Space – The Final Frontier

by Benjamin Fitzgerald

Next year represents a huge milestone for Star Trek fans, as September 8th, 2016 will mark the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s original television debut. Star Trek has always had a relatively small fanbase, but it has been significant enough to warrant 29 seasons of five separate television shows, comprising a whopping 702 episodes that equal some 520+ hours of television. It is the biggest television franchise of all time, indeed, perhaps the largest intellectual property franchise in the world.

As such, Star Trek has spawned a huge number of video game tie-ins. Despite this, it has sometimes been remarked that there is no such thing as a good Star Trek game. There is some truth to this. During the height of its popularity in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, a great many Star Trek titles were releases, many of which were unfortunately rushed in some way or another: some were too short; others were plagued with bugs; still more suffered from poor scripting or lackluster gameplay. Despite this, there have been several very good Star Trek games (albeit not in the last decade).

As a video game fan and a Star Trek diehard, I will be honoring this anniversary with a series of retro game reviews and Let’s Play’s of a number of Star Trek games. I will be playing some of the best Star Trek has to offer – and maybe some of the worst, too! I will attempt to review at least 12 games. However, all of these Star Trek titles are old and sellers sometimes charge exorbitant prices for these games. In addition, some of these titles were produced for Windows 98 or 2000, and compatibility issues may prevent my playing some of the titles I want to do. Furthermore, two of the games I would like to review were made for the SNES, and I doubt I’ll be able to cough up the money to buy one of those old systems.

Despite these challenges, below are the games I hope to review. Titles that are in bold are games that I know I can play. They are listed in chronological order from their release date.

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Star Trek: Judgment Rites
Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Harbinger
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Klingon Honor Guard
Star Trek: Starfleet Command
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Hidden Evil
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Armada
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Fallen
Star Trek: Klingon Academy
Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Away Team
Star Trek: Starfleet Command II
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Elite Force II

Despite my uncertainty with some of these titles, there will be enough games for me to release a review or a Let’s Play once a month. The first review will be released next month, and the title will be a surprise. I’m looking forward to this ride – it will be a blast from the past.

Make it so, Number One.