Trek Throwback Thursday: Trek Games on the NES

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Trek Throwback Thursday: Trek Games on the NES
"Set a course for sector 8 (bit)"





 

This is the first of three posts reviewing Star Trek games on Nintendo video game consoles (NES, SNES, Gameboy).  *I know that most of these games were also released on Sega systems.  As I do not have those games or any Sega systems, therefore I have no experience with those games and cannot offer opinions on them.  I will mention the Sega versions of games in these reviews only in terms of which games had ports and where applicable general opinions of the ports compared to the Nintendo games.*

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).  The system   that built Nintendo as a video game giant and at the same time resurrected the American video game market.  This system also gave us trekkies two different Star Trek games: one TOS game and one TNG game.  


Star Trek 25th Anniversary
Developed by: Interplay
Published by: Ultra
Released: 1992

An action/adventure fetch quest type game, Star Trek 25th Anniversary starts out like a normal TOS episode, complete with captain's log, teaser storyline hook and Space the Final Frontie.r title sequence (with text in place of voiceover-this is the NES).  The game alternated between ship based scenes continuing the plot and a number of planet-side maze puzzle fetch-quest maps.  From my (limited) experience with the game, the controls are mehh at best, the graphics are...ok (I'll give the cringy faces of Kirk, Spock and co. a pass, knowing the limited graphics capability of the NES) and the planetside levels become tedious in short order.  On the whole not a favorite.

Rating: 2/5 


Star Trek: The Next Generation
Developed by: Absolute Entertainment
Published by: Absolute Entertainment
Released: 1993

Full disclosure: the game was and is my favorite NES game and one of my top favorite Star Trek games of all time.  As a kid in the early/mid 1990s growing up with TNG reruns and first run episodes and thus becoming a massive TNG fanatic, I played the absolute (no pun intended) hell out of this game.  I always really really really like any games that let you the player sit in the captains chair and command the Enterprise.  And this one is a lot of fun.  Players take command of the USS Enterprise-D and go on a variety of missions, from combat situations to transporting colonists to rendering aid to federation planets or other starships, to eventually fighting a Borg Cube.  As player you manually pilot the ship and control weapons, while giving commands to the TNG crew (Worf, Data, Geordi, O'Brien and Riker) to carry out missions.  As more missions are completed players are "promoted" (leveled up) from Ensign to Captain.  A password systems allows you to star roughly back where you left off.

Rating: 5/5




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