’s also a lot of negotiating and trading properties with other players to try and create sets. In order to buy houses and hotels.

This version of Monopoly had something special promised: if you linked all four planned versions of Star Trek Monopoly, you can link them together via the wormhole in the corner of the board, but only one of these versions existed and it’s still just Monopoly, just one that drags on even more.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine & The Next Generation: The Board Game

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: Component Game Systems
• Publisher: Component Game Systems
• Platform: Board Game

While the names suggest that these are different games, they’re part of the same system and are compatible with each other. These are the “Core Sets”, with plans for releasing additional starter kids (new factions) and reinforcement packs. The system for these games is called the “Component Games System” and was initially made for Babylon 5: The Board Game (which seems like it was quite popular), before expanding into more franchises.

The company shut down shortly after the Star Trek core sets were released, so none of the additional stuff was made. I do find the names of the games odd as they send the message that these are just basic individual cheap tie-in games. It needed a subtitle to indicate that they’re part of the same system.

The game itself is a 4x game. A turn consists of the following: bookkeeping (checking victory, gaining money, paying for repairs), building new ships and bases, moving then combat. It seems like a fairly typical game of the genre. There are different scenarios to choose from in the form of different map layouts, either a singular map or, if you want a proper DS9 experience, you can set up the gamma quadrant separately, using the wormhole to move between maps.

For testing it out, I could only find images of a limited amount of pieces, but was able to put together a small 2-player Maquis Vs Dominion game (and even then, I had to borrow a few map tiles from the imagery of the Babylon 5 game – the games use the same rules so you could probably combine them). The game is fine, but doesn’t really do anything special with the genre.

Star Trek: Insurrection: Son’a Ambush Adventure

• Original Release: 1998
• Developer: Last Unicorn Games
• Publisher: Last Unicorn Games
• Platform: Board Game

This board game was given out with Issue Inquest Games Magazine #46 (February 1999), and utilises the simple combat system from Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game.

The goal of the game is to get at least one Ba’ku to the cave (although I added the extra challenge of seeing how many you can rescue). Drones will try to capture the Ba’ku while Son’a soldiers will attack the Enterprise crew (Picard, Data, Crusher, Worf and Troi). More drones appear at the end of each turn (which can be very dangerous, as if they land on a crew member, the crew member is lost), with three soldiers appearing on turn three.

You can only shoot at enemies one or to spaces away. Each crew member rolls a different number of dice (although onl the highest number is counted). The default you need to hit is an 8 for one square away or 10 for two squares away, you can also fire at additional targets, each one adding to the score you need to hit. The character’s phaser skill is added to the roll. One dice is the “Drama” dice. If this lands on a 6, you use both that and the next highest roll.

Everything is mostly down to Data, with Worf backing him up. If you can get them to be the main wall between the drones and the Ba’ku, you’re set, with Picard, Troi and Crusher getting any stragglers. I ended up getting all but one of the Ba’ku to the cave on my first try, with the very start of the game being the most difficult part. If you lose Data early on, you pretty much have no chance at stopping the drones from taking all of the Ba’ku.

Durotta

• Original Release: 1991 (appeared in Star Trek in 1998)
• Developer: Blaise Muller
• Publisher: Gigamic
• Original Platform: Board Game

Durotta is what the game Quarto will be called in the 24th century. Based on the Voyager Season 5 opening episode “Night”, with Tom Paris opening the game with the “Novakovich gambit”.

The object of Durotta is to place a piece in order to form a line of 4 with a single matching characteristic. These characteristics are: Tall/Short, Round/Square, Light/Dark and Full/Hollow. As long as one characteristic is consistent across 4 in a row, you’ll win. For example: if you place a tall piece to form a row of four tall pieces, you win, even if they are all a mixture of light and dark.

What makes the game special is that you don’t choose what piece you play: your opponent does, which makes the game incredibly strategic as you have to think about what moves your opponent can make when deciding what piece to hand them, but also keep an eye on the remaining pieces when placing one as you don’t want to force yourself to give your opponent the winning piece. We see Tom and B’elanna passing each other the pieces, so it seems like they were following the actual rules of the game (even if they made up names for moves).

I only tried this game because of it’s appearance in Voyager, but I really love it. It’s a brilliant game, and the mini version (the one I got) is nice and portable – it also looks fantastic and makes for a great display piece.

Star Trek First Contact: Aftermath

• Original Release: N/A (In development 1998)
• Developer: MicroProse
• Publisher: MicroProse
• Original Platform: PC
• Not played: No leaked prototypes.

After making the Generations game, MicroProse set to work on a game for First Contact. Instead of retelling the events of the film, they opted to make a direct sequel: the Borg Queen had managed to copy her brain to the Enterprise’s computer, and the Enterprise kept some of the Borg (for either study, release or prisoners, it’s not clear). A few months after First Contact, this copy of the queen takes control of the Borg on the ship and starts assimilating.

The whole game would have been set on the Enterprise E (although from the screenshots, the holodeck was also used), with parts of the game being random to encourage replayability. You directly controlled all 7 of the main cast, swapping between them at will. You could also give them tasks, such as researching technology to stop the Borg.. There was an additional tactical interface where you order around 49 other crewmembers.

The game itself would have taken around 5 hours for a successful campaign, although from the sounds of the game I would imagine some playthroughs might get to a point where beating the Borg would be impossible (due to bad planning), requiring a restart. It sounded like an interesting idea, but was cancelled when a deal with Activision was made for Star Trek games.

Star Trek: Birth of The Federation

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: MicroProse
• Publisher: Hasbro Interactive
• Platform: PC

Birth of the Federation is a turn based 4x strategy game (think of a turn-based Stellaris). You can play as the Federation (although it’s just humans), Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians of Ferrengi.

My first attempt ended in tragedy my science ship was lost to a neutron star pretty much straight away, then a major accident happened at another colony and I seemed to not have the dilithium required to build more. I used the game to learn the other parts of the game ready for the next game.

The start of the game is all about colonising systems, sustaining them (either manually or using the handy auto builder). Spacedocks are the most important element as they expand your reach, letting you colonise more star systems. Once you encounter other races, you can offer messages of peace, friendship, give gifts, demand goods or declare war. Unfortunately, the diplomacy is the weakest element. With the major races, it’s pretty much buying time before war, while with minor races if you’re lucky or throw enough money at them, you can get a system and possibly a couple of ships added to your faction as they join you.

There are two game types: control 60% of the galaxy or wipe out two factions that are set as your rivals. At some point, you’re going to need to take over systems owned by other factions, and you can only do so by wiping out all life in the system, which seems a bit overboard. This will anger other factions, so the game seems to be building up your recourses and ships enough to take on everyone near the end. The final part of the games (either winning or losing) seems anti-climatic, as it seems to be having a fleet bomb a defenceless planet.

Ship battles can be fought though a turn-based tactical screen, with some tactics working well over others. It mainly comes down to having more and better ships, though.

Birth of a Federation has a lot of depth, and I suspect would have been great when it came out. The genre has evolved a lot since then, so I wouldn’t recommend it now.

 

[Tuskin38]

I had both Starship creator games. They were fun time sinks

Spoiler: Starship Creator 2

SC2 let you export your ships to use in the Dominion War game, but I never had that so I never tried it

 

[Yistaan]

With the major races, it’s pretty much buying time before war, while with minor races if you’re lucky or throw enough money at them, you can get a system and possibly a couple of ships added to your faction as they join you.

If the Fed doesn't use money, what do they throw at other races to get them to join them? Or is no-money just ignored in this game.

 

[NCC-73515]

SSC had one of the greatest soundtracks ever, and my favorite part was putting whatever you want into the MSMD, which you could zoom in a lot and put different types of rooms, facilities, warp cores, weapons, etc.

Funny that they made an INS board game, I've never heard of it! Hidden Evil was ok, just a little underwhelming.

At some point, you’re going to need to take over systems owned by other factions, and you can only do so by wiping out all life in the system, which seems a bit overboard. This will anger other factions, so the game seems to be building up your recourses and ships enough to take on everyone near the end. The final part of the games (either winning or losing) seems anti-climatic, as it seems to be having a fleet bomb a defenceless planet.

You can liberate or conquer planets with your troop transport ships by using the attack system command. A liberated system (previously subjugated by an opponent) will like you a lot after that, and you can often get them to join you immediately. A conquered system also becomes your member, but is subjugated and unhappy. Existing planetary defense and bunker networks will make it harder, repelling your invasion. SO you always have to take those out first, then use several transports to invade. There will be loss of life and buildings, but you don't have to destroy all life there

Birth of a Federation has a lot of depth, and I suspect would have been great when it came out. The genre has evolved a lot since then, so I wouldn’t recommend it now.

I'm still playing it every once in a while, just for fun, with cheats and a small map

If the Fed doesn't use money, what do they throw at other races to get them to join them? Or is no-money just ignored in this game.

Everyone in the game uses credits, including the Federation. But the Federation is better at diplomacy and has a bonus for many minor races. The Romulans and Cardassians have the best intelligence abilities (sabotage, assassination, planetary poisoning, theft, or espionage, even against allies), the Klingons have the best weapons, and the Romulans can cloak all their ships, giving them a free first move in combat.

 

[ichab]

I disagree with your final assessment on BOTF. This along with other games you will be covering later(Armada, Starfleet Command etc) had high replayability thanks to the modding community. Once the patches were made to fix the bugs, the game was a lot of fun because it required a lot of careful planning and thinking. Meeting familiar races for the first time and making the decision to conquer or try and sway them to join you was cool. Your decisions also had an effect on how you were received in your homeworld, so trying to "buy friendship" was not popular on the Klingon homeworld nor was trying to conquor a planet as Federation. If you are a fan of turn based strategy games and fan of Star Trek, then this game is a no brainer, even today.

I'm looking forward to your write up on Starfleet Command because that was my first Star Trek game and holds a special place for me. It had a bunch of sequals along with so many cool mods from the community. Same goes for Armada 1. The Star Trek vs Star Wars mod for that game was really epic.

Other games that was announced but never released was Borg Assimilator and Secret Of Vulcan Fury. There was a lot of Star Trek games being developed around this time. The late 90s and early 2000s was really a golden age for Star Trek gaming.

 

[Cube1701]

I disagree with your final assessment on BOTF. This along with other games you will be covering later(Armada, Starfleet Command etc) had high replayability thanks to the modding community.

I agree that the modding community has done a lot, but I'm basing my experience on as close to the original (with the exception of a better resolution) as possible, playing them as intended. I used to help out with Bridge Commander mods. I'm tempted to do major mod highlights after playing through the games.

Starfleet Command is a difficult one for me to do a write-up for. It's not my kind of game, but I appreciate the sheer amount of depth and complexity involved.

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek: Starfleet Command

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Quicksilver / 14 Degrees East
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: PC

This ship combat game is based on the board game Star Fleet Battles (which licensed designs from Star Trek but is officially not Star Trek). This game has a lot to it. There are six races: Federation, Klingon, Romulans, Gorn, Lyran and Hydran, each with their own ships and campaign – every faction even has its own unique HUD and menu interface, a lot of effort clearly went into this game.

The same is true with the gameplay itself, there’s an immense amount of depth, so much you can do with how the weapons work, power distribution, using the transporter in offensive ways, having shuttles help you in combat and so much more. For someone who wants to feel like they’re fully managing a ship on their own, this is the kind of game for them. I personally did not enjoy it at all, with everything feeling extremely slow and sluggish, with battles feeling like endurance tests of not getting bored.

It’s not the game’s fault, really. It does what it sets out to do and does it well, it just really isn’t my kind of thing.

Star Trek: Hidden Evil

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Presto
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PC

This was the first one that was a nightmare to get running. Even though it’s on GoG, it requires audio hardware acceleration to be turned off, which isn’t an option on Windows 11. In the end, I had to install Windows 10 on a partition to get it working. Was it worth it? Definitely not.

Hidden Evil starts out quite promising. You play as Ensign Sovok, a human that was raised by Vulcans and is the first human to have mastered the Vulcan neck pinch (which you use in the stealth sections of the game). He serves on a station near Ba’ku, that has discovered ancient ruins near where the Son’a are settling, and they have requested Picard to look into it.

Leaving the Enterprise E and everyone but Data behind Picard has Sovok take him to Ba’ku to investigate, although the Son’a soon start a rebellion.

The game is played form a stationary camera. The controls aren’t as bad as I expected, and worked well when mapped to a controller. Aiming isn’t easy, so you’ll just flail and spam the shoot button until you hit something. There’s a few basic puzzles, but most of the game is just roaming around, occasionally shooting things. There’s a lot of pointless back and forth and padding to the game – which is astonishing for a game that is shorter than Insurrection.

The plot starts to pick up when you discover one of the ancient beings: one of the aliens from The Chase. Then, just as things get interesting, she’s immediately disposed of and instead the real villain is revealed: a big organic blob that spews out insect soldiers. Given time, this thing could overrun the entire galaxy. Romulans take her and then you have two really boring missions aimlessly roaming corridors on a Romulan space station and the Enterprise E – somehow they made exploring the Enterprise boring (also, only Picard and Data still talk to you on the Enterprise).

Hidden Evil feels like a game that had big plans, but the developers didn’t have the budget to do what they want. As a result, it feels like they gave up on their own story half way through this short game.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

The interface of this is the same as the Encyclopaedia. This has information on every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, including background information and the complete script for each episode. There is also a trailer for all episodes.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

The interface of this is the same as the Encyclopaedia. This has information on every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, including background information and the complete script for each episode. There is also a trailer for all episodes.

Star Trek: Trivia Challenge

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Sound Source
• Publisher: Sound Source
• Platform: PC

The sequel to Star Trek: The Game Show, this is worse in every possible way. John De Lancie as Q is gone as the host, and we instead have an extremely obnoxious guy that comes off as a bit creepy and very annoying. Deep Space Nine and Voyager have also been ditched. You can choose to have a quiz about The Original Series, The Next Generation or play a round of both.

In each round, you have four questions in four categories. Half of the categories are puns which often don’t make sense. The questions, as well as the possible answers, often feel rather immature – there are multiple questions about the “Red Shirts always die” joke (with the “correct” answer being a joke rather than an actual event) and a surprising number of questions include sexist remarks towards women, including one where you are asked what Uhura would do if you whispered the Swahili phrase “sisi ngono” in her ear. It essentially means “let’s have sex” with the answer being Uhura laughing and giving you a friendly slap.

While The Game Show is a lot of fun, this one is really not worth playing at all.

UNO: Star Trek

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Jim Keifer
• Publisher: Mattel
• Platform: Board Game

The popular game Uno where you’re trying to get rid of all your cards. This plays the same as the traditional Uno, but it has four unique wild cards.

Mind Meld lets you look at the next player’s hand, Live Long and Prosper lets you discard your entire hand and draw the same number of cards, Beam Me Up, Scotty can cancel the impact a card has on you and Double Tribble forces the next player to double the number of cards in their hand.

There was a second version of this released by Fundex, which only had the “Beam Me Up” extra wild card.

Star Trek Adventure: Serie Classica

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Jim Keifer
• Publisher: Mattel
• Platform: Board Game
• Not played: Very little information available.

This game had a lot of ambition. It licensed all Trek shows, but despite having Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway on the box, is focused entirely on The Original Series.

You can play as either the Federation, Klingons, Gorn or Romulans with the main game focusing on an away mission, where you will face lots of dangers, overcome tests and fight enemies, but your ship will still have to face dangers of its own.

It looks like a very in depth board game, but there’s no way to know with the information available on the internet.

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury

• Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 1999)
• Developer: Interplay
• Publisher: Interplay
• Original Platform: PC
• Not played: No leaked prototypes.

A point and click adventure game that boasted some very interesting graphics. It featured the whole cast from The Original Series (although due to declining health, Maurice LaMarche took over from DeForest Kelly part way through development). It was going to have six chapters, each focusing on a different member of the crew with an interconnected plot. It revolved around peace talks on Vulcan between them and Romulans, with the Romulan ambassador being murdered.

There are a few videos of cutscenes and a couple of trailers, but this YouTube video shows how the game would have played:

I've also recently found some old website games, so here they are out of order.

Star Trek: First Contact: Battle The Borg

• Original Release: 1996
• Developer: StarTrek.com
• Publisher: StarTrek.com
• Platform: Shockwave

I could only play a demo of this browser game, but the full game is probably more of the same thing, just with different map layouts or more Borg. You roam through the corridors of the Enterprise E, shooting Borg. After every shot, you need to remodulate phasers.

The game is made of pre-rendered backgrounds, so turning will “snap” to the direction. There are a few side routes to explore, although if you play the game properly you won’t get to see much, as the game ends when you’ve killed a small number of Borg. You can just run past them to see the full “map”, which consists of a few small sections that repeat endlessly.

For a quick distraction online, it’s not the worst game.

Namadra V Corridor

• Original Release: 1997
• Developer: StarTrek.com
• Publisher: StarTrek.com
• Platform: Shockwave

This Shockwave game from the Star Trek website puts you in the role of a Starfleet Academy Cadet tasked with completing a simulation where your ship is trapped in the deadly Namadra V Corridor. Not only are Klingons trying to attack you, but parts of the corridor will wear down your shields and hull. You need to get to the end of the corridor across different difficulty levels.

To move, you must press one of the six directions and set how many hexes to move (although it’s quicker to press “engage” multiple times than set a number). You want to try and stay in empty space as much as possible, but may have to go through some blue tiles (which zap your shields) – but stay away from the red ones as they’ll blow you up. You can also fire a probe in any direction which will reveal tiles until it reaches an obstacle.

It’s a very simple game that’s a bit annoying to control, but is fun for what it is. This game (and the whole Star Trek website) was initially exclusive people that used MSN as their internet provider.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Odo’s Investigation

• Original Release: 1997
• Developer: StarTrek.com
• Publisher: StarTrek.com
• Platform: Shockwave

This Shockwave game from the Star Trek website is a holodeck simulation to test your detective skills. You have 30 minutes to solve a crime by asking witnesses around the station followed by asking the three suspects a total of four questions between them.

Every time you change location, it takes 2 minutes, then talking to a witness takes 4 minutes. Unless you get lucky, you won’t be able to solve in on your first try as you need to find the one witness that disagrees with a question later on. Witnesses are also in different locations each time, so you need to remember who you talked to.

That said, even though Odo tells you off for accusing with no evidence if you get the suspect wrong, you don’t actually need to encounter the key witness for a correct answer, so you can get it right by random choice. You can even skip straight to accusing without talking to any witnesses. Of course, this ruins the game, but I imagine people did it to submit high scores after they had played.

There are three different scenarios in this, although instead of progressing through them, the scenario is picked randomly at the start.

 

[David cgc]

Oh, wow, I'd totally forgotten that "Namadra V Corridor" game until I saw a screenshot and it all came rushing back. I was recently trying to scare up some old Shockwave and Flash games. Most of them were available through Flashpoint.