Strange New Worlds Ending With Short Season 5 - The State of Star Trek

 Strange New Worlds Ending With Short Season 5 - The State of Star Trek

With the news 'SNW' is to end with its fifth season, but not only that, a shortened, six-episode season, now seems a good time to take a look at Trek's health a year on from when I last did so. Things didn't look rosy even then, but now it's on life support waiting for the news to come down it's time to turn off the machine, with the caveat that some new medicine is to be attempted, though judging by recent medication the hopes of an improvement in condition would seem to be unfounded. Chopping through the overgrowth of my heavy-handed analogy with the machete of plainness: 'Starfleet Academy' is the last and only 'hope' (if we can stretch the meaning of that word!), for Trek's future, an idea that dates back to the 1980s and was a bad one even then. Certainly I never liked it when I heard about it and that was just for a film, now it's a whole series. But like it or loathe it, the current generation of Trek, the Third Generation as I like to deem it after 'TOS' and its film series, and the Golden Age Berman-era, could be coming to an end thanks to the business part of show business - these things seem to move like behemoth destroyers passing in the ocean, but the merger or buyout, or whatever the technical term for Paramount's new masters is supposed to be, is starting to take hold and it's mainly through the lack of commissioning of new Trek than anything concrete that suggests they might well be reevaluating its importance to their business, despite it being at the forefront of its plans when 'DSC' began as the poster child for CBS All Access way back in 2017.

For me, I'm at the point, and have been for some years, where I don't see Trek improving, and in fact have been more and more put off by its general lack of care in its own reality - it started with 'DSC,' then pulled back to a stage where things were going in the right general direction, but with 'SNW,' once again showed me their view of canon is a very loose and malleable thing. Where once history was carved in stone (with the potential for intelligent writers to do a bit of chipping where needed in order to give the slabs a smoother fit - it is fiction after all!), and any major deviation would be seen as an alternate timeline that needed to be dealt with or had its offshoot to follow (most notably the Mirror Universe and Kelvin Timeline), now they can just shift the Eugenics Wars a century later, have the Gorn be the main opposition years before 'TOS,' alter characters to the point of being unrecognisable (Chapel, Pike, Spock, maybe even Scotty, what little I've seen of him), and so the news 'SNW' is ending was good for me. I've found it to be worse than 'DSC,' something quite surprising, though it shouldn't have been when you follow the rule that each new endeavour tends to be a little worse than what went before, which is why I don't excitedly call for Alex Kurtzman's resignation like a politician brought into ill-repute: whoever comes along next could be even worse, as hard as it is to imagine, because at least some of Kurtzman's hires have worked out, to an extent.

It's sad to me to see 'TOS' so utterly disrespected, often forgotten its giant shoulders is what everything else is perched atop, now remade for a new generation with completely different attitudes, beliefs and interests, overwriting the Grandad of it all. But if you look at the other long-running franchises that's what happens, and I've probably said all this before that it was amazing Trek was so strong as it was when created by so many different people over such a length of years. 'Star Wars,' 'Dr. Who,' James Bond... It doesn't matter what it is, eventually new people are going to come along and put their mark on it, and there's a good chance they're going to either undo what was so great about it before, or so venerate it that they're scared to create anything meaningful. That's always the dilemma and is one of the main reasons so much pop culture is mostly regurgitated mush with little to impress or impart. From my perspective I've continued to buy the discs and watch new Trek, not out of a sense of enjoyment, or even keeping up with fellow Trekkers since I'm not in contact with any, but simply because it's available, and in the streaming world of today that's less common, so I will at least praise Trek for releasing the productions, and in a timely manner. Yet I'm still not in any great hurry to get the most recent releases - 'Lower Decks' Season 5 I'm very interested to see, but am currently reviewing the rest of the series and don't want to watch that at the same time, and 'DSC' Season 5 I am interested to see, as the end of the mostly poor series that started this whole era, but am in no hurry as I go through Season 2 of 'Prodigy' which has so many episodes and is similarly lacking in that spark of interest, so I only do one a week.

It's long since I actively looked forward to new episodes of Trek, but at least I got to the stage where I was interested in rewatching the best bits of this era for the purposes of reviews, with 'Picard' Season 3 and 'LD' encouraging me to engage with them on that level, even if Season 4 was a step backward. After 'SNW' Season 2, which really was mostly a chore to get through, I don't anticipate its upcoming Season 3 at all. As far as I'm concerned that series has ruined the established characters, in so far as I would take it seriously at all - it's not going to dissuade me from going back and revisiting 'TOS,' the 'true' sequence of events, and for those that would say the original should be viewed as a crude or imagined view of history that has come down to us, or whatever personal way of justifying the differences, or pointing out its inconsistencies and suggesting we should accept changes because of that, I say I have no interest in following that weak logic. I'll watch it, but I doubt I'll ever have the desire to record my detailed thoughts in reviews because I don't want to think about it, it's too upsetting, much like 'DSC' and most of 'Picard' - it actually puts me off more Trek. And so I actually feel relieved Trek is lessening. It's disappointing the proposed streaming films have seemingly come to nothing - there's been no update or movement from that quarter, probably due to the terrible first attempt of 'Section 31,' another piece of Trek I'll probably watch at some point if I see it going cheap in a charity shop, but have no interest in watching for enjoyment's sake.

The whole concept was awful and by the response to it, it sounds as bad as could have been expected, the only relief being it wasn't a series! But I suspect that production, and the complexities of the merger and money matters, has put paid to the hoped-for streaming film concept and that 'S31' will be a mere anomaly. The downside is that that appeared to be the only outlet for more 25th Century Trek with the 'TNG' cast, and possibly other actors playing their characters from that time period as the 'current' point in Trek history (since it matches up with the actors' ages and roughly the same time has passed in the real world as in-universe), and when you consider the age of the actors from the 24th Century series', NOW is really the only time they were realistically going to portray their much-loved characters again. And that's a sad thing because, for all the many, many faults of modern Trek, one small positive has been having so many beloved characters return, however insubstantially, and in some cases it's felt like a return to the good version of Trek before it became fantasy melodrama for teens. Not in every case: for every sort-of Data, Riker and Worf, there's a doddery old Jean-Luc Picard or entirely altered Seven of Nine. While I never wanted the Seven series I was still interested to see what they might do with a one-off streaming film for the 'TNG'/'DS9'/'Voyager' cast and those hopes seem to be over.

Even had that happened I'm sure it would have been a weak version of Trek focused on running around spitting out 'witty' comic book dialogue, explosions, and little of substance, an emphasis on extreme ideologies and little to no development of the races and galactic setup of the Trek universe that has been crumbling ever since 'DSC' first appeared. It's a sorry state for a once-great empire, but Trek has gone the way of all Earthly empires, it was just a matter of time. And with the ending of my familiar companion piece, the Trek magazine, it marks another slicing off of the interest and potential to excite, but it says a lot that, while slightly sad from a nostalgic perspective, I don't feel any real emotion about the state of Trek because it's been coming to this for years. It does affect my appreciation of old Trek, too, I can't deny, in the same way new 'Star Wars' and 'Dr. Who' put me off the old stuff, I find myself less drawn to Trek than when it was a main focus in life. The old Treks will always be special and I'll keep rewatching them, but it feels like a more 'dead,' niche universe than ever before, even when there was no Trek being made post-2005, and the fact Trek is winding down is more of a relief as someone that doesn't really like what I've been given with this era.

Who knows if the two feature films that were supposedly planned, one for the Kelvin Timeline crew, one as an Earth-based origin story (?!), will even happen - if they were aiming for the 60th Anniversary next year then they'd have to rush things along. But again, I hope they don't happen. I'd have preferred if 'SNW' didn't even get its six-episode final season and just end at 4 which had already been green-lit for a while. And as for 'Academy,' it doesn't matter enough to me that the EMH is there, the setup holds no anticipation. With that pessimistic thought, and with likely only 'SNW' 3-5 and 'SFA' 1-2 on the way, the ones actually confirmed, I'll put the seasons in order of merit, best to worst:

Lower Decks S2 - still the best episodes

Picard S3 - best live action for getting 'TNG' together, moves up a spot after reviewing it and 'LD'

Lower Decks S3 - not quite as good as I thought, though still some good ones, especially the finale

Lower Decks S4 - better than S1, weaker than the others, but good redemption story

Lower Decks S1 - not bad end, still the weakest of the series

Picard S1 - novelty that turns bad, and then worse

DSC S4 - slow, but the most Trekky

Prodigy S1 - plain average, but did have a good episode which is why I bumped it up one

DSC S3 - mostly inoffensive

SNW S1 - strong finale, otherwise nah, but it was a good finale so it goes up one

DSC S1 - switches with above, started with potential, soon lost

Short Treks - one good, some bad, most mediocre, it moves down a way as more irrelevant with the 'SNW' potential lost

DSC S2 - more bad stuff done to the 23rd Century, while its spinoff S1 at least had the finale

Prodigy S2* - mostly quite dull and time-wasting

SNW S2 - close to most boring, if mildly fun crossover

Picard S2 - the most boring

very Short Treks - actively offensive

*haven't quite finished yet

As you can see, there's very little change, though reviewing altered things slightly and relatively reliable 'LD' continues to take most of the top spots. Hopefully by next year I'll be up to date with 'DSC' and 'LD,' but here are my anticipation ratings:

Lower Decks S5: ***
DSC S5: **
SNW S3: *
S31: -
SFA: *

As opposed to my 2024 list:

SNW S2: **
LD S4: ***
DSC S5: **
Prodigy S2: **
Section 31: -
Starfleet Academy: -
25th Century, post-Picard: ***

'Academy' gets one star for having The Doctor, but really it's only half a star if that were possible. I may not even have seen it in a year's time as who knows when it'll even debut, let alone come out on disc, but I'm not in any way looking forward to it. Same for 'S31.' And of course there was still the possibility of post-'Picard' in some form back then which looks to be just about nonexistent now.

Who knows, perhaps 'Academy' will prove many people wrong, perhaps more streaming films will be announced, perhaps Kurtzman's time will be up and they'll immediately set to developing a new team that can guide Trek into success... But I doubt it. At least William Shatner still lives, amazingly!

Star Trek Monthly, Star Trek Magazine, Star Trek Explorer

 Star Trek Monthly, Star Trek Magazine, Star Trek Explorer (1995-2025) Magazine

How to sum up a tradition, no, an institution, a guide and  a familiar friend from the mid-90s to the present? It's tough, because reading this magazine, or its later variants has been a constant through my childhood on the cusp of my teens, across into adulthood and middle age and was the only regular connection to new Trek in the years when the unbroken run that I joined during the 90s ended with 'Enterprise.' To paraphrase the old trailer for Trek as a whole on the CIC videos, 'it has been my companion, my guide, my friend.' Maybe I'm being over the top, it is after all just a collection of words and pictures printed on paper and stapled or glued together. Yet it also represents an entire universe of content, both the filmed voyages of the various series' and films, as well as the merchandise, books and events surrounding the greatest entertainment franchise ever to be created. At the same time I don't feel sadness for the title's demise as I would have ten years ago or more simply because, like the fortunes of Trek as a whole, it had cooled my enthusiasm in recent times to the extent, like watching much of modern Trek, I read it more from habit than enjoyment. I suspect there are plenty of others who feel the same, no doubt part of the reason it had to close down, because if Trek was healthy and vibrant I'm sure the mag would have been able to be inspired by the source material to remain alive.

It's also true that readers consume media differently for the most part - I read Trek news off sites such as Trekmovie.com as soon as it comes out, while the magazine could take months to catch up to 'the latest.' For me I always found it valuable as an archive that marked the changes in Trek over the years, so it didn't matter it contained old news, it was a physical record of the life and times of Trek and I would never discard my collection of every single issue (even the ones heavy on 'Discovery' and 'Strange New Worlds'!). At the same time I had contemplated giving up on the magazine in recent years as I struggled to maintain interest in a divided, watered down franchise that no longer hewed close to the canon and excellence of its forebears, and consequently was difficult to inspire interest for me. As sad as the ending of an era was, I was ready to give up what had become a little too 'fan'-focused, a platform for ideological agendas, and a view that wasn't discerning enough, afraid of putting off viewers who may love the current crop Trek was putting out. As it turned out I kept some interest thanks to 'Lower Decks' coming into its own and 'Picard' Season 3 returning to a closer taste of the Trek I knew and loved, but right now the future for both TV and film looks shaky and uninspired so losing a magazine discussing such things isn't a hardship.

Everything ends, Trek will be no exception, and in a world which seems to be wrapping up anyway the trivial things of TV shows and magazines no longer carry the weight they once did to my young mind. I used to hope I'd be alive long enough to see the end of 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' and later, 'Enterprise,' as silly as that sounds, though it was hard to imagine life beyond thirty, but now I'm past all that and if I never saw more new Trek I could... live with that! (Okay, I do still want to see the final season of 'LD,' but after the Season 4 dip even that is anticipated less!). The achievement of the magazine is its longevity and I will miss hearing from the old actors and having that ongoing tribute to the greats of the past, following them until they were in the grave, encapsulating their lives - it's amazing to me that William Shatner has outlived the mag while most of his costars are no longer with us. It served multiple purposes, providing me with news on the future of Trek before I had any access to the internet, it was written by good writers that seemed to care about their subject matter, and it has been a most valuable resource for someone that was always fascinated by not just the storytelling, but behind the scenes details. Perhaps more than all the other features, however, what most excited me for many of the years I bought it, was the chance to see what like-minded (or not, in some cases!), people thought about something when I had very little connection to peers with the same interest. Communicator, otherwise known as the letters pages, was my favourite section because of that.

Back in the time of 'DS9' and 'Voyager' it was also thrilling to read synopses of forthcoming episodes that I may not see for months, if not a year or more, and by then I was fully invested. In retrospect I came to realise my enjoyment had been mildly spoiled by having the excitement of knowing this character was returning, or hearing the idea for that story long before actually viewing the episodes, but it really was exciting to have that burst of information, and increased the anticipation. In the early years it was also a monthly magazine (hence the name Star Trek Monthly - logical as a Vulcan), so I was filling up on knowledge of the wider franchise, getting to know 'TNG' of which I'd only seen certain episodes, reinforcing knowledge of the others I had seen, including the films, and generally enhancing my experience. Because Trek back then was something you grew into - maybe you were turned on to it by seeing some episodes (for me it was 'TOS' in the early 90s with my Father), which then led you to a greater interest where you wanted to experience that world more and more, and for a child or young teen it was a big commitment to spend money on a monthly magazine (even if for much of that time I was given a subscription or partial subscription by a grandparent which continued for many years - I didn't actively subscribe direct to Titan until relatively recent years), since saving up for the videos to actually be able to rewatch or see episodes I'd missed, was the main priority, so you can tell from that how much I valued the magazine that I would spend precious money on it even while collecting videos (primarily 'DS9').

In fact the magazine was responsible for really injecting the idea of collecting all the videos into reality when it advertised Mr. Benson's offers on Buy One, Get One Free which is really what launched my video collecting in earnest - for a schoolboy, to suddenly have the option of essentially getting videos half price, even for a limited time, was an opportunity not to be missed (Quark would've been proud!). It also began my collection of Trek novels as in the early years they would have an annual giant-sized 100-page issue which came with a free book. While the novels in general I've found to be quite poor on the whole, there have still been some well worthwhile entries in the series, and even when they weren't brilliant it was still a thrill to get a free book and be able to experience Trek in a different medium. Due to the variable quality of the books I never got into collecting them in a big way, though I still have tens of them on my shelf and collected every numbered 'DS9' novel in later years thanks to ebay, etc. So the magazine wasn't simply something to read, it was a gateway into the Trek world that informed me on so many areas, reviewing merchandise and books, models and videos, and while I didn't have the money to pursue all these avenues, nor did I really want to as only 'pure' Trek was what I was most interested in, it was all fascinating to see unfold before me.

My connection with the magazine eventually extended to contribution - no, sadly not of the paid kind, but as 'Enterprise' began to wind down and questions were asked about the state of Trek after that had been less successful, as had the last 'TNG' film (the first I ever saw in the cinema), STM started a feature where readers could send in story ideas and generally constructive input for where Trek could go. At least a couple of my entries were published (although one, titled 'Prism,' an episode idea for 'Enterprise' tying in the Changelings that had been sent out to discover the galaxy, was wrongly credited to an 'Ashley Stone, Staffs' which I was disappointed to see). A couple of my letters also found their way in, the last of which came during the latter years, during the early 2010s when my sister had crafted some excellently naive renditions of the 'TNG' crew in cake form which I was so impressed with I had to send photos. Around this time, perhaps earlier, I also had the odd illustration published, too, so I was very pleased to have been able to be recognised by my favourite magazine in those ways. My final connection to the mag came in the last few months when I happened to sell a couple of 50th Anniversary Kirk and Spock bookmarks on ebay to a certain Lisa Herrera in Canada (which then got lost in the post thanks to the Canadian postal strike at the time!), but foolishly failed to realise this was the name of a columnist in the mag who wrote about mainly vintage collectables, and which I loved reading. It was only after our business had finished I happened to notice her name on the feature and wished I could have realised so I could thank her for her great column!

Larry Nemecek was another great contributor who was there not from the beginning, but not far off, a terrific archivist and behind the scenes expert, whose column 'A Fistful of Data' was a great source of smoothing out canon conundrums, a fascination and strong interest I wholeheartedly shared with him. He's exactly the sort of person I'd love to have a decent conversation with on all things Trek for being so knowledgeable and so deeply interested, and interesting (if you've ever heard him on a podcast you know he's got so much to say he barely has time to get it out, bouncing from thought to thought!). But while the magazine provided some relief from the lack of new Trek in the late 2000s and 2010s with only the variable modern film series representing proper filmed Trek, it gradually became less frequent. During the time of the new TV assault with 'DSC' it became the sole official magazine, something I'd assumed was a new era, although reading the feature with comments from past Editors in the final ever issue I found out it was always official, it's just that prior to this it'd always kept its British identity with the unique approach to humour or the solidarity of always getting new Trek well after Americans. But it changed to become more comfortable to that audience taking on the mantle of the only title still going and I thought at first this may give it a lot of potential for expansion and a strong future, perhaps going back to monthly, having greater access, etc, but in the event it just became Americanised in spelling and reference and no longer felt like the more homely, relatable publication it'd been in earlier years.

There also seemed to be a shift in the demographics to appeal more to a comic book aesthetic of variant covers for superhero collector types from the mainly Marvel cinematic boom, just as Trek also appeared to be aiming for that audience more than the traditional, thoughtful sci-fi enthusiast. Add to that the physical size of the mag shrunk over time, going from sensible staples where you could easily open the mag and have it stay open, and a nice feel to the paper (I don't quite know how to describe it, but it was matte and not too thick or heavy, just right), to being glued in a spine (which will surely disintegrate over time), so you couldn't always read the central part of pages so easily, needed two hands to keep it open, and the apparently 'high quality' grade of paper was too thick, and worst of all, glossy, so any light nearby would mean having to adjust the pages to read them! All this may sound like nitpicking, but the feel, texture, size, shape, layout and design all contribute to the pleasure of reading a magazine (something you don't have in the cold, efficient world of digital). Oh, and I forgot to mention the pictures were often too dark as they started to rely on screen captures from episodes or films rather than high quality photography as had been the staple for the majority of the magazine's life. All this combined with the disillusionment over Trek's new direction to make it all less desirable, and needless to say they hadn't given away a free book in years as budgets got tighter and the world sadly moved away from the print medium. I'll continue to use my collection for reference and in fact I'm in the process of re-reading them all in order, as well as going back over recent years to read features or interviews that contained information about seasons I hadn't seen at the time, but have now caught up with. To paraphrase Dr. McCoy: 'you know, the magazine's really not dead, as long as we remember and read it.'

Star Trek Monthly: *****
Star Trek Magazine: ****
Star Trek Explorer: **

Glover

 

N64, Glover (1998) game

The N64 is in large part a home of the 3D platformer and is a defining piece of the machine to me. But what do you do when you've played all the big platform games? You begin to explore the lesser known titles, the ones that didn't score so highly in N64 Magazine. It's only taken me around twenty-five years to get to 'Glover' and funnily enough, this is the only N64 game I remember seeing advertised on TV! It did interest me, but not to the extent of buying it at the time (it came out before I even owned an N64, too, since the game was released the year before I bought my console). Perhaps I never saw it going cheaply in the years after, and more pertinently I've never been as interested in puzzle games as I have in the freedoms to explore and experiment the best 3D platformers have afforded. Yet I always carried this one in mind over the years and finally got my hands on a copy, eventually leading me to play it as my summer N64 game, a tradition of the past few years. Platforming standards were high on the N64, two of my favourite all-time games were in that genre ('Banjo-Kazooie' and 'Donkey Kong 64'), with others close behind ('Super Mario 64' and 'Banjo-Tooie'), so it was always going to be a tough school to break into my affections, and certainly at first I found it on the level of the weak 'Starshot: Space Circus Fever' as a bit of a disappointment, though that eventually rose to the level of fellow puzzle-platformer 'Space Station Silicon Valley' of okay-ish gaming quality.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but while I have found a certain satisfaction in beating the hardest parts, it never grew on me to the extent I could happily call it a good game (unlike, say, last year's summer platform-puzzler, 'Blast Corps,' of which I still have happy memories despite it generally being much harder). Part of that, if only a small part, is down to the first-generation graphics, which, while not as scrappy as parts of 'Body Harvest' (released in the same year, but much more ambitious in scope), include a lot of average textures and little of the beauty seen on the title screen as we travel around the main hub with its grassy greenness and imposing wizard's castle dominating the landscape. So far, so much more 'Super Mario 64' than 'Banjo-Kazooie,' which, while many would argue for the purity of gameplay in Mario's first 3D adventure, I prefer the atmosphere and inherent freedom in Banjo's first outing, the latter really showing the swift grasp on the N64's power and potential by Rare (that also came out in 1998!). Graphics aren't the most important aspect of a game, of course - if that were so why would anyone be playing old games at all since the newest, shiniest releases would easily put them to shame, though I'd also argue that in the same way art mediums have different attractions for different people, I love many of the visual styles of the past, whether they were enforced by processor size or were a deliberate artistic choice, so either way a game can be successful or not in the arena dependent on subjective views.

Sound is a little more of an issue - rain down a beautiful, ethereal theme or a catchy tune, and it can do much to enhance the involvement of a player, but if you get it wrong it can simply annoy. 'Glover' tends to fall more in the latter category than the former with often somewhat grating background music, though they include the option to change the volume of both music and sound effects independently so that's a boon, if adding further irritation by the lack of such changes in-game, only allowing them to be made from the main screen! That brings us neatly on to the technical flaws of the whole: there's a lot of fogging and pop-up as was common in many a title of this era unless they were technically gifted in their programming. Sometimes it doesn't make that much difference, can even add to the atmosphere in some cases, such as 'Turok: Dinosaur Hunter,' but when you have levels where you're not quite sure where to go it can be a bit annoying that things aren't clear enough to plan a route and you can sometimes find yourself having to leap into the unknown, never a sign of good game design. I could criticise the stereotypical choices for level theme, but they're age-old clichés of the kind that have been around since platforming became a genre: you've got the sandy beach and running waters of 'Atlantis,' the cartoonish bright colours of a circus in 'Carnival,' more watery beach style coupled with ships in 'Pirates,' an ancient landscape of lava and stone with 'Prehistoric,' the tropes of classic horror in 'Fortress of Fear,' and the obligatory space level of 'Out of This World.'

It's not that the ideas are bad, the puzzling isn't too bad at all, though I was stumped (by the stump part of a palm tree no less!), by one particular head-scratcher in 'Prehistoric 3,' but more on that later. It's pretty standard stuff and the game eases you in gently (until you reach the Bonus level at the end of the first world, a version of 'Frogger' that requires serious learning on the precise movements you have to make to succeed!), with both a Practice level that teaches the basics, and a first level that requires the use of your knowledge, but is in no way taxing, as you'd expect. I wasn't fully conversant with the game's language at first, such as the fact you can't kill some enemies, only stun them, or for another example, I didn't realise to begin with the magic cards you're supposed to collect were required to unlock the Bonus level at the end of each world, nor that some were well hidden, they just appeared to be a way of getting a good score - run into them as the little glove man of the title and you score less points than if you manoeuvre the magic ball (there's a lot of magic stuff), into them, even more if you do it with the ball in its fragile natural crystal state - it fell from the towers of the wizard's castle into each world and needs to be returned... Yes, the 'plot' is pretty terrible, but that could often be the way with old, old games so it's continuing a quaint tradition in that sense and if the gameplay works the story is going to be pretty irrelevant to how much you enjoy the experience anyway.

To score the most points you have to collect as many cards in quick succession as possible - you're able to do that for little batches as they tend to be in clumps, though controlling the ball can be tricky as you have the realistic physics of an actual disembodied glove (if such a thing were possible!), that grabs this spherical bounty and requires more effort to push it up slopes, or reacts to the contours of the terrain, as you'd expect a ball to. You can bounce it, you can throw it, you can bounce and then throw it from the apex for maximum height, and they managed to work in a number of moves to enable movement of this precious item to the end goal so it can return to its rightful place on the castle and restore the wizard. It's a slim motivation for the action, but it gets things to the point of doing - I hate to complain about a game's controls and keep revisiting this criticism recently, whether it be 'Super Mario Galaxy 2,' 'Sleepwalker' or 'XIII' I've expressed my discontent repeatedly, but the situation crops up again with this one: controls are awkward. Part of that is the learning curve of understanding the game's language in both how puzzles work and how to interact with this slippery, but vital item you control. Glover himself, when divorced from the ball, can walk about independently, jump and double-jump, even crawl flat on the floor (though I don't remember that ever being implemented in any puzzles other than a way to avoid the blast of 'living' sticks of dynamite, one of the later enemies you encounter), but he's quite slow, there's strangely little use of the analogue stick's levels of sensitivity, or at least there is, but the full pressure applied doesn't result in much pace.

I suppose when you've only got two 'fingers' for legs you aren't going to get about very quickly, and a player probably does value the incremental movements when at platform edges and with threats all around, but it can still be irksome when crossing large distances. Even with the ball 'in hand' you don't roll along all that quickly and I could never decide if it was quicker to do a straight roll or to dribble the ball, bouncing it repeatedly. Speed tended to be more of an issue when you're trying to beat the Time Trials which was a whole other side to the game, though a much-needed one since the main story was over quicker than I was expecting - there are six levels divided into three standard platforming sections, then a Boss level and the Bonus level (which isn't required to complete the game, unless you want a 100% rating, which I did), which isn't too bad, but I was expecting a final confrontation level in the castle itself, as so often happens - a final test of all the skills and knowledge you've gained. Instead you beat your mirror opposite, the evil glove (yeah, don't ask!), the wizard pops out of his castle and it's game over, simple as that. Not that it was the kind of game I wished would go on, and in fact I didn't originally plan to beat the Time Trials as it would seem like a chore to keep playing when I'd done just about everything there was to do - except I hadn't, there was a Bonus ('Frogger'-ish), a couple of levels where I hadn't located all the cards ('Prehistoric 1' and '3'), and the Bonus level at the end of that world.

Time-trialling gave me an easier task to accomplish between the tricky bits of those others, which is why I made the effort. And by then I was comfortable with the controls and how everything worked and the game had settled down from the restrictive, high frustration levels of earlier to an acceptable experience, if not necessarily the most fun. I'd have described it early on as like playing 'Super Mario 64' if Mario was a water balloon crossed with a Slinky, and while I can praise the game for managing to incorporate so many moves, they could be confusing and took a long while to become second nature. Even then it was very easy to make a mistake and either press the wrong button or hold it for the wrong amount of time: press A to lob the ball, hold A to hit the ball, press B to bounce the ball, hold B to throw the ball in an arc, and combinations of such. You could also jump on the ball and use it as a trampoline or control it by running about on top of it, useful for traversing water where it was too deep to get a grip of the ball (having no legs Glover couldn't swim and use the ball as a float), the downside being controls were reversed making life more difficult (this was a deliberate attempt to increase difficulty as on the Easy level controls weren't reversed, according to the manual). Making things needlessly hard to control isn't something that endears me to a game, and coupled with the frustration of being too easily ruined by a careless mistake in the controls with plenty of instant death potential, as well as the odd glitch, took away from what could have been a classic.

Glitches were encountered as early as 'Atlantis 3' where you dropped down the side of a cliff to a 'secret' cave in which a foreboding black obelisk stood - if you pushed into this shape you'd appear in another area, but couldn't move. I tried several times to do it, but each time the same result, the only way to escape was to quit out of the game, very bad design! Until I patted the ball in ahead of me and for some reason when I walked in separately I appeared atop the ball in this other cave and could move around. I can't imagine this was meant to be, but if it was there was no indication of what you were supposed to do, or why! The other glitchy thing was the camera itself which acted like it was your enemy (hindered by some unintuitive button mapping such as 'R' used to magic your ball into a different material, bouncy ball, bowling ball, magnetic ballbearing or crystal, rather than centring the camera behind you as in most 3D games), and would get stuck on scenery so that you could run off into another part, unable to see yourself since the camera was still 'outside' a location (for example going into the small cave at the base of the cliff beneath the stone circle in 'Prehistoric 3'), or almost as bad, it would insist on a particular angle and didn't like me trying to circle the view. Or if you were close to a wall and zoomed in to look around you, the camera couldn't move because of the wall... None of this exactly inspired confidence, which is why I take less shame in admitting I did have to look up the solution to one, final puzzle - I located the last of the cards in 'Prehistoric 1' hidden behind a wall where there were slight cracks, so I suspected the last set of cards in 'Prehistoric 3' would follow the same logic and spent a long time searching along every wall and floor without the merest hint of a crack.

Most puzzles weren't this difficult and I began to think there was something wrong when I finally caved and input the cheat to locate the nearest cards in a level (Glover turns into a pointing hand to indicate direction). I felt this was a reasonable option since I'd exhausted all possibilities I could think of and the cheat had been given to me in the end credits upon completion of the game, but when I'd collected all the usual cards and then activated the pointer it veered all over the place like it was broken and that was the point I thought there might be a glitch so I dug out my trusty N64 Magazine booklet guide and found the solution was as simple as getting the Triceratops female, who runs after you with love hearts streaming from her if you came close enough, to follow you and hit a palm tree with a tiny love heart symbol on it! The annoying thing was that I'd already tried this tactic on other parts of the scenery in that area, maybe even that tree, but had never noticed the heart symbol. For the most part the game was a test of skill more than observation or brain power, and while I'd say finding those last cards was technically the hardest, simply because I could not do it and had to get help, in terms of testing my ability the 'Frogger' Bonus was the toughest thing in the game: I spent hours trying to judge the timing and distance of jumping this frog from block to lily pad to log - it took me a long time to recognise the distances were very particular so that you needed to use either a sideways leap or a diagonal one, and even then it was easy to get out of the right line, but do it I did.

And that wasn't even the toughest thing in the game after all: the 'Prehistoric' Bonus level was even more challenging, being a run towards camera down this tunnel full of pitfalls with a wall of fire chasing you... And you have to collect all 60 cards... And you have to time everything exactly right since here you're playing the ball itself and have to bounce to get some of them which slows you down... And, I have to admit, at time of writing I haven't yet succeeded so I'm stuck at 98% completion, though I'll keep trying. I will say the game was reassuringly structured with its repetition of three levels, Boss and Bonus, and even the familiar world themes are slightly pleasant for being such tropes that sometimes it was close to being a little taste of 'Banjo,' yet it really wasn't close to the technical achievement of that seminal title and had far too much that seemed like it was almost designed to make you froth at the mouth, it was so unfair - sometimes I'd beat a Boss and didn't even know how I'd done it, it was just suddenly over! And while I commend them for including Hi-Score tables and Time Trials (which you can either do 'in-game' where you have the advantage of using Checkpoints if you die, or the external option from the main screen where you don't and have only until the clock counts down from the best time - the only level that really challenged me was 'Carnival 3' where you have so little time and so much to do), neither of these things have ever really been a strong game-lengthening motivation to me as a rule.

I will praise them for the many save files they included, one of the most I've seen as an on-cartridge option, equalling the six of 'Jet Force Gemini,' an addition that could promote multiple people to compete against each other for scores and times, all sharing the same cart, which is a great idea, though for me it was just myself and it's also less impressive when you realise the levels are generally fairly small, plus all the added technical limitations, it shouldn't be so much of a surprise they could allow for so many files. But my final opinion is that 'Glover' was conceptually sound, but needed a stronger design and programming team for the best implementation, much like 'Space Station Silicon Valley' or 'Bomberman 64,' and I can imagine an updated version could be a vast improvement. But for the purposes of review I can only regard what is before me, and this didn't quite make it - I'm not a lover of 'Glover,' too much of a bother.

**