Game 75: Star Trek: 25th Anniversary - Introduction (1992)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Adventure games… the final frontier...

It’s a wonderful coincidence that we are about to play this game, produced in honor of Star Trek’s 25th anniversary, shortly after that show’s 50th. I am thrilled to be able to play it for the blog! Star Trek has been a part of my life almost as long as I can remember. I watched the original show with my father as a kid, young enough that I would hide before the credits so that I did not have to see the “scary” face at the end. As a nine-year old, I debated the merits of the “old” and “new” Star Trek with my friends shortly after The Next Generation took the airwaves. As I grew up and the world became a more complicated place, Deep Space Nine infused that vision of the future with just enough darkness and complexity that I was hooked. By the Voyager finale, I was in the workforce and watched it surrounded by my friends and coworkers. Enterprise debuted on my birthday. It’s no exaggeration to say that Star Trek has been one of the yardsticks of my youth.

All that said, I had never even heard of this game before getting involved with the blog. I was aware of the Nintendo version, but I suspect that Paramount did themselves a disservice by releasing three different games with the same name. More on that in a bit, but the important thing is that I am coming into this fresh and excited. Did they build a fitting game to honor the silver anniversary of this beloved franchise?

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy: The Star Trek trinity

Not everyone out there is a “Trekkie” so I’ll recap the basics. Star Trek, the original series, debuted in September of 1966. It was the creation of Gene Roddenberry, a former World War II Air Force pilot and policeman who transitioned into writing for television. He envisioned something akin to “Wagon Train to the stars” for the series, mixing western and sci-fi tropes into a weekly anthology format where a core group of characters solve a challenge in the space-frontier involving the week’s guest cast. The show took place on the starship USS Enterprise and featured a core ensemble of Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner), science and first officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) with half a dozen more key secondary characters. Gene’s creation was an optimistic future where humans have their acts together in a United Nations-esque “Federation” of other worlds who share mankind’s interests in exploration. The show aired 79 episodes before its cancellation in 1969, although it found new life in syndication. It would be revived both in animated form (two seasons of which aired 1973-1974) and by a series of theatrical films from 1979 through 1991.

The next most important moment in the history of Trek came in 1987 with the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation. After attempts to relaunch a series with the original cast failed, Gene Roddenberry advanced the timeline by a hundred years and built a new series with an all new cast, headlined by Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard on a more advanced version of the Enterprise. That show was a tremendous success and brought Star Trek literally to the “next generation” of fans. By the time of this game’s release, “TNG” was in its fifth season and was preparing to launch spin-offs of its own. We’ve since seen three more spin-offs (Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise) and a fourth (Discovery) is slated to air in January. We’ve also had seven more films: four starring the Next Generation crew plus three with an alternate timeline version of the Kirk/Spock/McCoy crew.

The very first Star Trek adventure game, published in 1985.

But you might not care about all that! What we care about here is adventure games. This is actually the sixth adventure game produced for Star Trek, the first five having been published by Simon & Schuster. Three of those were text adventures: The Kobayashi Alternative (1985), The Promethean Prophecy (1986), and First Contact (1988); and two were early point-and-click adventure titles, The Rebel Universe (1987) and The Transinium Challenge (1989). We have not looked at any of those titles before, nor have any of the developers from those titles worked on this one.

By 1992, Interplay seems to have won the Star Trek license from Simon & Schuster. We haven’t talked much about the history of adventure games at Interplay for one very good reason: there weren’t that many. By this point in their history, they were best known for their RPGs including Bard’s Tale, Swords and Serpents, Wasteland, and Lord of the Rings. So one of the biggest surprises for me was just how little adventure experience the team that built this game actually had. Of the five credited designers on this game-- Scott Bennie, Elizabeth T. Danforth, Jayesh J. Patel, Bruce Schlickbernd, and Michael A. Stackpole-- only Mr. Stackpole was credited with any adventure design for his work on a text adventure in 1985. (This was for 2010, based on the Arthur C. Clarke book and film.) Brian Fargo, the executive producer and CEO of Interplay, cut his teeth on adventure games with The Demon’s Forge (1981) and Tass Times in Tonetown (1986), but my guess is that he was not deeply involved with the day-to-day design of this game. The bottom line is that this game shares remarkably little DNA either with the preceding Star Trek adventure games nor any other adventures. The designers were working with both the Star Trek license and the adventure game format for the first time. What could possibly go wrong?

NES and Gameboy versions of this game are very different.

To add a further layer of confusion, there are three separate games called Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. In addition to a computer adventure game, there were separate Nintendo and Gameboy games produced. As far as I know, these games share nothing in common except the title. All three were released in 1992. I may take a closer look at them further down the road, but I’m avoiding them for now in case there are spoilers for the game that I am playing.

The manual explains some basics about the game: there are two modes of play, one on the bridge of the Enterprise and another when the crew is exploring a planet. The bridge sections let you talk with Spock (who accesses the library computer), Scotty (who reports on and repairs ship damage), Uhura (for communications), Sulu (controlling the helm and the ship’s shields), and Chekov (the star map and ship weapons). There is an awful lot in the manual about combat with other ships, how the shields and other systems work, and advice on not letting the enemy breach your hull. I have a feeling that ship-to-ship combat will be a major factor in this game. The controls in the exploration mode seem similar to others that we have played with left-click to move and right-click to access a menu of verbs. I’ll get a better feel for the interface when I play.

I also learn from the manual that the game consists of several “scenarios” and that we will get a rating at the conclusion of each one. It also recommends keeping a save from the beginning of each one as there may be multiple solutions. The stories in this game take place in the fourth year of the five year mission, so assumedly all after the TV series and well before the movies.

A lot of keyboard shortcuts. Will I have to remember them all?

Just as I did for some of my recent games, I’ll make some predictions:

1. We will see major recurring characters or races from the original series. The manual already hinted at Klingons and Romulans so I’m going to wager that we’ll see others like Harry Mudd, Tholians, or Tribbles.
2. There will be subtle (or unsubtle) references to The Next Generation characters or races.
3. Red shirts will die!
4. Even though the game is episodic, we will have a unifying plot or villain that spans multiple episodes. 

Before we begin, a couple of final notes: I will be playing the original 1992 version of this game and not the enhanced CD-ROM that came out later. If you are playing along with the GOG version, just be aware that I’m playing a less-enhanced edition of the game. At the conclusion of each post, I’ll try to also include any relevant Star Trek trivia that I find along the way.

Our first scenario! Sounds spooky!

I don’t think I can be much help in guessing the score this time. The only directly related game is Tass Times in Tonetown which scored a 47, but it was released six years earlier. Neuromancer scored a 43; it was also released by Interplay but had none of the same developers behind it. Good luck!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 20 CAPs in return.

It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw. Mr. Valdez has also kindly donated a Humble Bundle key for Gemini Rue, which we will hand out as award for a person having the closest score guess (in case of several people having the closest guess, the award will be handed to only one of them).