Well maybe he is, but STAR TREK certainly isn't. The Star Trek dynasty, that all started back in the sixties with a quirky, low budget show featuring a bunch of unknown actors flailing over- dramatically around a cardboard set has become something larger than itself. Seven major motion pictures and three spinoffs later, Star Trek proves that once again, it is a timeless entity. Me? I do it all. I watch the shows and see the movies. I go to the Conventions, I read the books. I adorn my walls with it's images, and I play the games. For many years I had heard murmuring in the Amiga community about Tobias Richter's Star Trek - The Game, and after 6 years of searching, I finally managed to beam a copy through my modem. So while this game is nothing new in the Amiga community, it's brand spankin' new for me, and that gets me excited!
Star Trek - The Game, 1990 Tobias Richter, comes on 2 disks and is shareware. Originally a PAL game, the program comes with a little hack called PatchNTSC which displays the game in interlaced mode, making it appear similar to a letterboxed movie. For those who don't know, letterboxed movies are the one's that appear more rectangular with black bars at the top and bottom and make you say "I'll NEVER get used to that" only to discover, 5 minutes later, that you don't even notice it any more. Upon boot up the game presents you with a few nicely done animations and screen shots, all accompanied by Alexander Courage's Star Trek Theme. The game then scans your computer system for life signs.. er I mean sufficient memory, and asks (provided you have enough RAM) if you would like to copy the contents of disk 2 into RAM. A BIG plus for floppy based systems, and a feature that more programmers should include.
The main goal in the game is to receive mission calls from Starfleet Command and execute them, as they get gradually more difficult. Missions consist mostly along the lines of "Take some high ranking yo-yo from this backwater planet to that backwater planet". Occasionally you will be asked to protect a planet from the canal water sucking enemies of all that is good and decent in space, the Romulans and the Klingons. Main game play begins with you sitting in the main bridge in the central chair of Captain James T. Kirk. Ahead of you is the main view screen with the limitless void of space beyond it, and the back of your Helmsman and Navigator's heads. From here you may call up and use any station and crew member at the Captain's disposal. A click on the science station will have Spock's valuable yet somewhat predictable logic and advice on anything that comes up in the game; anything from Ion storms and other space anomalies to how to deal with enemies (which you end up killing anyway). From here you have control of the impulse and warp engines, the alert status (red alert, yellow alert, yada yada yada), shield levels, everything. Your communication station keeps you in touch with Starfleet's missions and gives you communication access to any planet you visit and any ships you encounter, friend or foe.
Clicking on the turbolift brings up a beautifully rendered cross section of all the decks in the Enterprise. Clicking on a deck level gives a brief description of what's located there and access to the "lower levels" of the ship. Much like the Star Trek series' and movies, I have yet to come across any bathrooms which makes me wonder what the REAL purpose of the phaser is. From here you can go to many different areas. You can go to the Transporter area and use the controls there to beam objects and people to and from the ship. A shuttlecraft is at your disposal in case you foolishly waste your energy and don't have enough to beam, and/or repair the transporters. A visit to Dr, McCoy's sickbay lets you check out the physical condition of your crew, and the officers lounge lets you review mission status and check on the morale of the crew, something that you want to keep high if you want your crew to respect you and follow your orders. Don't wander too long from the bridge though, as those pesky Klingons are always out there waiting for you to let your guard down and turn your multi-billion dollar high-tech arsenal of destruction... er... I mean your vessel of peaceful exploration, into silly putty.
As far as the combat goes, the controls are very easy to master. From the Helmsman's station you have control over movement of the ship via point and click directional arrows. Selecting tactical display will present you with a "heads up" display on the viewer displaying any enemy ships that are attacking you. Your phaser supply is based solely on remaining energy levels, although you have only a limited supply of the deadly photon torpedoes. Each weapon has it's own unique crosshair, simply select "aim" and move the crosshair of the weapon you want to use on the enemy ship, and then simply press "fire". A few well placed shots and the enemy armada is reduced to toast scrapings. You may even bluff your way out of an engagement with the enemy using the "Corbomite Maneuver", as seen in the episode of the same name. Even a failed attempt at bluffing will go over well with the crew and raise their morale, which keeps you as Captain from going trigger-happy.
But despite all of the games fantastic graphics and it's plethora of well placed sampled sounds taken directly from the series, the game is not without it's little annoyances, as well as a few program bugs. The stellar cartography screen for selecting the coordinates of planets is nicely drawn, but the ever changing ships computer information is near impossible to read at times, making it difficult to pinpoint the location of a ship in need of defense. Another minor annoyance is the other Federation ships you encounter in your merry travels in space. Oh sure, they are nice to come across when you are in need of an emergency energy transfer, but the rest of the time they can drive you to needing a shot of Romulan Ale. You JUST get through all the nonsense of getting the ship up and running under impulse power, you wait for Scotty to give his approval before making the jump to Warp speeds, and then you have to come to a screeching halt when you come across some yahoos on a science vessel who stop you to say "Hello Enterprise", which you must say back to them. They don't need anything, they eventually go away, and then you must get your ship up to speed again. Upon reaching your destination, you must manually guide the Enterprise into an orbit around the planet and not damage it (the Enterprise that is, NOT the planet) in the process, something that after a few times gets old and would have been better as an automatic function.
There are a few bugs in the version I have played. Nothing that will lock up the program or anything, but bring the fun to a halt all the same. Sometimes the game does not let you successfully complete a mission. You beam some Ambassador you've risked your neck to pick up in the middle of nowhere (cosmically speaking) down onto his destination planet and await the game to tell you that you have successfully completed a mission AND IT DOESN'T HAPPEN! You must then re-beam the person up and down from the planet several times in hopes that it will "kick in" and trigger a mission completion. This wastes valuable energy, and failure to do it will bring warnings from the crew that you are not doing your job, and your eventually being removed from the command position. At this point the fun factor dips rather sharply. Another quirk occurs sometimes when you go to a set of coordinates to protect a ship from enemy vessels, only for you to arrive there and find nothing. This makes for a frustrated Captain, and an eventual losing game.
But, given it's program limitations, this game is very easy to learn, and a great time for anyone who is a fan of the Star Trek genre. Games may be saved one position at a time to the game disks, and is very fast on both saving and restoring. Some games are obviously made for profit, and some are labors of love by someone who truly is a fan of the game subject. Tobias Richter (trekkin' Tobi as he calls himself) is apparently a big fan of Star Trek, as he has worked some amazing levels of detail into his game. I myself have seen commercial Star Trek games on other platforms that cannot even compare to the Star Trek "feel", for lack of a better term, that this game has in abundance.
So sit back in your Captain's chair and boot up Star Trek - The Game, and keep in mind these few points of advice:
Always keep your phaser set on stun.
Don't put all your ranking officers in one shuttlecraft.
And above all, don't just go, but BOLDLY go, where no man has gone before. Well at least no one worth mentioning.
Dr. Torgo
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