Why not many games set during the movie era?

[Lance]

This occured to me the other day.

Apart from Starfleet Academy (both home console and computer versions) and its spin-off Klingon Academy, the game based directly on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and PS2 game Shattered Universe (which is set in the MIRROR universe anyway, so maybe it doesn't even technically count apart from Sulu and the Excelsior being in it), I can't immediately recall any other Star Trek videogames set during this time period.

There have been a couple set during TOS, a few set during TNG and it's movies, one or two DS9 and VOY outings, one game that pays lip service to ENT and even a couple that are explicitly set 'after' Star Trek: Nemesis (heck, there's even been one set in the JJ-verse!).

It seems strange to me that the original Trek movie-verse has been so largely ignored. TWOK being the most popular movie and all, you'd have thought it would have been tapped more often.

It seems to me that most of the Trek games we have got seem to be set in the TNG era or beyond. Almost disproportionately so.

Do we think there's potential here?

 

[F. King Daniel]

There was also the strategy game New Worlds, which had a striking poster image of a Constitution-refit crashed on a desert world. I never played it, though.

 

[BigJake]

TWOK is my favourite of the Trek films, but for some reason that era of Trek has never fired the imagination the way the TOS universe did. I think a big part of it is how the films developed after TWOK, when the setting began to nerf the rest of Starfleet and converge around Kirk & Co. to increasingly improbable degrees; somehow it's just not that appealing to follow the adventures of Starfleet in an era when it seemed largely made up of either corrupt assholes or nebbishes who couldn't get shit done without Jim Kirk at the helm*.

(* Sulu excepted, I suppose. Maybe adventuring with Sulu and Tuvok aboard the Excelsior could have some appeal. Except the film that established Captain Sulu was also so gorram silly in so many ways that it contaminates the premise by association.)

 

[Toxteth O´Grady]

There was also the strategy game New Worlds, which had a striking poster image of a Constitution-refit crashed on a desert world. I never played it, though.

I've heard that New Worlds was pretty bad. I wasn't interested in it because I don't play strategy games, but according to seasoned strategy players it wasn't that good.

I would love a FPS set in the original movie era, specifically the earlier movies. As far as the sets and costumes and the design of everything goes, it's my favorite. I keep hoping that somebody will create a mod for an FPS set on the refit Enterprise. I'd love to explore that ship deck by deck.

 

[Lance]

There was one more I forgot, hand-held game for the PSP and Nintendo DS. Star Trek: Tactical Assault. That one was set during the movie era too, although it didn't make much difference to the gameplay or storyline as far as I can recall (it was pretty much just the ships being refit-era ships, and that was it).

 

[Nob Akimoto]

So for a while in the 90s and early 2000s, the licensing situation for Trek games was rather odd. From what I recall, Interplay only had the rights for TOS based games, hence all of the games they made (25th Anniversary, Judgment Rites, Starfleet Academy, Starfleet Command, SFC2: Empires at War, SFC: Orion Pirates, Klingon Academy, New Worlds, and I think Shattered Universe) were based on TOS-Movie Era. Of these only Judgment Rites and 25th Anniversary were set during the 5 Year Mission. (Secret of Vulcan Fury would have also been on that list)

 

[USS Triumphant]

Game idea: During Star Trek IV, you're in command of the U.S.S. Potemkin (Constitution-class, NCC-1657), which has been disabled by the whalesong probe while on the way to a rescue mission to assist an Andorian merchant ship that was raided by Orion pirates. They are *not* disabled, but are crippled, venting atmo and losing life support, and because of hull and engine damage, they are limited to one half impulse. To make matters worse, conditions on your ship (the dark, the feeling of being adrift, worry about Earth, etc) are gradually resulting in space madness in some of the crew. Some are insisting that *something else* has gotten into the ship...

The goals: 1. To gather supplies and make what repairs are possible to keep your crew alive and get back underway toward the Andorian ship. 2. To keep as many people as possible alive from that ship, as well. 3. To survive until help arrives - if it ever does, and if whatever answers the distress calls is friendly.

Someone get on making that, right now.

 

[USS Triumphant]

... and I think Shattered Universe)

Shatnered Universe featured red movie era uniforms and movie era ship designs.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

The first two Starfleet Command games were clearly set in the TOS movie era. Really fun games, too.

 

[Nob Akimoto]

... and I think Shattered Universe)

Shatnered Universe featured red movie era uniforms and movie era ship designs.

Right, my point was "I think Shattered Universe was part of Interplay's set of games, given the models used for their fighters" . I think it was published by someone else, since Interplay was already in bankruptcy by the time game was completed.

 

[Caesar753]

Parts of both Encounters and Legacy take place in the movie era as well.