Star Trek: 25th Anniversary

DOSBox, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992) game

Probably the closest I've felt to actually being in an episode, part of the crew, and off on a 'Star Trek' adventure, which is saying a lot. Well, it's saying a small amount of a lot, considering I've played very few Trek games in my time, the platforms I've owned over the years having been in short supply of 'Star Trek' - you needed a PC for most of them, and Nintendo's platforms don't seem to have been 'mainstream' enough to warrant Trek's licence, but on the Amiga was this game, '25th Anniversary.' Except I never was able to find it, until now… Technically, I didn't even find it now, since I played it on DOSBox, a DOS emulator program of the PC version, but nevertheless it gave me a fine approximation, minus the disc-swapping and likely superior sound capabilities of the Amiga version. Still, it evokes 'The Original Series' in atmosphere, character, sound, and bright, optimistic style that was prevalent in the TV series and its spinoffs over the last fifty years. Yes, ironically it took me until the 50th Anniversary to play the game of the 25th! What I love about games of that era, the early '90s, are the beauty of pixel graphics. Sure, the sound was much cruder than the visuals (although I did read that a CD version exists with the dialogue recorded by the stars of the series which would be quite an enhancement to the experience, I'm sure), but that detailed configuration of the USS Enterprise's Bridge, and images of the Landing Parties beaming down to planets was what had impressed me back in the day and made me wish to seek it out.

The lovely graphics remain attractive to this day, that pixel aesthetic one of the styles I appreciate most in games (seen beautifully in such titles as the first 'X-Com' game, 'Dune II,' 'Settlers' and so many others). Not photorealistic, they couldn't have done that back then, but with a cartoony, yet real enough quality to it that sucks you in, and was perfect for the bright, colourful world of Trek. It's more than the look of the thing that drew me in, it was the representation of the various characters through their function, and the use of staple Trek tech, such as phasers, photon torpedoes, the Transporter, and the ship's computer. Initially, the computer appears to be nothing more than a fun little interface to see how much of the lore the programmers were able to squeeze into the game, so I was typing in famous names of aliens, people and planets to see what it had to say about them. Though I didn't realise it, I was actually researching this game because it tends to feature mostly topics you'll encounter on the seven missions. But it was more than a fun extra, actually integral to solving some of the game's puzzles, the most difficult of which involved base three mathematics and had me stumped for a while, having to abandon the game in order to brush up (in other words, learn), what base numbers were all about. So, like any good Trek episode, it's a game that makes you think (as it turned out, the answer was in the computer banks, so I didn't need to revise maths to find the answer!).

Mr. Spock is on hand to advise you scientifically, as is the irascible Dr. McCoy, on medical matters. Uhura deals with communications, Scotty with repairs, and Sulu and Chekov are at their customary Helm and Navigation posts. Even Kyle operates the Transporter for you! All is as it should be. Best of all, you can actually beam down for an Away Mission, or Landing Party in the parlance of the period, in control of Kirk, with Spock, McCoy, and a redshirt security guard along for the ride. Surprisingly few of these get killed, so it wasn't all that accurate! Although, if you were working out the percentage of missions a redshirt would die on, perhaps it was reasonably accurate - I refer you to Spock for a precise calculation to the decimal… You do feel like you're leading a team, and while it's not as exciting and immediate as a real mission on the series, being a point and click adventure in the vein of 'Monkey Island' and others of that ilk, you can talk to your fellow officers, glean information from them, and use their skills to benefit the mission and fulfil objectives. The missions are very much in the style of 'TOS' episodes, neatly wrapped up with a moral message and a bit of humour among the main characters on the Bridge, and replayability is enhanced by the awarding of a percentage grade on completion of each mission, so there's the urge to go back and improve your score once you know how to succeed.

You can use phasers, Tricorders, McCoy's medical scanner, and other equipment you find, and it's all rather thrilling to find such options. However, the freedom is limited, as you soon learn - you can't go around phasering whatever you like and it would have been a better game if you could have personally selected which crewmembers beam down, or to have more tasks to do aboard the Enterprise, though this is a churlish complaint as the game is pretty tightly defined, and it works. Where it falls down is something which most of these kinds of games share: the frustration of not knowing what to do or where to go, scouring the scenery for a few pixels to find something you need or might have missed, you don't really get to rely on your crew as much as the real Kirk would have - Spock doesn't tend to give you clues to your predicament when you're stumped, and contacting the Enterprise rarely results in constructive assistance. A hint system for when you get stuck would have been a better idea, to keep you from that demoralising feeling of failure, although it's in keeping with the harder difficulty of games of the time.

The interface is fine, although it was irritating that you have to wait for the dialogue box to highlight for a second or two when cycling through text, when you want to get to a specific piece of information, but that says more about modern patience than about the game's problems! I did find it annoying that you can't save at the very beginning of a mission, you have to wait until all the pertinent mission information has been given to you first, which means if you go back and start again you can't get those details. It's a minor fault (as is the way the game always starts with the first mission so you have to cycle through the dialogue instead of having the option to load a saved game from the title screen), and you can get round it if you sense you're coming to the end of a mission and save just before the new one, but it's just one of those little niggles that could have been smoothed out, and would be, in more modern games. Apart from that I found the interaction with the environment to be perfectly acceptable, and although it took me a while to realise you could only engage with things that lit up your eye icon when searching the screen, and that some things have no relevance and are a blind, I didn't feel too unfairly treated by the game. It could become a clickfest where you're struggling to go through the motions of combining everything you have to find the solution, but it was satisfying to solve the puzzles, and a great relief to complete the game (even if I was awarded a paltry 57% - it made the characters remind each other of the kind of sentiment that to err is human and nobody's perfect!).

The attention to detail, as you'd hope in a Trek game, is very good. While there is the odd missing piece (such as Kyle not having any biographical data on the Enterprise computer, yet Chapel, or Sarek, neither of which feature, do), or mistake (Cyrano Jones was called something else), the Trek atmosphere is recreated expertly, with lots of fun references and guest characters, whether it be Klingons and Romulans, or a young, pre-'Star Trek II' Carol Marcus (long before 'Into Darkness' gave us the same), working on an early version of what appears to be the Genesis device, and scurrilous Harry Mudd, to details from outside 'TOS' (the Romulans sign off with Jolan Tru, a term invented on 'The Next Generation'). It's fantastic to have a rear view of the Bridge, Kirk sitting in the chair, the others at their respective consoles, and battling away with enemy ships isn't a bad test of skill and resources either, as you manually aim phasers and photons, while also keeping track of Scotty's repair priorities. The ship battles get harder, too, so that by the end of the final mission you're taking on a fellow Constitution-class starship and two alien vessels, a real test to overcome.

I was tempted to give the game only two stars for all the frustration it caused, often a trial and error, with emphasis on the trial, making it a relief more than a pleasure to complete. You can see it was aimed at what was considered the intelligent audience that liked Trek so much, and games were generally much tougher in those days than in subsequent decades, so I shouldn't be surprised, but it is a tax on the brain and fingers. And I expected around thirteen or fourteen missions in total, so if it felt like it was dragging it was because I didn't realise how short it would be. For the excellent evocation of the TV series in both graphics and sound, not to mention being a functional, varied game world, I had to upgrade it to three stars. If you want a challenge, then this is the game for you, and it even ends with a nice little tribute to Gene Roddenberry, who would have just died when this game was being made. Now I want to play one in the same style for 'TNG' and 'DS9'!

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