Ah, Star Trek – a well beloved staple of Sci-Fi culture, and a franchise which has had its fair share of video games, some good, some bad, all seeming to do what they can to capture at least some aspect of the series.
In this episode, James takes a look at a few of these early games from the 8-bit era of gaming. At least, he tries his best to, but given this is an AVGN episode, we know what’s to come – Star Trek parody goodness, including the Enterprise here being the Starship NES and the Nerd being basically Spock! It’s obvious stuff, but fun for what it is.
We start with a look at the Vectrex, of all things, and a the game Star Trek: The Motion Picture. An arcade style space shooter, from the looks of it, played on a vector graphics based system. Pretty cool looking, sure, but the Nerd is quickly put off by a flaw in the design of the Vectrex.
We next take a look at Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator on both the Atari 2600 and the Colecovision. Again, these both look like solid enough arcade space shooter type games, certainly adequate for their time. James has only mild criticisms here, namely the odd fact that the Atari 2600 version comes with a control overlay, something I can actually understand given the “tank” controls the game uses being different from other games.
Moving to the Colecovision version, he has little to say other than the game looks better than the 2600 version, but at the end he makes a critical mistake insulting Klingons, reulsting in his game being interrupted by a very angry Klingon (played by Mike Matei.) After a brief exchange referencing the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan involving an obvious Sega Genesis pun, the angry Klingon attacks the Nerd directly in a great parody of the fights common to the original series, terrible edits and all.
With that situation resolved, James gets to the core of the episode by taking a look at the NES game Star Trek – 25th Anniversary. Unlike the other games, which were action oriented, this game focuses on re-creating much of the experience of the original series – the talk, the adventuring, the universe, it’s something.
It should be noted this is a game published by Ultra which means it’s actually a Konami game, of all things. Interesting.
Sadly, it doesn’t play all that well, with both poor controls and an overly complex method of taking action in the game, with far more questions than there should be for actions you need to take to progress in the game! Some puzzles, some needless buildup, a clear reference to Led Zeppelin, and one very strange chain of events later, the Nerd has had enough.
It doesn’t look all that bad, but it’s just one of those kinds of games that has way too much going on at times, sometimes confusingly so. Still, in the end, the Nerd accepts the game for what it is, which brings on a visit from a Metron (also played by Mike Matei.) This event ends about how you would expect, and that’s that!
Final Rating: 3.5/ 5
This isn’t a bad episode by any means. While not one I like to go back and re-watch too often it is enjoyable for how it pretty well parodies the original Star Trek series while still being a Nerd episode. The Genesis joke stays funny a decade later, and the ending also gives me a laugh. The episode still is a little dry, but enjoyable for what it is, a tribute to the classic Star Trek!