Whether you're a final frontier fan or not, you've probably noticed the onslaught of advertising for the latest entry in CBS' ever-growing catalogue of Star Trek series. The impending return of Jean-Luc Picard to television screens this week is a massive media event and seeing the iconic captain once again going boldly in the imaginatively-named Star Trek: Picard will be emotional for fans who have missed his uncompromising integrity and moral fibre.
The media fanfare surrounding the new show is down to the fact that Patrick Stewart's character is up there alongside pointy-eared Mr. Spock as a pop culture icon, instantly recognisable whether you've followed his exploits on the USS Enterprise or only know him as 'facepalm guy'. We thought we would never see him again, but here he is; nostalgia for beloved characters burns even bolder and brighter in space, it seems. The recent Star Wars trilogy proved as much when Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher returned once more to a galaxy we believed they had left behind a long time ago.
Despite sharing 50% of their titles, Star Wars and Star Trek have little in common beyond their cosmic settings and a theatrical, Shakespearean quality to their drama. Both properties have had their ups and downs over the years, but one area where Star Wars fans have Trekkies trumped is video games; there are a great many more console games from a galaxy far far away and — inevitable disappointments aside — the high points are significantly higher than virtually any Trek game.
In all honesty, it’s been slim pickings for Trek fans over the years. We’re going to take a look specifically at the games on Nintendo platforms, but even the most die-hard Trekker would be out of their Vulcan mind to suggest the cross-platform Star Trek catalogue comes anywhere near the quality of the 'Wars library. There are definitely highlights but arguably no equivalents to classics like Rogue Squadron II or Knights of the Old Republic. There are multiple reasons for this, which we'll explore below, but let's start by revisiting the first Star Trek game on a Nintendo system.
Set course for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Maximum warp.
Space, the final frontier
Interplay’s Star Trek: 25th Anniversary was the first Star Trek game to beam to Nintendo consoles in 1991. Its Game Boy counterpart arrived the following year, but despite sharing a title these are two different games. The former was a take on the developer's computer game of the same name while the latter was developed by Visual Concepts, although both were published by Konami's shell company Ultra (or Palcom in Europe).
The NES version features top-down exploration of various locations as you planet-hop through an adventure solving puzzles and finding life forms before beaming back to the bridge and warping to the next planet. For a licensed NES title, the visuals are pleasingly accurate when it comes to depicting the characters and ship, although its lacklustre gameplay doesn't hold up so well.
The Game Boy version intersperses top-down away missions to find weapon parts with side-on shmup-like action sections where you take direct control of the Enterprise and negotiate incoming asteroids and other debris. Firing phasers and photon torpedos soon gets monotonous, although the ability to divert power between shields, 'speed' or phasers adds an element of personal strategy to these gauntlets. You can push right to go faster or hang back and steadily avoid gravity wells and obstacles. It's tough, as many 8-bit games are, although a password (stardate) system lets you skip to where you lost your ship. Scintillating it isn't, but we've played much worse.
Developer Imagineering Inc. turned in both versions of 1993's Star Trek: The Next Generation for NES and Game Boy and the two games offer largely similar experiences. This involves juggling menus and ship systems as you warp between locations on an 'adventure', of sorts, although it has all the excitement of boldly filling in a spreadsheet. For fans there is some pleasure to be wrung from them, but the games suffer from a distinct lack of intrigue or wonder, taking the least interesting part of Star Trek — the menial functions and inputs required to operate a starship — and building a management game around that. On PC this works better thanks to the interface and power of the platform. The 8-bit consoles simply weren't suited to this genre, though. Who knew piloting the Federation flagship could be quite so dull?
This style of game didn't fare much better on 16-bit consoles. Spectrum Holobyte's Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past released on Super Nintendo (and Genesis) in 1994. It certainly looked better than its 8-bit predecessors and featured a similar mix of ship-based management and on-foot away missions, but gameplay was much the same; clunky and interminably sluggish to the point that it's hard to maintain enthusiasm. Perseverance (and perhaps a lack of other games to play) may have endeared Future's Past to some players, but compared to the countless fun and accessible games in the SNES library, it's desperately pedestrian. With such a broad universe of ideas to draw upon, it was disappointing to see such humdrum efforts to catch Star Trek's lightning in a cartridge-shaped bottle.
These are the voyages...
PC games like Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity demonstrated that this style of management-adventure was better suited to that platform thanks to its mouse and keyboard interface and improved visual and audio fidelity. On console we'd continue to see limited takes on the same premise like 1994's Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus, a tired movie tie-in for Game Boy from Absolute Entertainment. Interplay's Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator on Super NES took the bridge-based gameplay from previous Original Series titles and put it front and centre, enabling you to reenact key battles from the show and movies. Once again, though, the static view from the captain's chair and the menu-based interface simply didn't translate well to console gaming and tedium triumphed over tension.
Perhaps we expected too much. We were pining for a Star Trek game which captured the essence of the show, which is certainly not navigating soupy menus to engage the warp drive or reroute auxiliary power to the inertial dampeners. Star Trek is about exploring the unknown — boldly charting the stars to better understand ourselves — but the real beauty of the show is its almost infinite diversity in form and content.
Star Trek can be almost anything. Some of the best-loved episodes feature almost no visual effects: The Measure of a Man is one of several courtroom dramas; Lower Decks concentrates on non-principal characters and their unique impressions of the main crew; Family doesn’t once show the bridge of the Enterprise. For all its operatic space faring, playing Netflix roulette with the series is just as likely to turn up an episode with Data painting or replicating cat food as it is some grand confrontation with the Borg. With that in mind, a Star Trek game could take almost any form at all, big or small, so why had most been so turgid and unimaginative to this point?
Looking to that other 'Star' franchise, games like Super Star Wars may have strayed from the source material considerably, but they captured the movies' swashbuckling spirit and gave you the opportunity to fire blasters and swing lightsabers along to 16-bit renditions of John Williams' thrilling tunes. Console-owning Trekkies could be forgiven for wanting a simple Star Trek-branded 2D platformer in a similar vein.
Enter Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time. Made by Novotrade International, developers of Ecco the Dolphin among others, this DS9 game captures the look of the show relatively well, but the platforming itself is stodgy and awkward - Super Star Wars it ain't. In fairness, it's more along the lines of Flashback or Another World, but it lacks the charm of those cinematic platformers. Wandering the Promenade talking to NPCs soon becomes dreary and the controls are too unwieldy to be fun in the more action-oriented sections.
So, back to space combat, then.
Its continuing mission...
Developers would continue to grope around for a hook on which to hang a Star Trek game, to varying degrees of success. There are several reasons that Star Trek doesn't have a truly great video game to its name. One factor is that it's really about people and their relationships, nuanced things that video games have only recently begun to explore with any sophistication. The Roddenberry ethos at the heart of Trek — that by the 23rd Century humanity will no longer quarrel amongst themselves – is something writers on the various shows have struggled to reconcile for years because without conflict, drama is very difficult to create. And video games are near impossible.
Games have been built on the act of shooting things from the very beginning – Spacewar! was essentially the first computer game, and it didn’t have you sitting down in the Observation Lounge debating the Prime Directive. At its core, Star Trek's grey areas and moral quandaries don't lend themselves to the action-packed, binary scenarios that video games traditionally excel in. Perhaps an old-school text adventure, but not a sexy shootout.
Conversely, Star Wars carries conflict in its very name and epic, thematic battles between the light and dark sides play to gaming's strengths. The new era of Trek, as instigated (stylistically) by JJ Abrams in his 2009 'reboot' movie, has shifted the franchise into a more mainstream, action-packed lane – a pill which old-school fans often find hard to swallow. Advancements in CG technology play a large part, too; epic space battles are now much simpler (and cheaper) to create without building and photographing hulking great physical models. Far easier to cut to a snazzy VFX shot than write your way around a budget-busting battle with a clever, entertaining conversation. Star Trek: Discovery certainly looks better than any previous iteration of the show, although we sometimes wish they’d taken another pass at the dialogue.
Still, firing phasers in Star Trek is generally a sign of failure. This hasn't prevented a handful of first-person shooters (including the surprisingly not-abominable Star Trek: Elite Force) and a large number of space combat and strategy sims appearing across all platforms, though. Nintendo-wise, we’ve had both Quicksilver Software's Star Trek: Tactical Assault on DS (and PSP) in 2006 and 4J Studios' Star Trek: Conquest for Wii (and PS2) the following year. Both titles were published by Bethesda, with the DS game giving you more direct control over your ship and the Wii title taking a turn-based approach to battle.
Tactical Assault, while showing promise with its touch interface and a welcome lighthearted approach with cartoon-y character portraits and humorous writing, ultimately fails to iron out gameplay kinks and ends up more frustrating than fun. Sound familiar? It scored poorly in our review and Conquest fared little better. The combination of Star Trek and Risk-style strategy sounds with a winner, but it reeked of a product put together on a shoestring budget and much older PC games offered a far deeper and more rewarding strategy experience.
Strange new worlds
And that’s it for Star Trek on Nintendo platforms. With the exception of the pinball table available as part of Stern Pinball Arcade, it's been 13 long years since Star Trek has graced a Nintendo system. Perhaps that's a blessing in disguise; at least we dodged the excretable Star Trek, an attempt to squeeze Kirk and Spock into an ill-fitting third-person co-op shooter that even JJ Abrams vocally disliked.
There have been some good ones we've missed out on, though. Star Trek Online will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in February, and in spite of some MMORPG clunk, the fact that it's still going after a decade says something. Mobile game Star Trek: Timelines has its fans. Without doubt, though, the finest Star Trek game of recent times (and perhaps all time) is Ubisoft's Star Trek: Bridge Crew, a co-operative VR game where four players take different bridge stations and work together to overcome the challenges inherent to commanding a starship on the final frontier.
For arguably the first time, Bridge Crew gives players a taste of the feeling they've sought from static bridge sims and strategy games over the years. No, not navigating dreary menus or balancing power reserves, but co-operating intelligently as a crew, reporting to each other, living out starship fantasies and actually saying the words. You're not simply speaking for the fun of it - clear communication of all that delicious Treknobabble is vital to success. Therefore you assume the role and channel all the procedural knowledge you've soaked up through decades of watching the show. Hail them. No response, Captain. They're firing! Shields up, red alert!
The realm of VR brings the bridge to life in a way static 16-bit screens never could. Framed as a co-op adventure, it's arguably the first game to tap into the most potent part of Star Trek's formula: the sense of comradeship and family that develops in each and every crew. It’s a real shame that VR still represents a barrier to entry preventing more players from taking their bridge stations.
New life and new civilisations...
Perhaps unlike previous developers, Ubisoft has the resources and the budget to make good on the promise of the premise, which may explain why Bridge Crew succeeds where so many others have failed. For all the grandeur of the setting, the show itself has traditionally been produced on a very tight budget, and that's reflected in the games as well. A galaxy-sized canvas needs galaxy-sized talent, which takes time and money to foster.
Other games exist that don't carry the Star Trek name but capture its spirit incredibly well. The narrative of the Mass Effect trilogy gets into some grey areas and its focus on building a crew and examining their relationships is something we've yet to see explored effectively in a Star Trek game. Mass Effect Andromeda arguably drove that franchise off a cliff, but the original games still have plenty to offer and were certainly influenced by the show.
However, a multi-million dollar budget isn't necessary to create a unique and engaging (pun intended) experience. Subset Games, indie developer of Into The Breach, absolutely nailed the shipboard resource management angle with FTL: Faster Than Light, a brilliantly addictive top-down roguelike strategy game that secretes Star Trek from every pore (in a good way). We've lost countless hours to it on PC, so it's probably a good thing that it never came to Switch.
We've also got a soft spot for Switch eShop minnow Catastronauts. It's essentially Overcooked in space, and the Trek influence is obvious. Far from original, then, but by tapping into communication and cooperation, it hits on the Trek fundamentals far more successfully than many of the official games. We can't help but like it.
Where no one has gone before...
So, we still await a Star Trek game (great or otherwise) on Switch. If there's one thing above all else that the series offers, it's hope for the future. Perhaps Star Trek: Picard and the new fleet of shows will spark interest and investment in a gaming experience that truly showcases what Trek is all about. Regardless of budget, there is so much potential for games in this universe, and we don’t just mean 3D chess. We're all for jumping into X-Wings, blasting TIE Fighters and slicing things in half with laser swords, but with the infinite diversity and combinations of game genres today — both epic and personal in scope — surely there’s space to boldly go somewhere, too?
As an erstwhile captain of the Enterprise often said: somebody, please, make it so.
Picard only said the last bit of that sentence, of course; Jean-Luc rarely grovels. What have been your favourite Trektacular gaming experiences, on Nintendo platforms or otherwise? Are you looking forward to the new Picard show? Sick to death of all the posters and TV spots? How many lights are there? Feel free to open hailing frequencies below. NL out.
Comments (80)
I have never known Star Trek to have great games. A real shame because the universe is so interesting and totally appealing to gamers.
Star Trek Away Team for PC was fantastic. It was basically a reskin of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines.
"If the Federation is so great, Captain, then where are all the games?"
"They're...right here in...front of you! Are you..........blind?!"
I enjoyed Star Trek Armada II on PC. Most Star Trek games are pretty bad compared to that.
I had that 25th anniversary game on the NES as a kid.
It wasn’t great.
Shouldn’t this article reference the star trek armada series?
They should really make a game like FTL but with proper planet exploration. Or a No Man’s Sky style game would be able to tap into the ‘exploring new worlds’ side of it. The potential’s there but they can’t seem to get it right.
Star Trek Armada 2 was an awesome game.
I was never aware that star trek had video games. Wow I see something new every day.🤔
oh man, A Final Unity was one of my favorite Star Trek games as a kid, especially because it managed to be as fun as the 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites games were, but in the Next Generation setting, with CGI cutscenes and voice acting from the entire cast. It plays like you're in control of an episode of TNG, which is exactly how Star Trek games should be. Would be amazing if they could somehow re-release it with improved visuals, or even just modern compatibility, but sadly not on any Nintendo system.
"Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity" looked pretty great, back on MS-DOS.

I liked the snes games and the wii and xbox 360 bethesda games (legacy and conquest) but I haven't played much more than that. I was not happy about my favorite series getting FPS entries only. Would have preferred an RPG.
Had to remind us of those poor independent contractors on the second Death Star... RIP
Very fond memories of this one:
It was my first US Game Boy import, something I accidentality stumbled when local retailer started popping up video games that where not on the official Nintendo catalogue. Amazing how much they squeezed out of the Game Boy for this.
I really wish they had a Star Trek game that was very story driven were every choice you made had some meaningful impact on the experience and on the unfolding story. I would really like it if it was from the perspective of someone not in Starfleet because that is a perspective that the series hasn’t ever centered on till Picard. And I think it would be nice if there was something done in the game to honor the mother of Star Trek Lucille Ball.
I rather like Starship simulator on the Snes as a kid.
I could finish it in one sitting.
These days ? not so much anymore.
The best games I've seen for Star Trek were 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites on PC. However, at the time consoles lacked a CD-Rom for the most part. The games without the voice acting just didn't have the same charm, and I don't think the Sega-CD or TG-16 would have been up to the challenge.
I bought a used cartridge for the NES as a kid, and returned it the next week. I couldn't figure it out. Tried again in my 30s and I finally got to go on an away mission. Clearly kid me wanted to shoot things with phasers and zoom through space more than he wanted to read a few paragraphs of expositionary dialogue.
Have there ever b een great Star Trek games on any platform? Some fun "for the fans" moments, but nothing actually great. Starfleet Command, the strategy game adaptation of a board game back in the early 00's probably comes the closest. Clunky, but tactically sound. But the scenarios were buggy as heck.
@NEStalgia Star Trek Armada 2 was a GREAT game...like Command in Conquer but Star Trek TNG style with all the factions. It was a very good RTS game.
Oh I loved Starship Sim on SNES. It even had the Kobayashi Maru test later on.
I heard the Q-Cotinuum can pump out Switch ports astonishingly fast. 🤔
@purpleibby Armada and Armada 2 were fun games, but I wouldn't call them great. Their balance was terrible and clearly not up to the standards of real RTS veteran studios, though I did enjoy them both
@NEStalgia I didn't feel the factions were terribly out of balance really(I only played Armada 2)....I had fun with many of the different sides.
Who cares... where is rogue squadron 2
Slightly off topic but is there anything I need to rewatch before Picard starts or can I just go straight in?
THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!
...Those Kardasians...
@BoFiS Thank you, A Final Unity absolutely IS a fantastic Star Trek game that nailed the feel of the TV series. This is a thoughtful and great article, but this game is a glaring omission!
@Capt_N There are....three lights?
Basically grew up on Trek games... had both Tactical Assault and Conquest on DS/Wii, still go back to both occasionally. Had a truckload on PC as well... Klingon Honour Guard, Armada 1/2, Elite Force 1/2, BotF, Legacy... been crying out for a new Trek game for years tbh
Star Trek Bridge Crew is an excellent game and better than the vast majority of Star Wars games, Star Trek Invasion in PS1 was really good as was the Voyager Elite Force game. To be fair the Star Wars games have been over hyped, the SNES trilogy was great as was Rogue Leader on the Gamecube whilst I'll always have a special place for Shadows of The Empire. However there hasn't been a great title since that era, the recent Battlefront games are decent now that they've fixed the second but Jedi Fallen Order is just decent and just copies other better games
I loved Star Trek: Conquest on Wii. I played that game to death.
A Star Trek platformer? Have you forgotten that Star Trek V for the NES exists (in prototype form). It is about as much quality as could be expected out of a Bandai sidescroller.
I forgot what system it was on, but there was a a vector type game, where you shot at Klingon ships. Or was it an arcade game?
@XiaoShao It is mentioned, but only briefly as it was only available on DOS and not on any Nintendo platforms.
@BoFiS I stand corrected, I see the reference now, but calling it a “management adventure” seems faint praise indeed given the great game! Point and click adventures actually translate well to Switch, so this would be a great port to finally claim a great StarTrek title for a Nintendo platform!
Birth Of The Federation I found to be reasonable fun on PC. As probably the most strategy heavy Star Trek game ever made though it was sadly never going to turn up on any console.
I don't think I've ever played a good "Star Trek" game.
I have "Encounters" on the PS2, and that game could end up being a hot mess, with your ship flying off in the wrong direction if you so much as hit an asteroid or another ship (which made for "The Chase" mission to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible). The Skirmish mode made for some dull fights, and there were certain areas in your targeting zone where firing phasers was impossible.
"Conquest" was a bit better than "Encounters," but if you knew what you were doing, it made for a very short game. Just keep your fleet in attack formation instead of scattering them when fighting battles against enemy fleets, use the Genesis Device on enemy homeworlds, and you'd win very easily.
I think the only "Star Trek" game that I played that I could consider to be halfway decent was "Online," but even that could get tedious and monotonous at times in the gameplay department. And because it's been forever since I last played it (and I mean actually playing it, not just logging in for a few minutes), I have no idea what's changed with all the new updates and expansions.
I do have that bug-ridden mess of a "Star Trek" game for the PS3 that came out shortly before "Into Darkness" premiered in theaters, but I have yet to play it. But at least I only bought it for $1 USD, despite it being brand new.
@Priceless_Spork I am so old, my first console was a Pong/hockey and handball simulator. It predated Atari 2600....
The original, ORIGINAL Star Trek game on computers was hugely popular, and still a lot of fun today, once you figure out how to play it (and at one point, even carried an official license). Atari ported it to the 2600, renaming it "Stellar Track"...to say it is "clunky" would be too kind, but you may have heard of Atari's other attempt, a little game called called Star Raiders Both games are available on the Nintendo DS.
Depending on how far you want to go down the rabbit hole, Star Raiders spawned many imitators (like Elite) which would find their way onto Nintendo consoles. I know we used to have Star Voyager on the NES (originally called Cosmo Genesis in Japan).
@XiaoShao That would be amazing, but first you'd have to resurrect Spectrum HoloByte, or hope Hasbro kept anything, and get the license. At least we have Star Trek pinball in Pinball Arcade (and Stern)
I was pretty sure they all sucked. Then again i was never a big enough fan to care about playing the games. Spock and data are the only two characters i ever really liked. Wrath of kahn and the one with the whales were my favorite out of all the movies.
As a lifelong #StarTrek fan, I must say this...
If the games are anything like the dumpster fire that is Star Trek Discovery, no thanks.
The 25th Anniversary GB game is quite fun!
I've honestly been getting very nostalgic for the old Interplay PC Trek games lately. They were so much fun, and unlike a lot of early licensed games they actually felt like Star Trek. I'd love to play them again.
Starfleet Command and its sequel Empires at War were also great, except both of them always crashed my computer about halfway through the game. Hazards of PC gaming with a computer that isn't really built for it. Both would be amazing remastered on the Switch.
I also just remembered I had the Gameboy Trek game and it was actually a lot of fun, it just wasn't actually Star Trek. I still wasted dozens of hours on it, though.
@Zeldafan79
That's 2 and 4 respectively.
I got to say 4 aged badly for me.
The humor falls flat and the environmental message is as subtle as a jackhammer.
But thats' me.
Everybody agrees that 2 is the best one.
Seen em recently ?
Kudos for a Excelent Startrek Article on Nintendolife
highly apreciated and good read.
Talking about game that inspire Startrek
I would say Star Ocean by Squareenix is best it so inspired
and you can even get one of the starocean game on Switch.
Mass effect is the other on ps3 and ps4.
Also Metroid franchise was somewhat inspired on Startrek (federation is meantioned in the game).
Is funny i played Metroid nes before watching Startrek Next generation on Tv which i did as late as 1992 while played metroid in 1989.
We sure need a Startrek game on switch
meanwhile check out Starocean on switch.
Mass Effect 1,2 and 3 are the best Star Trek games I have ever played.
I have had some fun with futures past snes and elite forces on ps2. I would love a turn based rpg with the next generation as its back drop.
Back in the day I enjoyed A Final Unity and Judgment Rights for PC and Mac. Remasters making the video sequences full screen would be welcome. The Trexels mobile titles are amusing and could be enjoyable on Switch if they eliminate the pay to play aspect outside of an initial purchase. It's just a franchise in need of the right studio
@KitsuneNight
Yeah actually i have. I liked wrath of kahn cause it's just so memorable and the whole thing with Spock at the end and Star trek IV seemed the most casual friendly if you get what i mean. It's almost like they wanted to draw in non fans with goofy humor and a plot that's a little less mind bending. Also setting much of the movie on earth. I also liked the funny scenes with spock. Stuff like, (They are not the hell your whales).
It was probably the first star trek movie where i wasn't bored to death almost the entire time and i got a few good laughs.
I remember quite enjoying Deep Space Nine: Crossroads of Time, though I played the Sega Genesis version. Was it actually any good, though? This was 25 years ago and as a huge Star Trek fan at the time I'm sure my standards weren't high. Anything that was at least playable was sure to be met with enthusiastic approval.
Star Trek birth of the Federation sparked my love of 4x games, which I'm currently playing in the form of Civ on Switch.
And... That's about it for my TrekXNintendo thoughts.
Star trek has be dying for an game for such a long time. I wonder what it would of been like if CBS approved of Bethesda and Biowares respective pitches
Back in the very old days, I had one of those black and white Apple Macs. It had a Star Trek trivia game which I was so starved for entertainment that I actually got good at, despite never having seen an episode of the show.
Looking back on it now, the game was more in the spirit of that one episode of Futurama than Star Trek...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkNvE4x05mM
@BenGrimm
The Best of both worlds part1&2
Family
I-Borg
Descent part1&2
Those are my most recommended to watch before Picard. I also recommend most of the movies if you haven’t seen them, already. If you only have time for one, at least watch Nemesis.
@Flipbot Nemesis?! First Contact every time Think its up there with Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country.
Glad Mass Effect was mentioned in the article. That game, the first one especially, really captured some of the sense of exploration of the tv series, some of the moral and human emotional stories too.
But for sure, that there hasnt been a 'full' Star Trek game I think is one of the biggest lost opportunities within the industry.
@Filbert_Wang
Yes, I know First Contact is the best. I didn’t say Nemesis was my favorite. It’s not even my second favorite. Just that before watching Picard, it fills you in on what happens to an important character.
Apparently, no one can make a Star Trek or Superman game that's worthy of the license.
@Flipbot damn - wish I had taken your advice! was watching Picard thinking "urrrghh what happened in Nemesis again?" I remembered a bald Tom Hardy!
Don't you mean Star WARS? 😋
To be honest.
Where are the decent Star Trek films.
A Final Unity is really the best Star Trek game I've ever played...would LOVE an HD remaster of that, using all the existing audio files but I guess re-rendering all the cutscenes and updating the graphics, which might be impossible or at least as much work as the Lucasarts adventure remasters.
I think a very story focused game could work great. Like from telltale pre catastrophe. But the science/technical side of Star Trek I always struggled with.
No mention of Oric Trek, which features some of my favourite cover artwork. Not strictly speaking a licensed game, but such things didn't really exist then.
Honestly, probably the best (or the least worst) Star Trek game I ever played was Star Trek Online. What I would give to play that on the Switch.
But by and large, a good chunk of the Star Trek video games are not very good. Just look at the AVGN episode regarding Star Trek games, and you'll get a good idea.
Bethesda (of Elder Scrolls, Doom, Quake, and Fallout fame) also made a few Star Trek games, and they weren't really good, either. And don't get me started on the 2013 Star Trek game taking place in the Kelvin Timeline; that one is probably the worst of the bunch.
The new iterations of Star Trek - Discovery and Picard - are beyond awful. You therefore can't now expect too much from games companies when the source material is so dire.
I've been watching a lot of Trek lately (TNG and, now, DS9) and thinking about how good a good Trek game could be. Trek has a great universe built up with many interesting cultures and ideas to take advantage of.
I'm envisioning something like Mass Effect but much more open-ended and with a lot of ship and crew customization and an emphasis on dialogue and decision making over combat. Each quest would basically be a mini-episode - investigating some anomaly, moral quandaries about the Prime Directive, etc., political intrigue between the various empires, etc. I'd want it to be with a new ship and crew, not one of the ones from the show, although characters from the shows could make guest appearances from time to time. Ideally it would pull from the 90's shows and ignore the post-JJ Abrams world.
Please do it!
Star Trek Invasion was and still is the best Star Trek videogame from the original Playstation.
My personal favourite is Star Trek The Next Generation on the GameBoy. While it’s probably a very boring game for most people I really love it.
The missions are all randomly generated so it avoids feeling too samey and the missions aren’t just all based around pew pew shooting, often you have to transport vaccines, ferry ambassadors or evacuate a colony. There are also random events like a Romulan ship appearing, falling into a time warp, intruders getting on board, etc to add extra variety.
It’s probably one of the few Star Trek games that tries to be about more than just space combat and re-captures how the show would often be about more mundane things like peace conferences and scientific observations.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have combat, the rare Borg mission in particular is very cool.
I love DS9: The Fallen, Armada 2 and Voyager: Elite Force <3 Every completed by myself
I've never played a Star Trek game; but after seeing all of those screenshots, I want to binge watch TNG on the TV.
The Persona games provide a great template for a Star Trek game.
By day navigate life as a crew member, assisting others and taking part in away missions.
By night navigate the holodeck.
I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I'm sick and in quarantine right now and binge watching TNG and DS9 for the millionth time.
Unfortunately, I haven't played a good Start Trek game. The 25 anniversary NES game was okay when I was a kid, but doesn't really hold up well today.
I've thought about buying Bridge Crew for my Oculus Quest but I'm a little put off by it being multiplayer only. I wish it had a single player campaign.
I could see Star Trek doing well as a point and click adventure, so hopefully we'll finally see a great game that lives up to my favorite television series.
No great Star Trek games because Star Trek is rubbish itself. It's a bunch of stiffs talking **** most of the time. It's not much more than Days Of Our Lives in space.
I think Captain Blood and Mass Effect 1-3 are the best Trek-alikes and all great games.
Are we allowed to post links? Anyway, here’s a link to article on Captain Blood for anyone unfamiliar:
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/the-strange-life-of-captain-blood
@darlinfan +1 for The Fallen being the best Trek game by a clear parsec (I assume you knew about the add-on mission Convergence?). Final Unity was very good as well and Elite Force was entertaining enough, but the Fallen just ticked so many boxes - being DS9 for a start.
But as per the point of the article, none of these had "available on Nintendo" on the box...
Tactical Assault on DS was awful. I got it used for $4.99 and that was expensive considering the ten minutes of game play I got out of it.
Elite Force voyager on pc was pretty fun though.
8 or 9 year old me asked for Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for my birthday in 91 or 92 and I played the hell out of it. It was the first game I enjoyed that wasn't a "fun" game. The story structure and missions built upon classic episodes and characters, City on the Edge of Forever, Harry Mudd, etc, all stuff I was familiar with from annual summer reruns of TOS. Really liked it, even though some parts confused the hell out of me.
As average as the Star Fleet Academy game was on the Snes I played it to death back when it came out and was one of those games that I only seemed to enjoy because I loved the shows and movies. Although I still have sunk thousands of hours into Star Trek Online as many problems as it has had over the years I find the actual story to be well worth it for people who like Star Trek from the 90s as it's stories are actually considered canon and there is even one story arch involving Ferengi that is actually hilarious at one point. Still hoping for a port to Switch as it is one of those games I would be able to play as I am watching other stuff just because I have gotten so much from it.
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