Star Trek: The Next Generation

Game Boy, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1993) game

I bought this having accidentally discovered on eBay that there were a couple of Trek games released on the Game Boy that I never knew about. Purchasing the other, 'Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary,' fell through when the cartridge didn't work, but I had much more success with this one. Having played (and completed), 'Star Trek: Generations - Beyond The Nexus' I was quickly familiar with the style of gameplay shown in this game as it was almost identical. Although the graphical detail isn't quite as good in this compared with 'Nexus,' this is a slightly more satisfying game in some ways. In the other game each 'mission' consisted of shooting alien ships, directing plasma flow in a 'pipe' game and a memory puzzle where you had to match signals. This game integrates all its mission variations giving the player much more of a sense of utilising the different crewmembers, changing to meet needs that arise, and juggling multiple problems at the same time.

The interface is the same as the later game's viewscreen used in ship battles, but this time it has options underneath for you to check in with five different key personnel: Worf controls shields and weapons, Data sets course for warp travel and orbiting planets, Geordi heads up engineering and repairs, O'Brien's in charge of Transporters, and Riker reminds you what the mission is and how long you have to complete it. The artwork on each of the faces is very good for the machine at that time, and they even blink! It's not at the same level as the later 'Nexus' game, but it looks as good as you would expect. That goes for much of the graphics in the game, the ships look good whether they're enemies (Talarian, Ferengi, Romulan, Klingon), friends (fellow starships and starbases), and other celestial bodies (planets and asteroids). Even Picard gets a look-in, appearing as your mission commander to send you off on each time with a brief description.

The missions are fairly varied, from rescuing people on an exploding ship, destroying enemy vessels threatening the space lanes, to shooting down asteroids on a collision course with inhabited worlds. They're also randomised so you never know which kind you'll get, something that adds to the feeling of unstructured space where anything can happen. Indeed, at one point it felt like anything could happen as I got a message I hadn't seen before, telling me to intercept an unknown vessel that had been spotted near several colonies that had been destroyed. I wondered if it could possibly be a Borg ship, but no, I didn't expect that in a little game like this. So I turned up at the coordinates and there it was, a large cube-shaped vessel. Aaagh! Even more exciting was when I was recalled to Earth for a computer virus and the Borg follow me there. It took several encounters for me to eventually defeat this unexpected menace, but it added a layer of surprise to a competent game and you can tell the makers cared about their work.

After a while, the missions can get very repetitive and if you have a string of transporting missions (beam people up from a planet, beam an ambassador down to a planet, beam people off a damaged ship…), and you just want to get to a confrontation with the tough Romulan or Klingon ships to practice your combat technique, it can be a little disheartening, especially when you arrive only to be destroyed and have to start the cycle again. On the other hand, if you've just succeeded in a tense battle you don't want to go right back into a tough fight right away. The game occasionally throws a surprise into the works in a similar vein to the Borg appearance, such as enemies (often the Ferengi) beaming their own operatives aboard to bring down your ship from the inside, or your ship suffering damage to life support which must immediately be repaired, or falling into a wormhole. It adds to the drama a bit.

The most amateurish part of the game is seeing little stick men dancing across the screen in the transporter section, but you soon get used to the graphical style and don't pay attention to what they look like since you're so busy trying to lock on your beam. There are shortcuts taken, such as the beam up animation that displays once you've locked onto all the people - whatever race they are, the same animation always plays at the end of one nondescript person beaming onto (or away from) the transporter pad. I'd have liked to see it correspond to the number of people being transported. The same niggle goes for the cargo transport which is always the same single drum appearing on the pad.

The music is fine, as are the sound effects, and are actually necessary to hear since you may need to know when you're being hit if during battle you're forced to concentrate on making repairs, meaning you have to leave the combat screen and make it so (a variation of the 'pipe' game, only this time you have switches that determine where bursts of power get distributed - simple once you get used to the pattern). My main concern with the game is that it doesn't appear to have a definite end. Every few missions you complete successfully you're awarded a new rank, from Ensign to Captain, but once you reach the lofty heights of Picard you can keep playing with harder tasks and no foreseeable end. I think my record was eleven missions in a row, and it's good to be able to keep playing (especially when 'Nexus' ends so quickly), but I'd have liked to have been notified that I'd reached Admiral status, for example, and had completed the game.

The impression of being in charge of a starship comes across well for such a small game on such a small screen, although you don't get the feeling of being in control of a vast vessel in space, you do get the multiple levels of control aboard it and you do get to have the main people under your command, including O'Brien - the closest I've got to playing a 'DS9' game so far! Once you get the hang of the different disciplines and work out strategies for different battles (I found coming at the Romulans from a distance and taking on one at a time, then warping back to Earth for a quick-fire repair session worked well), it can be quite an enjoyable experience, though controls are a little difficult to get the hang of at first. Persevere and be rewarded. It's not an incredible game, but it's not bad, and better than a lot of lazy, licenced games.

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