Star Trek games of old...

[martok2112]

Sometimes I miss my SNES. Star Trek Starfleet Academy was actually pretty fun on that old console. It even had some hidden scenarios such as Kirk defeating the Kobayashi Maru...and it was taken straight from the novel that had been written years before. One of my old friends and I enjoyed playing the two-player, split screen battle mode. I also enjoyed the ST:TMP photon torpedo sounds (the best sound effect rendered in the game). Phasers sounded more like a low-bitrate version of a gun going off. Romulan plasma torpedoes sounded like the V'ger plasma weapons, but, it was also a low-rate sample that didn't last but a split second.

The PC version of Starfleet Academy is pretty fun as well...and obviously looks light years better than the SNES version. I hadn't really invested a lot of time in that game though. I'm sure I still have it, and I need to see if it will run on my current rigs.

Another game that I still have, but haven't visited in a while is Star Trek Bridge Commander. It had a nice selection of ships, and had MANY mods released for it, especially in the form of ships that didn't make the initial roster, (and even some other sci-fi franchise entries like the Battlestar Galactica, or some stuff from Star Wars) but I haven't worked up the courage to try and figure out how to make a mod work for a PC game.

Elite Force and Elite Force II were also quite fun. I don't think I have my PS2 copy of EF anymore...but somewhere, lying around I have EFII.

So...anyone else have some old faves they'd like to wax nostalgic on?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Tobias Richter's unofficial Star Trek game for the Amiga was fantastic fun. I spent many, many, many hours playing that growing up.

Star Wreck on the ZX Spectrum was a text adventure with very primitive graphics which I explored, mapped and played endlessly. Even a decade or so past the publisher's closure, I sent off for the cheat sheet and got it. But, even though I finished the game, I still don't know what (if anything) the drugs do except transport you to another dimension where you can't get back or do anything.

 

[Melakon]

The granddaddy of all Star Trek games must be those early ASCII text games where the universe is an 8x8 grid, and you're clearing each sector of Klingons. Earliest version I came across was written in BASIC in the old Creative Computing magazine in the late 70s or early 80s. Lots of games seemed to borrow the concept, including a version for the Atari 800/400 home computers called Star Raiders.

 

[martok2112]

Good memories, folks.



i definitely remember the old, grid based "Star Trek". And I used to love playing Star Raiders!

 

[Corran Horn]

I loved 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rights. A Final Unity was a great one, too, in that same vein.

Starfleet Command I thought was just ok. I liked Birth of the Federation more than most.

Armada was fun, I thought. Away Team looked like fun but it was so repetitive - you should just run around phasering everybody you saw in some levels.

Dominion Wars I didn't like - I thought the controls were confusing. Elite Force and Elite Force II were great Trek takes on the FPS genre.

I have Legacy but it was buggy so I barely played it. One of these days...

 

[Melakon]

And I used to love playing Star Raiders!

I always had the Star Wars soundtrack album running on the phonograph while playing.

 

[Count]

WinTrek for Windows 3.11, and netrek.

 

[martok2112]

And I used to love playing Star Raiders!

I always had the Star Wars soundtrack album running on the phonograph while playing.

Me too....ha ha ha ha!!!!!

 

[Shikarnov]

I used to love the space fights in the 25th Anniversary game for PC.

 

[martok2112]

I used to love the space fights in the 25th Anniversary game for PC.

Which looked to be the forerunner to how Starfleet Academy would play.

 

[Viper78]

Armada 1&2 along with Bridge commander were by far my favourite Star Trek games. I still have them although for some reason Armada 2 refuses to install on my Window's 7 pc.

 

[Corran Horn]

I used to love the space fights in the 25th Anniversary game for PC.

I liked how with my monitor you could turn up the brightness and see cloaked ships.

 

[martok2112]

I used to love the space fights in the 25th Anniversary game for PC.

I liked how with my monitor you could turn up the brightness and see cloaked ships.

Ha ha ha..wouldn't it be funny if Kirk did that in Star Trek?

-----
The crew of the Enterprise sat tense, each attentive to their tasks as all hell broke loose around them, but, when possible, focused on the main viewer, wondering when General Chang would strike next. His bird of prey was an exception to the rule of "ships cannot fire when cloaked." Chang was doing a terrifying job of tearing the Enterprise apart with his hidden torpedo attacks.

Spock, as always, was deep in thought....searching his logical mind for answers out of perilous situations. Finally, he spoke up.

"The shimmer," he said quietly.

Kirk turned around, looking both hopeful and expectant toward his science officer.

"The shimmer, Captain," Spock repeated. "I remember you told me that you and Mr. Sulu had spotted a cloaked ship on the view screen by its shimmer when you came to rescue me from Genesis."

Kirk turned around, grinning as he looked back at the main viewer. And something else was different at that time, he mused. And then, it just hit him.

"Chekov," he called out, "turn up the brightness on the main viewer!"

----------------------

 

[publiusr]

Perhaps the oldest
http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=star-trek&page=detail&id=3943
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space

I doo seem to remember line drawings of Klingon and FJ ships in profile that got larger.

 

[martok2112]

I remember the Sega arcade game of Star Trek where you fought Klingon battlecruisers, and ultimately, Nomad. That was a vector graphics title. There was another Star Trek game, similar to the arcade version released for the old Vectrex stand alone console....it was the first self-contained console that had its own screen and controller...and everything was done in vector graphics.....for those who might not know what vector graphics are/was...think the old arcade game "Asteroids".

 

[Smellincoffee]

My first Star Trek game was on the gameboy; I can remember having to 'repair' circuits by doing logic puzzles, and chasing people around to transport them. Battles were difficult because I'm still not sure if I did them right -- I could always blow up the Talarians, could blow up the Ferengi with some difficulty, and always lost to the Romulans. I used to ignore missions and just keep going from planet to planet until I found a ship I could destroy.

After that was ST: Hidden Evil, which I remember...not unfondly. I'm not sure why Insurrection was regarded as a good basis for a game, but I'd never played an adventure-mystery game like that before.

ST Elite Force was next, and I STILL play that, believe it or not. It runs on an old computer, and I run around CTF maps shooting bots. Not like the old days when I'd stay up all night talking with people around the world and playing CTF, but it brings back some memories.

At the same time I loved ST Armada; its prettier sequel never matched it. More ships, sure, but the balance was off and truth be told, I preferred the original's graphics. I was in a gaming clan called Starfleet, but my buddies and I preferred the 'yardwars' to the full maps. Those were custom maps in which every player began with a shipyard and a bunch of resources, and that was it. Once your yard was blown up, you were history.


The last ST game I got into heavily was ST Away Team, a commandos-type game that I adore. I could never beat the last mission, and truth be told I skipped the Borg missions because the audio was HORRIBLE, but I can still remember every single move I made on mission ten, because I replayed it so many times. I LOVED being able to choose my own team from the panel of characters, and the candidates and their positions are so etched into my memory I used to write fanfiction about their adventures.

I have ST EFII and sometimes play bot CTF matches, always on maps that are modeled after original EF maps. Sometimes I play Armada II, but the starbases are so overpowered every single game comes down to bombarding them with artillery ships. I'd like to try SFC III, but it's horribly expensive and I'm not sure I have the patience to learn complicated computer games nowadays -- I prefer ones that let me zone out, like Sid Meier's Pirates or The Sims.

 

[martok2112]

I used to have the GameBoy Star Trek game. Actually, there were a few, and a couple made for the Sega Game Gear as well. I used to have the TNG game for GameBoy. The space battles were a good way to pass the time. Chasing down intruders to beam off, or refugees to beam up was also a fun minigame. They did a cool job with establishing planetary standard orbit too.

 

[Seven of Five]

I loved A Final Unity, and tried to love Generations in the same way, which was buggy as hell every time I played. Starfleet Academy was pretty fun too.

I remember completing Borg a couple of times, though looking back that wasn't overly exciting.

Klingon Academy and Bridge Commander I played demos, but never the games. Weird, as I remember enjoying Klingon Academy. Oh I also owned Bridge Commander but never got into properly.

The two games that I enjoyed immensely were Birth of the Federation and Elite Force. Elite Force II was good too, but I didn't play on it as much as the original. BOTF I lost countless hours too.

 

[SPCTRE]

I have fond memories of Birth of the Federation, even though I cheated quite a lot because I suck at strategy games

Walking around on the bridge of the USS Voyager for the first time in the demo version of Elite Force was also pretty memorable. My 15 year-old fanboy mind was blown!

 

[Mytran]

Wintrek. Wintrek was awesome. The version I played even had the Borg and Ferengi, which was a little odd considering the TOS era! A later version, I suppose...