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Thread: So, Trekkies...

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    Default So, Trekkies...

    Were any of the console Trek games good?

    It seems like the only Star Trek games I ever hear getting praised are PC games--Interplay's 25th Anniversary (not the same as the NES or Game Boy games of the same name), and Raven Software's Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force... which I never played because at the time, I didn't care about Voyager, but I may rectify that as lately I'm more interested in Trek in general.

    I used to own three gameboy games--25th Anniversary, TNG, and Generations and I remember liking two of them (Generations was basically like a hardmode hack of TNG and thus I didn't care for it), and I remember 25th for NES wasn't bad, but what about others?

    For that matter what about DOS or early windows Trek? As in, "anything BEFORE the afformentioned Elite Force"?

    Thanks in advance.

    (Random, but why do people hate The Motion Picture--the movie I mean? I thought it was pretty good)

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    Great Puma (Level 12) Steve W's Avatar
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    I personally loved Star Trek: Shattered Universe on the PS2 and Xbox. It's a story of Captain Sulu's USS Excelsior getting pulled into the Mirror, Mirror universe and having to battle their way across the quadrant to get to a spacial anomaly that might let them get back. Warning: the difficulty balance is totally off, to a degree I've never seen before. Level 4 is a bat-guano insane difficulty spike where you pilot a shuttlecraft to destroy 4 Constitution-class starships (along with all their fightercraft/shuttlecraft) and when that's over, suddenly two Orion Syndicate starships warp in and attack (along with their fightercraft). It's soul-crushingly frustrating, I probably would have given up at that point if I weren't a huge Star Trek fan and wanted to push through.

    Star Trek: The Motion Picture comes across to people as boring since there are long stretches of special effects. The approach through the energy clouds to V'Ger, for example. On first viewing it's pretty impressive, evoking that "2001: A Space Odyssey" kind of feel, but on repeated viewings for people who aren't as into Trek as folks like me, it gets dull quickly. A lot of that was due to the studio wanting the film to feel epic, hence the great soundtrack and slow, majestic views of Enterprise in space dock. Plus, they only fire a weapon once, a photon torpedo at an asteroid. And the movie was considered a failure because Paramount poured money into attempting to launch their own network in the 1970s with Star Trek Phase II being the flagship show, when the network failed to launch (because the other three networks pressured advertisers to boycott Paramount to keep them from competing) a lot of that cost of development was dumped into the budget of The Motion Picture. It could never make those millions of dollars back at the box office.

    Star Trek: The Motion Picture is my favorite movie in the series. Because it's the most Trek-like, it stays true to the core of the original series. Sure, the new uniform designs are incredibly ugly and the bridge just doesn't seem the same, but it's still a winner in my book. Given the choice, I'll watch The Motion Picture over The Wrath of Khan anyday.

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    I recently re-watched Star Treks V and VI. A discussion came up between me and a friend about what gives Star Trek its "identity" and I kinda felt like those two exemplified it.

    It basically came down (for me) to this: Trek is usually ABOUT something, whereas most other sci-fi movies/television are just... stories. To use the obvious example, Star Wars doesn't really have deep themes, its just "empire is bad, rebels good." A Trek take on it would give more insight into the Empire and come down on a definite side, much like a lot of TOS stories did.

    Even V, which was largely a mindless action story, still tried to be about God and cosmic thoughts and stuff. Which already makes it better than Insurrection and Nemesis, which were just pointless popcorn flicks that shouldn't have been called Star Trek. Its also why I don't get the desire some fans have for a Star Trek and Star Wars crossover, because really the two universes feel like they wouldn't mesh at all.

    .....

    I kinda expect this to fly out the window when discussing gaming though.

    I've been wondering what the video games TNG: A Final Unity and TNG: Echoes of the Past are about.

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) Emperor Megas's Avatar
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    ...I'll watch the Motion Picture over The Wrath of Khan anyday.
    Wait... You're like, NOT gonna add the troll face or anything? 😶

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    Great Puma (Level 12) YoshiM's Avatar
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    The TNG game for SNES/Genesis was decent, though one version seemed to play better than the other. I can't remember which.

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    I like the one on Vectrex, that's about it.
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    Anyone play the mobile app game? Fleet Command, I think. I assume it is pretty typical mobile pay to win stuff, but looks kinda neat from the ads I've seen.

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    Treekie here to chime in. Well, you just crapped on my favorite Star Trek console game, Elite Force. I have it for the Playstation 2 and PC. You don't have to be a Voyager fan to enjoy it, since it doesn't exactly follow the Voyager story line, but if you don't like the Borg at all, then you might not like it.

    My second favorite Star Trek game would Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. A good top down spaceship fight simulation game. It's not overly complicated like other Star Trek space ship games. The best version would be the arcade for its amazing vector graphics, but I also find the Atari 5200 version to be very enjoyable.

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by buzz_n64 View Post
    Treekie here to chime in. Well, you just crapped on my favorite Star Trek console game, Elite Force.
    I mean, all I said was I hadn't been interested at the time, but these days... well I do have two PCs that might be capable of playing it and it looks pretty fun... and Voyager isn't that bad a show (I used to dislike it, but...)

    Mostly, as usual with me, I was afraid I'd be hearing a lot of PS3 or other modern console games I wouldn't be able to play. That and I would prefer Trek based on the original timeline. I do like me some Borg.

    Now if only they'd make a game where you get to team up with Abe Lincoln and fight that big cigar thing from the Doomsday Weapon episode.

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    Cherry (Level 1) WulfeLuer's Avatar
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    There was a TOS-based one of the Game Boy that was pretty fun. It alternated between various shmup segments and away team adventure segments. The difficulty was schizophrenic and had a bizarre habit of punishing you for wanting to fight Klingons. I liked it a lot but the difficulty really turned me off after a week of getting nowhere.

    There was a TOS-based one on the PC, that I can't remember the name of. All I remember (I was maybe 11 or 12) was that it came with lots of feelies including a really sweet pin (collect them all!) and you wound up in a space jail and you had to subdue a guard. The 'right' way from the pack-in hintbook was to fiddle with something and jump the guy when he opened the force field, but you got dialogue options and I stumbled upon a way to just talk the guy down and he gave you your gear back. I have no idea what happened after that because EVERYTHING I tried wound up with our heroes getting ambushed and TPK'd. I still liked it a lot (dialog options for peaceful resolutions impressed me) but I only got to play it once at an uncle's place for about two hours. Got to keep the pin, though.

    There was some TNG stuff on the PC that I didn't think much of, simply because it kept throwing plot hooks at you and my poor little brain couldn't figure which one first, especially since you wound up with not-Romulans right off the bat in the briefing room but Starfleet would not SHUT UP and let me figure it out. Harumph.

    I never played Elite Force, but I have a friend that loves it and the sequel a lot.

    You know what would be awesome, a RTS where you did the usual trash the xeno warmongers for great justice business then you unlocked a campaign where the villains are SFDebris' evil Janeway and her spider abominations. Bonus points if you could get a Klingon that yelled Shakespeare lines while he wrecked stuff.

    Of course I have bizarre tastes; I hate Generations but think it has the best soundtrack of the lot. Tragic, really. VI: The Undiscovered Country is my favorite movie (all hail Chang!) and I support any spinoff or movie that keeps Chris Pine away.
    RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.

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    Quote Originally Posted by WulfeLuer View Post
    There was a TOS-based one of the Game Boy that was pretty fun. It alternated between various shmup segments and away team adventure segments. The difficulty was schizophrenic and had a bizarre habit of punishing you for wanting to fight Klingons. I liked it a lot but the difficulty really turned me off after a week of getting nowhere.

    There was a TOS-based one on the PC, that I can't remember the name of.
    Ironically I think I can tell you both their names: Star Trek 25th Anniversary. There were three games of that name (Gameboy, NES, and PC) and all were completely different from each other.

    The PC version had a sequel called Judgment Rites. Both are up on GOG now IIRC.

    I never got past the second mission in 25th Anniversary PC, mostly because I'm sure you're supposed to use a phaser welder on a broken phaser but there's no way I can find to use an inventory item on another inventory item, but I was a kid last time I tried so maybe I was just being dumb and missing something. I know a lot of adventure games which seemed obtuse to me 10-20 years ago seem incredibly obvious now.

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    Cherry (Level 1) WulfeLuer's Avatar
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    Ok, I got off my butt and looked things up. The GB game I mentioned was 25th Anniversary, but the PC game was Star Trek: Judgment Rites. I totally forgot about the opener, too.
    RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.

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    The best would be the 2 earlier DOS PC games 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites no argument. They're point and click games, but also you do get into a few starship fights and they handle pretty well. They're often on sale on GoG, don't cost a whole lot too, and 25th even has a cool clue book that's actually written in a novel format so it's a hell of a little book of multiple star trek stories. Better yet some of them are written by old writers, DC Fontana from the old series even did a story or two between the two. Beyond that, Final Unity used the TNG cast and it handles much the same, all three had CD releases with full voice acting though the older 2 were first on disks.

    Getting away from those, I can say that on console Star Trek Starfleet Academy on SNES or 32X were fantastic, all based around solving trek type stuff from the bridge of your ever upgrading ship through your academy stay, and there's a good mix of hard combat in there which plays very well. The game knows it too as it even has just a combat sim mode which will re-enact some of the famous movie bits like ST2, ST6 or the old Kobiyashi Maru where you can win it if you're lucky. I recently found a DS9 era title, Worf even is your leader on this one and voices plenty, it's a PS1 game and cheap too called Star Trek Invasion and you use starfleet fighters off their most powerful carrier so it's fairly wing commander like.

    And I do agree the old arcade game that's vector based that also hit the vectrex is fantastic.

    I had the 25th for NES/GB in the day, they're different but not widely so, and they're fairly average as they have some dumb stuff about how they play and work, some that gets really aggravating too, but they're not awful or great.

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