My Attempt to Play Every Star Trek Game

[NCC-73515]

I was so looking forward to Hidden Evil after seeing the ad for it on the INS videocassette
They could've done a lot more with it, like fly the shuttle and dock with the scout ship, etc.

Battle the Borg was on the FC soundtrack CD!

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.

Same here. SFC 1 and 2 looked good, and the control depth was unique, but it was no fun dealing with it. I have 3 as well, which is supposed to be less complex, but haven't tried it yet...

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.

I hope someday the apparently complete voice recordings will be used for another game, or animated show, or just anything

 

[Timby]

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 ... isn't true. You can invade planets using Troop Transports to conquer them.

 

[NCC-73515]

Or liberate them if subjugated

 

[Tuskin38]

Hm I remember being able to run GOG Hidden Evil fine on Windows 11

Edit: no wait I was thinking of Away Team

 

[ichab]

This ... isn't true. You can invade planets using Troop Transports to conquer them.

Yep. Wiping out the planet takes far longer than gathering a proper fleet of ships to take over the planet. You certainly don't want to wipe out a planet owned by a minor race as you lose the special technological benefit that comes with having them on your side. Plus if you wipe out the planet you have to recolonize and rebuild everything.

 

[NCC-73515]

And your people will hate you if you're the UFP

 

[Tuskin38]

They can't hate me if they're dead

 

[Grendelsbayne]

They can't hate me if they're dead

Well if all your Federation citizens are dead, you lose the game, so...

 

[Char Kais]

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.

Promo with screenshots:

A teaser video with static screenshots:

 

[Cube1701]

This ... isn't true. You can invade planets using Troop Transports to conquer them.

Yeah, I've found this out since playing the game - there's a lot of stuff in the game that isn't easy to find.

Star Trek (Game Boy Color)

• Original Release: N/A (Demo pitched in 1999)
• Developer: Aqua Pacific
• Publisher: N/A
• Original Platform: Game Boy Color

This demo was probably just a pitch for a Star Trek game, submitted to CBS/Paramount but never approved for development. It’s a vertical scrolling shooter where you pilot a Klingon Bird of Prey and alternate between shooting asteroids and what looks like Romulan Scout Ships.

The playable prototype is clearly very early, as while you can blow things up, you suffer no damage from anything. I can see the people in charge of the Star Trek license at the time wanting something a bit more substantial.

Star Trek: Armada

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Activision
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PC

A real time strategy game set after the Dominion war. The story starts with the Enterprise E dealing with Dominion stragglers that refuse to accept that the war is over when a ship from the future comes and warns Picard that the Borg are about to launch a large scale invasion led by Locutus. At the same time, infighting starts out with the Klingons and Romulans – if this doesn’t stop, the alpha quadrant is doomed.

Armada is a fairly basic RTS game. Each playable faction -the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Borg – plays almost identically as they all have the same stations and types of ships, they just look different and have slightly different abilities. Building your forces is the same for all of them, although it does make them more balanced against each other, even if it means a Borg Cube is on par with a Sovereign class ship.

The main unique element of Armada is crew. Each ship has its own crew, and the number drops down in battles and become less effective. You can also transport your crew to other ships. Derelict ships can be scattered around to take over, and you can even gain control of enemy ships. It’s a really nice mechanic, even if everyone breeds at an alarming rate.

The missions in the story mode have thought out some interesting scenarios to play, which keeps things varied. Some are about defending, some are building up forces to attack, while some have more unique objectives. There’s one where you start off with just a Defiant class ship and need to navigate a maze of asteroid while being chased by far more powerful ships, using derelict ships as cannon fodder to reach the end of the maze.

The game looks very nice, and there are some interesting cutscenes throughout the campaign. It makes things less realistic to make the game much more fun to play – like the layouts of the maps, which manage to remain interesting even though they’re in space. While basic, it’s a lot of fun.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: The Collective
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster
• Platform: PC

A third person shooter set sometime in season 6 of Deep Space Nine. Most of the main characters are involved, with three playable: Sisko, Kira and Worf. Unfortunately, not all the cast is here, with Avery Brooks and Colm Meaney not returning. The voice actor for Sisko isn’t too bad (although still noticeable), while O’Brien is someone doing a very bad Irish accent.

That said, the story is really good. The new alien race, the Grigari are introduced in a spooky manner. They have shielding that needs scanning so you can modulate your phaser to the right frequency, and there’s some nice locations that you visit. The ploy revolves around Pah-Wraith orbs after some Cardassian bodies from a failed experiment are discovered.

While the gameplay is mainly shooting, the tricorder is used well for scanning enemies, looking for hazards and solving puzzles. It help keeps the game feeling like it belongs in Star Trek. The shooting mechanics and weapons are quite fun too, and the game plays really well mapped to a controller (using external software). There’s also some rudimentary platforming, which works well enough. It’s a very fun game.

My favourite mission involves investigating a crashed Miranda class starship. Even with the old graphics, climbing up a cliff and seeing the ship is a wonderful sight, and you even get to fight on top of it and explore inside. You also get to explore parts of the Defiant and between each mission, explore parts of Deep Space Nine, talking to the main cast and some recurring characters, including Garak. That said, some character’s faces are really not done well – I thought Jazdia Dax was Odo when I first saw her. Worf and the Cardassians look much better than the humans in this game.

You can also play through the game as Kira and Worf. Kira has a unique mission on Bajor, but misses out on the crashed Miranda ship. You play though the same levels, but take different routes and have different objectives (although some sections are still completely the same). Kira plays the same as Sisko, while Worf lacks a phaser (which also means no forcefields to bypass) so if you don’t have ammo, you need to get up close and personal with a Bat’leth.

Deep Space Nine: The Fallen is a really fun game, I definitely recommend this one.

Star Trek: ConQuest Online

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Genetic Anomalies
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PC

Unfortunately, I can’t get the full experience of this game as it’s an online focused game and the servers are down. That said, you can still play the tutorial and battle against an AI, just without the full features of the game, so I can at least get a taste of what the game is.

ConQuest is some kind of digital board game where you play as a Q battling other Q using pieces from the galaxy. Each turn goes through phases where you plan your actions, which then occur at the same time as your opponent. The deploy phase is where you bring in more pieces from your collection: these can be personnel, ships or items that can be attached to them.

The next phase is combat. If you have ships/people in the same place at others, you can fight. However, any attacking ships can not defend. The last phase is the movement phase, where you use the actions of your pieces, which is mainly beaming people to/from planets and ships, the planets being key to victory. The map will have your planet, the opponent’s planet and then 1 or 3 planets in the “Neutral Zone”. You need influence to control these planets, which generate control points to spend on bringing new pieces into the game. The overall objective is to trap the enemy Q on a planet you control for one turn.

There’s also a more advanced game which adds some more steps and changes the objective. The first new step is the auction phase, which is where events come into play. For good events, you take turns bidding. For negative events, you both bid in secret. There’s also a “Special” phase where you use the bonus abilities of characters – the Borg Queen, for example can assimilate opponent pieces. You can also generate more control points to spend next turn or generate Q points. These Q points are the path to victory in the advanced game.

ConQuest Online is a well thought out strategy game and it’s a shame that the game is server dependant and doesn’t allow for setting up your own matches. It also means that you are stuck with just using the starter Federation pieces when playing against the AI – you can’t get more pieces or the packs from the other factions.

Star Trek: Klingon Academy

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: 14 Degrees East
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: PC

Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully enjoy the full extinct of this game due to my colourblindness. The interface colours, while fitting in with the Klingon style, makes it almost impossible for me to read any of the words in the HUD. Even lowering the resolution to make the HUD appear larger didn’t help, so I had to refer to the manual for the list of button presses I needed for the interface system in order to play.

Klingon Academy a follow on from Starfleet Academy, with similar gameplay. The bridge view is removed, instead offering a first person or third person view of the ship. While it was nice to look at, it was better playing in the first person view anyway. Klingon Academy introduces a “Verbal Orders System”, which uses all the number keys to give a large list of commands, requiring 3 or 4 button presses. It’s not very easy to do while in the middle of combat using a joystick to fly around. You can order your helm officer to fly, but they’ll crash the ship.

It’s a shame as there’s a lot of advanced tactics buried deep in this system. You can send marines to capture enemy ships overload shields and weapons for a short boost but risking damage and subsystem targeting – this feature would be better refined in Bridge Commanded, aided by your officers not being awful at piloting the ship.

The piloting issues also extend to the enemy. While Klingons are known for ramming as a last resort, the Federation (well, simulated Federation) in this seem to love it, with collisions running a lot of missions. You have even more options available to you by using nearby phenomena such as gas giants and planetary rings to your advantage. It’s a shame that there’s so much depth, yet most battles end up slowly pummelling each other while circling close with you trying to avoid getting rammed.

Throughout the game you’ll be treated to a ton of live action clips starring Christopher Plummer and David Warner as Chang and Gorkon, who do a wonderful job and the game gives a great insight into Klingons, as well as serving as a prequel to The Undiscovered Country. There’s a lot to like about Klingon Academy, it’s just a shame about the interface and enemy AI.


Star Trek: New Worlds

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: 14 Degrees East
• Publisher: Interplay
• Platform: PC

A few months after Star Trek Armada came out, we got another real time strategy game set in the Star Trek universe. This is a more traditional ground based one similar to Command & Conquer. Star Trek isn’t exactly known for large scale ground combat, so this takes a lot of liberties.

It’s set in a new solar system thar suddenly appeared after a Romulan’s weapons test went wrong. As the location happens to be on an intersection of Federation, Klingon and Romulan territory, it’s a good opportunity for them to colonise this new world and kill each other for its resources. You eventually encounter a race that already lives on the planet, so you kill them, too. With all these random ground vehicles, recognisable Star Trek elements and designs are few and far between.

The best thing about this game is the camera. There’s a lot of options for moving the camera around and looking at the fully 3D landscape. It seems odd to praise a camera, but I’m having a hard time thinking of other good things to say about this game, other than the opening and ending FMV cutscenes.

The gameplay is extremely tedious. One major RTS element this game throws out is the fog of war system. You can see the landscape of the whole area, but can only see objects near your units. This means that you have absolutely no idea which parts of the map you have previously explored. Units are also very slow at responding and it can take minutes for them to travel where they need to go. This game really needed speed options due to how long everything takes.

To make matters worse, these very long missions have to be completed in one go, as there’s no save feature at all – only which missions you’ve unlocked. There are also six different resources to manage, as well as moving officers to locations to complete objectives.

Star Trek: Starship Creator Warp II

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Imergy
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Platform: PC

This is an updated version of the first Starship Creator. It includes some of the ships from the first game with only one new addition: a Klingon Bird of Prey. In this version, you can set your 5 digit prefix code. That’s pretty much it for the ship creator side of things.

This version does come with a lot more missions to complete, along with a way to create your own missions. Although this is the most boring part of the game and is only there to run in the background to slowly get more credits to spend on ship part and crew.

 

[NCC-73515]

My favourite mission involves investigating a crashed Miranda class starship. Even with the old graphics, climbing up a cliff and seeing the ship is a wonderful sight, and you even get to fight on top of it and explore inside. You also get to explore parts of the Defiant and between each mission, explore parts of Deep Space Nine, talking to the main cast and some recurring characters, including Garak.

It looked very creepy inside, it's my favorite part as well.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully enjoy the full extinct of this game due to my colourblindness. The interface colours, while fitting in with the Klingon style, makes it almost impossible for me to read any of the words in the HUD. Even lowering the resolution to make the HUD appear larger didn’t help, so I had to refer to the manual for the list of button presses I needed for the interface system in order to play.

At some point, I had memorized all the important combinations anyway. Like at the beginning of every battle, raise shields, cloak, engage combat energy distribution mode...
The most impressive part of it was the multi-level damage modelling. I read that was unique to this game, and hasn't been done in such detail before or after.

Throughout the game you’ll be treated to a ton of live action clips starring Christopher Plummer and David Warner as Chang and Gorkon, who do a wonderful job and the game gives a great insight into Klingons, as well as serving as a prequel to The Undiscovered Country. There’s a lot to like about Klingon Academy, it’s just a shame about the interface and enemy AI.

Chang is so much better here than in TUC. I hope they remaster those videos one day... very inspiring speeches about the tIq ghob, for example.

 

[Cube1701]

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Raven
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PC

After a previous failed attempt, Voyager finally gets a video game: a first person shooter based on the Quake engine. You are part of an elite squad designed for dangerous situations called “Hazard Team”. During a training mission, Voyager gets attacked by an unknown ship and, upon the ship’s destruction, gets transported to a region of space full of dead ships with a dampening field that stops Voyager from moving. You play as Ensign Munro, second in command of Hazard Team, and get sent on missions to other ships, as well as defending Voyager itself.

While using the Quake engine, the game is also inflected by Half-Life, with your Hazard Suit maintaining your health and recharging from ports on the wall. The suit also explains other FPS tropes in a way that fits the Star Trek uniforms. Most notably, your suit has a transporter buffer that can store all your weapons.

The weapons are also fun to play with, using a mixture of starfleet designs and alien weapons, with starfleet weapons using power from your suit and alien weapons using crystals. This ammo mechanic also makes choosing weapons interesting – using the portable photon torpedo launcher consumes the same ammo as the phaser rifle. The ammo placement throughout weapons also encourages you to swap between starfleet and alien weapons rather than sticking to the same weapon. You also have a standard phaser as a backup (or quickly switching to in order to blow up objects without consuming ammo).

There’s also a few puzzle and platforming sections, although I do with the Tricorder (found in the expansion) was given more of a use for this, as most puzzles are pushing switches. A few slower paced sections where you have to scan, learn an analyse stuff would enhance the game a lot – that said, it’s still a great game.

The add-on (which now comes with the standard game) lets you explore a good chunk of Voyager, playing with some consoles and having fun in the holodeck (including a Captain Proton mission). It’s a really nice part of the game, and you can even blow up the ship or just shoot people. When you get “killed”, you get a brig scene, although the response is random, so I got 30 days in the brig for vaporising Chakotay.

Elite Force isn’t just a great Star Trek game, it’s also a great FPS game. I definitely highly recommend this one.

Star Trek: Invasion

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Warthog Games
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PlayStation

Star Trek Invasion is a space combat game developed for the PlayStation. Targeting a more casual audience than other Star Trek games, this game has you flying around in single-person fighters.

As fighters aren’t a big thing in Star Trek, this game takes a lot of liberties with the franchise, as every race has suddenly started using fighters, including the Borg. These alien fighters have nice designs, as well as the starting Federation fighter. As you progress though the game, you’ll get new and upgraded fighters which…are quite ugly. That said, the game itself looks really nice, especially for the original PlayStation.

Your ship is equipped with multiple kinds of phasers, so you can have “bullet style” ones or beam ones, although both are slow, so your targeting lock-on displays a marker ahead of enemy ships to show where you need to aim. You can twist, boost and move to the side. I found the controls to work really well and the gameplay is very enjoyable in short bursts, but unfortunately very repetitive if you’re playing though the whole game as there’s not much variety, mostly just blowing up ships. There are a couple of nice set pieces (including a Death Star II attack on a Borg Cube), but it’s mainly just blowing up other fighters.

The story feels like a jumbled mess. While the opening cutscene shows a massive Borg invasion, this is a trivial part of the story, instead it focuses on a mysterious new alien species that have been accidentally awakened by a Federation ship. That said, the story itself jumps around different scenarios, with you dealing with Cardassians, then the Borg, then this new species. The levels don’t flow. In one mission you fight the borg in deep space, the next you protect the Typhon (the carrier ship that transports the fighters) because it has sustained damage in battle, but it’s suddenly falling into a star.

The difficulty of the game also ramps up very quickly, with harsh time limits and some levels with infinitely respawning enemies. If you choose to play on easy difficulty (which still gets challenging), the game stops half way through, telling you to start the game from scratch at a higher difficulty level. On top of this, a lot of missions are hidden behind “secrets”, which the game gives you no hints about. These can be needing to have a certain accuracy rating or finding hidden objects and using the tractor beam on them. One of the secret missions unlocked in this manner is actually a requirement for the ending of the game – miss it and you’ll get a different one.

Invasion is a lot of fun in short bursts, but doesn’t feel much like a Star Trek game – if it wasn’t for Worf being your commander, you would easily forget.

Nintendo Mini Classics: Star Trek

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Stadlbauer
• Publisher: Take 2
• Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

This LCD game is a bit of an odd one. Austrian developer Stadlbauer got a license from Nintendo to sell LCD keychain games, starting with recreating Game & Watch games, but in a more Game Boy themed unit. They eventually got licenses to make new games based on franchises, and other publishers helped to publish them in various countries, resulting in different regions getting different Mini Classics games. The Star Trek games were published by Take 2 in Europe.

The game itself is a space invaders-style shooting game, with you blowing up waves of Klingons. You can also adjust the intensity of your ship’s phasers, although they are your only weapons. Between waves, you also dodge objects as you travel through warp.

Nintendo Mini Classics: Star Trek: The Next Generation

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Stadlbauer
• Publisher: Take 2
• Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

An LCD game similar to the Mini Classics based on The Original Series. This is a dual screen one and is the only Nintendo Mini Classics dual screen game that is an original game (the rest were Game & Watch games).

The game starts on the bottom screen, with the Enterprise D fighting waves of Klingon ships, space invaders style, just like the other Mini Classics game (although you can’t adjust phasers). Once you’ve defeated a wave of Klingons, Worf will beam down to attack a Klingon base as he tries to free a prisoner. Your time is limited, as another wave of Klingon ships will eventually arrive, and you’ll need to finish the ground level before you can control the Enterprise D.

Various listings on Wikis mention a “Single Screen” Nintendo Mini Classics of The Next Generation, but I can’t find any evidence of this actually existing.

Star Trek: Voyager: Classified Advertising Materials

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Paramount
• Publisher: Paramount
• Platform: PC

This reference CD came up in my searches and I would presume that there are other ones like this for previous seasons, and perhaps even Deep Space Nine. This was not intended to be seen by consumers, but is a CD for press and advertisers.

This disc is about the syndication of Season 6 of Voyager and included a lot of information on the show. There’s an episode guide with the full synopsis of every episode (similar to the TNG/DS9 Episode Guides), information on all the cast (including their personal backgrounds) and various other information on the show, including logos and photos.

The disc also contained a couple of wallpapers and a screensaver that has a nice LCARS theme.

It also came with an audio CD that contained versions of the main theme in different lengths plus a selection of audio clips.

I think it’s quite interesting that instead of putting all this data on a CD and calling it a day, they made this program to do so. That said, you can still browse through all the files with Windows Explorer – the imagery is surprisingly high resolution and all the information is in pdf documents. I think it’s strange that they had all this information, yet never made a Voyager Companion.


Star Trek Red Alert!

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Matthew Colville, Darrell Hardy, Christian Moore, Christian T. Petersen
• Publisher: Last Unicorn Games
• Platform: Board Game

This is a Star Trek themed version of a game called Diskwars, which also had themes based on Legend of the Five Rings and Warhammer. It is essentially a miniature war game, but using cardboard discs to keep the costs down and turn it into a collectible game with random packages (although a lot of the ships were sold in labelled packages).

I’ve recreated enough for a basic scenario, a 1v1 Federation vs Cardassian match. Each ship has its own command panel, technology and crew. Each turn, you set up to three command orders out of the following: Change speed, change heading, raise shields, attack or activate a crew/tech disk. This does a good job at making it seem like you’re giving orders to crew rather than controlling a ship directly, especially as changing speed (which includes slowing down) and heading are separate actions. This makes manoeuvring your ships difficult, and two inexperienced players can potentially end up completely missing each other constantly.

Red Alert has plenty of depth to it without needing an overly complicated rulebook. The game is easy to understand, but difficult to master.

Tribbles Customizable Card Game

• Original Release: 1999
• Developer: Tom Braunlich, Bill Martinson, Roland L. Tesh
• Publisher: Decipher
• Platform: Board Game

This is sort of a standalone expansion to the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, yet also its own completely unique game at the same time. It’s compatible with Tribble cards from the CCG, but has it’s own rule set – one that’s a single page long.

Tribbles is a bit like Uno in that the goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand by placing them in sequence order of 1, 10, 100, 1000 and 100000 Tribble cards. If you can’t go, you draw a card. Cards also have powers like skip, reverse or play another card. Each player starts with their own unique deck and over the course of the 5 matches, you can get rid of some card by adding them to a discard pile, which will then be removed for later matches.

It’s a simple game, but also good fun.

 

[NCC-73515]

While using the Quake engine, the game is also inflected by Half-Life, with your Hazard Suit maintaining your health and recharging from ports on the wall.

EF uses the Q3 engine, HL uses the Q2 (or a combination of 1 and 2) engine.
It also had a comic and a badge that came in a special edition Borg cube box.
There are a few choices in the game that lead to different paths as well.

The add-on (which now comes with the standard game) lets you explore a good chunk of Voyager, playing with some consoles and having fun in the holodeck (including a Captain Proton mission). It’s a really nice part of the game, and you can even blow up the ship or just shoot people.

A lot of people praised the holomatch part as well, and with the EP, you can play Borg vs SF, where the Borg assimilate players into their collective and you then play as a drone with red laser and borgified arm visible, while SF can liberate drones with hyposprays

Nintendo Mini Classics: Star Trek

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Stadlbauer
• Publisher: Take 2
• Platform: Electronic Handheld
• Not played: Too expensive to get second hand.

This LCD game is a bit of an odd one. Austrian developer Stadlbauer got a license from Nintendo to sell LCD keychain games, starting with recreating Game & Watch games, but in a more Game Boy themed unit. They eventually got licenses to make new games based on franchises, and other publishers helped to publish them in various countries, resulting in different regions getting different Mini Classics games. The Star Trek games were published by Take 2 in Europe.

The game itself is a space invaders-style shooting game, with you blowing up waves of Klingons. You can also adjust the intensity of your ship’s phasers, although they are your only weapons. Between waves, you also dodge objects as you travel through warp.

I think I have this one

 

[jackoverfull]

There are a few choices in the game that lead to different paths as well

i think that the only “choice” you can make in EF1 is saving Lt. Foster from the Borg: if you fail to rescue him in time he is assimilated, talk with you as a drone and you have to kill him in the boss battle at the end of the Borg section, if you save him the Borg take over 7’s body for the talking bits and you just need to battle some generic Borg drones at the end. He’s never seen again in both cases, anyway.

EF2 had the whole romantic subplot that was determined by your decisions on which of the two women involved talk to and what to tell them.

Both great games, btw.

 

[David cgc]

Foster did appear in Sickbay in the "Virtual Voyager" mode, which takes place right before the last mission in the game. I'm not sure if that could be influenced over whether or not you saved him in the main game, I missed him my first time through the game, but did a second playthrough when I got the expansion pack (because it added Jeri Ryan's voice, Seven was played by another actress in the original release) and rescued Foster then.

And speaking of the romantic subplot, while EF2 had Alex Munro as a male character exclusively, in the original, the player could be Alexander or Alexandria, but, as the gender-neutral nickname implies, all that changed was your character model and the voice acting for your lines, so playing as either gender teased a romantic attraction between Alex and Telsia Murphy, which was a decent-sized deal in the fandom back in the pre-Discovery days. Heck, it was even before the TNG novels ran with the rumor that Lt. Hawk from First Contact was supposed to have a boyfriend.

 

[jackoverfull]

Foster did appear in Sickbay in the "Virtual Voyager" mode, which takes place right before the last mission in the game. I'm not sure if that could be influenced over whether or not you saved him in the main game, I missed him my first time through the game, but did a second playthrough when I got the expansion pack (because it added Jeri Ryan's voice, Seven was played by another actress in the original release) and rescued Foster then.

I never got the expansion, so I missed that.

And speaking of the romantic subplot, while EF2 had Alex Munro as a male character exclusively, in the original, the player could be Alexander or Alexandria, but, as the gender-neutral nickname implies, all that changed was your character model and the voice acting for your lines, so playing as either gender teased a romantic attraction between Alex and Telsia Murphy, which was a decent-sized deal in the fandom back in the pre-Discovery days. Heck, it was even before the TNG novels ran with the rumor that Lt. Hawk from First Contact was supposed to have a boyfriend.

Yep. And I remember some pretty homophobic comments on the internet about this back in the day.

 

[Jax]

Been following your journey on Twitter and only just realised you were on here too

 

[NCC-73515]

I vaguely remember the Borg showing up at the end to fight the Vorsoth, but that may have been in the comic only.

 

[jackoverfull]

I vaguely remember the Borg showing up at the end to fight the Vorsoth, but that may have been in the comic only.

Correct: this happens in the comic, while in the game the flying aliens of the first away mission show up instead.

 

[Cube1701]

Monopoly: Star Trek Limited Edition

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Hasbro
• Publisher: Hasbro
• Platform: Board Game

This is the same as The Next Generation Monopoly, but with an Original Series theme. It includes the rules for the “wormhole” mechanic where you set up the four Star Trek Monopoly boards (including the future Deep Space Nine and Voyager sets) as play across all four quadrants: TOS was alpha, TNG was beta, DS9 was gamma and Voyager was Delta. This essentially creates a tortuously long version of a game that is already far too long. The rules do state that “in the unlikely event that all four games aren’t released, play this with the available board”. The DS9 and Voyager versions were thankfully never released.

Star Trek Trivia Game (Mattel)

• Original Release: 2000
• Developer: Mattel
• Publisher: Mattel
• Platform: Board Game

Star Trek: Invasion 2

• Original Release: Pitched in 2000
• Developer: Warthog Games
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PlayStation 2
• Not played: Game was only in concept stage

When development of Star Trek: Invasion was complete, a sequel for the PlayStation 2 was pitched to Activision, but they decided to not go along with it, so we just have a few bits of concept art. The plans for the sequel included 4 player co-op, some linear ground and aquatic missions, voice controls, large space battles and morphing ships. The four main characters would be human, Klingon, Romulan and Cardassian.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars

• Original Release: 2001
• Developer: Gizmo
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster
• Platform: PC

Dominion Wars is a real time strategy game set during the Dominion Wars of Deep Space Nine. You command a fleet of 1-6 ships in fights against the Dominion and Cardassians.

However, it’s not a real time strategy game like Armada, as there’s no base management or building new ships – you select your fleet at the start of each mission. Starfleet Command does something similar, but that has a massive depth of options and micromanagement while Dominion Wars has a few basic targeting options and not a lot more. This makes you feel quite disconnected with what it happening as you set up a few things and just let your ships do their thing.

While the ships look good for the time, there’s also something lacking about the presentation of the game. You can pick characters like Sisko, Dax and Worf as captains, but other than a tiny portrait, it means nothing. There’s no voices or dialogue from them. Even when you’re controlling the Defiant, it doesn’t feel like it’s actually THE Defiant, just another generic ship. If you lose ships in a mission, the captains can still be selected like nothing has happened.

I must admit that I didn’t get very far in the campaign. A few missions in, I was on a mission to rescue Thomas Riker (the transporter clone that joined the Marquis), who is suddenly so important that it’s worth losing ships and hundreds of lives over. I spent ages going up and down the map without much luck. I found some ships and scanned them and he wasn’t on those. I don’t know if it was a bug or I did something wrong – there isn’t much in the way of guides for the game. I did do a few skirmish matches.

Dominion Wars isn’t really a bad game. The mechanics are fine. It’s just boring and lacking in extra touches.

Star Trek: Away Team

• Original Release: 2001
• Developer: Reflexive
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PC

Away Team is an isometric strategy game, kind of like a real-time version of X-Com. You control a squad on board a ship called the NX Incursion – a small ship fitted with holoemitters that can disguise itself as other ships. Sadly, you don’t get to do anything with this cool ship, as you control a security squad on ground-based missions.

That said, “control” might be a bit too strong of a word. The game is a really odd mixture of them not following instructions really well but also requiring too much control at the same time. One key thing about real time strategy games is AI – you give your units a task and they do it. However, this is nearly non-existent in Away Team. You can only order tour squad to move a short distance as they can’t figure out longer distances. This leads to some situations where you tell your squad to go somewhere and get the confirmation animation, only that half your squad was slightly out of range and stay behind while the rest leave. When you move as a group, there’s also zero formation, it’s like a group of kids walking around, not a highly trained elite squad.

This extends to the shooting. Press the shoot button and your squad will stop and shoot directly there. They won’t carry on moving then shoot, and they won’t shoot while still moving either. So when your team is moving around the corner, you either have to let the person in front stand there and get shot, or shoot and have most of your team fire at a wall. I could understand if the game was designed for quick and precise aiming as a key element, but you can pause to fire at any time.

The graphics are also frustrating. There’s a nice art style used, but the game is locked to a 640×480 resolution, which was tiny back then. The default zoom makes it hard to tell your team apart and zooming in just stretches the pixels, which is no help at all. The levels are a mixture of shooting through everything or being stealthy, the latter being handy as you can easily trick enemies into investigating something where there’s a wall in the way and they’ll just be confused by the wall.

It’s a shame as the story itself is pretty decent, with a mysterious contagion that seems to be taking over the minds of high ranking officials in the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and even taking over Borg drones.

Star Trek: Armada II

• Original Release: 2001
• Developer: Mad Doc Software
• Publisher: Activision
• Platform: PC

Expanding upon the first Armada, this game adds an extra dimension: you can now move up and down. It’s a bit fiddly to do (hold shift while moving the mouse) and when playing against the AI, it doesn’t really make any difference to the game. When playing against other players, you can use it to your advantage by hiding ships underneath other ships and hoping your opponents are using the default view.

Armada 2 also has a fancy tactical camera. While you can play the game in this view, it’s a bit fiddly and more for admiring battles. There’s more resources to collect: on top of dilithium from asteroids, you’ll need heavy metals from planets and latinum from nebulae. Along with this is also trading with outposts. There are also more options for how your ships act, you can have them chase enemies over a long distance or let them flee, and how often they use their special abilities.

On paper, Armada 2 sounds like it’s an improvement over the first, but something just feels…off. Battles against other ships are short, but bases seem much tougher. The singleplayer missions seem to really drag, many with you slowly whittling away at the enemy base with a load of ships, knowing you’ve won but waiting for the game to accept it. Ships also blow up much quicker, leading to massive squadrons of the top tier ships being a necessity.

In the singleplayer campaign, you play though stories where the Federation fight the Borg, the Klingons fight Cardassians (with some Romulans) and the Borg build up their stranded forces and stopping species 8472. The Cardassians, Romulans and 8472 are playable, but only in skirmish. The story is quite basic, but there are some nice lines, particularly from Picard.

Star Trek: Borg Assimilator

• Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 2001)
• Developer: Cyberlore
• Publisher: Activision
• Original Platform: PC
• Not played: No leaked prototypes.

Borg Assimilator was an RTS game where you played as the Borg. In each of the 12 missions, you would have started with a few drones, building up your resources and assimilating enemies. Each mission would have you assimilating a new race, with the ultimate goal of getting the technology to produce an Omega Particle. If you complete these missions, you could then try to conquer the alpha quadrant in free mode.

There would also be threats along the way, such as Species 8472, viruses and individuality. You played as the “hive” with a Borg Queen acting as your conduit.

After announcing it, Activision ended up cancelling the game because “the game’s design did not reflect the established Star Trek universe”. The game was supposedly near completion at the time.

Star Trek Online (Verant Interactive)

• Original Release: N/A (Cancelled 2001)
• Developer: Verant Interactive
• Publisher: Activision
• Original Platform: PS2, PC
• Not played: Cancelled extremely early in development

An online RPG that was planned for the PlayStation 2 and PC. Not long after this was announced, the developer (Verant Interactive) decided to drop the game, citing a conflict of interest. They had got the licence to make a Star Wars game, which ended up being Star Wars Galaxies.