JC's Trek Talk

Trek Throwback Thursday: SNES (and Genesis) Treks Boldly going into 16-bits The 16-bit era.  Better graphics, deeper gameplay, more colors.  The fourth generation of consoles gave us a bit of a mixed bag of titles for the SNES/Genesis/32X.   Star Trek Starfleet Academy Bridge Combat Simulator Developed by: Interplay Published by: Interplay Released: 1995 Adapted from Interplay's Star Trek Starfleet Academy, Bridge Combat Simulator puts players it the shoes of a Starfleet Academy cadet, working with your simulator crew of fellow cadets completing simulated assignments to level up in class rank (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior) and gain the ability to command different simulated starship classes.  Each "year" consists of 5 simulator missions, for a total of 20, plus one final mission to graduate (the infamous Kobayashi Maru scenario).  The game also includes a simulator room mode which allows for one on one (or two or three) combat simulations, as well as...

Trek Throwback Thursday: Star Trek on Gameboy (and Game Gear) The Gameboy, Nintendo's super popular handheld.  The juggernaut that built the handheld gaming market.  Nintendo's Gameboy and it's competitor from Sega gave us three Star Trek games, one set in the TOS era and two in the TNG era.  Star Trek 25th Anniversary Developed by: Visual Concepts Published by: Ultra Released: 1992 Despite sharing the name, this is not in fact a port of Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the NES.  This action/shoot 'em up game consists of a combination of space shoot 'em up and planetside adventure maze levels, culminating in fighting the Doomsday Machine (from the eponymous TOS episode).  An ok game, the gameplay is a bit basic (necessity of being on the Gameboy), and as such the replay value suffers.   Rating: 2/5  Star Trek: The Next Generation Developed by: Imagineering Inc. Published by: Absolute Entertainment Released: 1993 This is an almost direct port of the ...

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 f...

Trek Throwback Thursday: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh is an engrossing and action filled tale that reveals the origins and backstory of Khan Noonien Singh and the oft referenced but never seen Eugenics Wars.  Presented in two volumes, The Eugenics Wars uses a combination of wit, humor, and clever Star Trek and real life historical references to tell the story of Khan Noonien Singh and the titular Eugenics Wars, all while not rewriting the 20th century history we all know.   Volume one covers the 1970s and 80s, from the super-secret eugenics/genetic engineering project that created Khan and his super-ilk, the fate of the project, Khan's formative years and the real life historical events that motivated his later actions during the Eugenics wars proper.  I especially love the way Greg Cox worked in all the references to real life historical events (the end of the Cold W...

Trek Throwback Thursday: The Kobayashi Maru by Julia Ecklar Julia Ecklar's The Kobayashi Maru (TOS #47) is a fun little self contained TOS novel which explores the backstories of some of our favorite TOS characters. Full disclosure: this review will be more than a bit biased. This is one of the first Star Trek novels I ever read, and one of my favorites. Set shortly after Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the story opens with Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov onboard a USS Enterprise shuttlecraft disabled after hitting a gravitic mine. After Sulu likes their situation to the famous (infamous?) Starfleet Academy Kobayashi Maru no-win scenario, Kirk, Chekov, Sulu and Scotty each share the story of their respective attempts to beat the no-win scenario. From Kirk's trying three times and then cheating by reprogramming the simulation, Chekov's destroying his ship to prevent capture (his story mostly focuses on another similar training scenario), Sulu taking the test amid the...

Star Trek Starship Creator (PC) 1998 Star Trek Starship Creator was developed by Imergy and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive in 1998 for Windows 95-XP and MacOS 7.5-9.  To call it a game is a bit of a stretch.  "Software toy" would be a better description.  As the name implies, it lets you create a starship (from one of 7 classes, the add-on pack released in 1999 adds 3 more classes) assign a crew from a list of characters from TOS,TNG, DS9, and Voyager and the movies and send the ship on pre-scripted missions.  Add-on pack also introduces the ability to send 2 ships on a mission simultaneously.  For those who are up for a bit of scripting, custom missions and crewmembers can be added.  The sequel, Starship Creator Warp II released in 2000 added some additional missions, a non federation ship class, and attempts to maked creating custom missions and custom crewmembers easier. Like Simon & Schuster's other trek offerings from the mid and lat...