Star Trek Games: Past, Present & Future. Part 1

As a small boy, I eagerly watched with glee reruns of the original 60’s Star Trek series, once a week on BBC2. Like most kids, I wanted to be Captain Kirk, boldly going and kicking Klingon butt around the galaxy. I used to play Star Trek with my best friends, using a mixture of official toys and other non-official or even remotely similar toys to act out our own versions of an episode. Deep down, I knew this was probably all just the beginning and sure enough, just around the corner was the wonderful beginning of COMPUTER GAMES!

There have been many Star Trek computer games over the years, covering the original series, the spin-offs and some of the movies, on a whole host of gaming platforms. Some have been good, some bad and some downright awful. In my opinion, the current and previous state of Trek gaming is a bit sad, which is a real shame as this is a very rich and deep franchise that has a lot to offer, which deserves some decent titles.

The Glorious and Not so Glorious Past

The very first Star Trek computer game that I played was Star Trek: The Rebel Universe on my beloved Atari ST. At the time, it was probably the best Star Trek game and totally captured my imagination, but I am probably looking back at it through rose-tinted glasses as looking at the game now it hasn’t aged very well (oh well, this was 1987 after all!). The cute thing about The Rebel Universe was the fact that digitised images of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Sulu, Chekov , Scotty and Uhura were used for both the bridge view and various Enterprise station views. Of course, by today’s standards, this tech is woeful, but at the time it was very cutting edge. The other interesting aspect of this game was that it used speech samples taken directly from one of the actual 60’s episodes, so you had Chekov blurting out “locked on target” and Scotty shouting “captain, she’ll blow up if we keep this speed up” (or something like that). The actual gameplay was very simplistic, but it did afford both combat and exploration. The important thing is that at the time, it did capture the spirit of Star Trek.

Fast forward to 1992 and we now have Trek gaming firmly in the hands of Interplay with Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Now the fact that this game already had “25th Anniversary” in the title made me feel a bit old back then, so…… anyway moving swiftly on (ahem). In 1992, the “point and click” adventure was all the rage and Interplay blatantly jumped on this bandwagon, to perfection I might add, as 25th Anniversary was a great game. This game worked because it felt exactly like you were immersed in an episode of the 60’s T.V show. The gameplay elements included starship combat, away team missions and puzzle solving, with plot progression via dialogue choices. There was also a fair amount of excellently crafted humour between the central characters, completely matching the style of the T.V show (you still had the comedy double act of Spock and Bones!). Fans of the show lapped this up and the game is still considered a classic even today. A year later, Interplay released the equally good Star Trek: Judgement Rites, which was pretty much more of the same with a new plot.

Next up in 1995, was the very first foray with Picard at the helm, with Star Trek The Next Generation: A Final Unity. This was published by the now long defunct Spectrum Holobyte. At the time, this had a lot of Trek gamers very excited, not just because it was the very first Next Generation title but also because of what was promised in terms of content. As with 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites the title was meant to be as close to playing and experiencing the T.V show as possible. The game used original, recorded speech from all of the main cast and the actual music from the show. Well, they almost succeeded in terms of emulating the feel of the show and creating a great game. To be fair, at the time it was probably the best Trek game that had been released so far, but looking back on it now I simply cannot help regarding it as a flawed point and click adventure, with very poorly implemented starship combat.

In 1997, we saw the first Trek game to concentrate on starship combat with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The player was a cadet at Starfleet Academy and the missions consisted of simulated combat and encounters on a bridge simulator. During the simulator missions, the player took direct control of a Starfleet vessel and various ship stations and systems were accurately portrayed with full functionality that fitted in well with the Trek Universe. The storyline was conveyed to the player via full motion movie style cutscenes, in between the simulator missions, with George Takei reprising his role as Sulu, but now as an Academy instructor. The game was a flop for myself and most fans, as you only ever went out on simulator missions, the “movie” bits were tiresome and the game was very linear without much in the way of actual content. An expansion pack called Chekov’s Lost Missions was later released and in 2000 the formula was repeated with Star Trek: Klingon Academy, but this time with much better graphics and proper (non bridge sim) missions, but alas still with the woeful FMV cutscenes, this time with Christopher Plummer back again in his role as General Chang.

The very first Trek game to embrace the first –person shooter style of gameplay was released in 1998, with Star Trek: The Next Generation – Klingon Honour Guard. The game was built using the excellent Unreal engine and the player was kind of a Klingon “special forces”, engaging various enemies with a variety of cool, familiar looking Klingon weapons. The plot was very good and offered lots of twists, turns, skulduggery and treachery. The developers did a great job in making the player feel like a Klingon warrior and the missions where set in a variety of locales including the outside of a spaceship (using magnetic boots, to stop you floating off in space) and the famous Rura Penthe penal colony from the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It was a great game, only marred by some annoying bugs and tech glitches with certain P.C setups.

The year 1999 saw the release of a couple Trek games that were very interesting for any Star Trek fans that also enjoyed a bit of strategy:
Star Trek: Starfleet Command was based on the old hexes and cardboard counters board wargame Starfleet Battles. I rushed out to buy the game as soon as it was released and when I fired it up for the first time, I remember thinking “yes, Star Trek gaming has arrived!” This for me, was the first Trek game that truly captured the spirit of being a starship captain in the Trek universe. You were in charge of Starfleet vessel viewed from 3rd person, performing various missions such as escort duty, scanning planets and destroying enemy vessels etc. Doing well in the missions gave you “prestige points” which you could then spend on upgrades, new crew and new ships between missions. It was a great game and the only real criticisms that I have is that you could only move you ship along a 2d flat plane and not go up and down in the z-axis and the game had no real actual plot to speak of. In 2000, Interplay released a follow up: Starfleet Command II: Empires at War, which was more of the same but with more ships, races and upgrades and the “dynaverse” multiplayer system (which was very buggy on initial release). In 2002, Activision updated the series to the Next Generation setting, with the rather excellent Star Trek: Starfleet Command III. This was essentially more of the same, but with better graphics, the Next Generation setting and ship and a proper, well written plot.

The other interesting Trek strategy title released in 1999 was the quite good Star Trek: The Next Generation – Birth Of The Federation. This was the first (and only, sadly) foray into the world of turn-based strategy and borrowed heavily in terms of game play style from the much celebrated Civilization by Sid Meier. The player picked a race to play as (i.e. Federation, Klingon, Romulan etc), with a starting home planet and could build ships, colonise planets, research new technology, engage in diplomacy with other races and of course wage war with other races in starship combat. It was a good game, only really being let down by very poor starship combat and unoriginal gameplay as it was pretty much Trek does Civilization.

Look out for part 2 of this article, which will be posted on Weds!