Star Trek: 25th Anniversary - A Retro Game Review
Sometime in the mid 90s (I'm inclined to say 1996), garage sale-ing was a popular past time for middle class Americans. It might still be, but I haven't been in forever. Seems like it'd be fun. But, I digress.
As stated, somewhere in (probably) 1996, we hit up a garage sale a few blocks up from our house. To my kid mind, it was probably the greatest garage sale ever, for there was a veritable treasure trove of old NES games. We wound up leaving that garage sale with three games (and some extra cases), one was Gauntlet II, one was some other game I can't remember, and the third was Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. I grew up on a steady diet of Next Generation growing up, but somehow I was aware of what the original series was and the characters in it. Granted, anything with the name Star Trek in it had to be cool, so I was excited.
And enjoy it I did. It became one of the very few games I played to completion on our old machine, a fact that I was proud of at the time. So, as I've been slowly watching TOS at the behest of my boss boss boss, I remembered this game and the feeling of enjoying it quite much. A quick trip to eBay, and I found not only a copy, but a copy with box and manual. That's a big deal for one who has the tendencies of a collector. For once, though, I actually played the game instead of let it sit and collect dust. And now that I'm done with my long ass intro, the review.
Scenario
The game opens with our intrepid explorers getting sucked into a wormhole or something and thrown out into the other side of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Pretty standard Star Trek fare. About half the game is devoted to getting enough dilithium to go anywhere, and the other half about the anomaly itself. All in all, it's a pretty short game.
The setup for play is very similar to the old point-and-click adventures of yore, such as those made by Sierra or LucasArts. When on the Enterprise, you get to see out the view screen, talk to various officers, jump around from planet to planet, or beam down to the one you are currently orbiting. In one section, you even battle a Romulan Bird of Prey. When on a planet's surface, you roam around collecting items, talking to natives, and "tricordering" things. It's a pretty basic setup that controls well enough given the platform.
One thing that I particularly enjoyed - especially after having been watching the show - was the writing. The dialog for each character is inline with what they'd say in the show, down to Spock's oft use of "fascinating" or Bones' complaining that he isn't a
Graphics
Given the limited abilities of the NES in terms of graphics, I have to give props to this game for both conveying the feel of the Star Trek sets while also pulling off a couple of nifty technical feats. One in particular had me scratching my head a bit, knowing what I know about the NES hardware thanks to the knowledge I picked up while writing my emulator.
It's pretty easy to overlook if you don't know what you're looking for, but Kirk is standing in front of the shrubbery and behind the rocks. Unlike the SNES, the NES only had one background layer and a sprite could be flagged as in front of or behind that one background layer. When I first noticed this I was all "what is this devilry?" The simple answer would be that the items in front of Kirk were just sprites pretending to be the background, but a lack of sprite flicker quickly rules that out. What they must be doing is paying very close attention to where each "subsprite" of the player sprite is in relation to the background (I'm guessing they're running in 8x16 sprite mode), and setting that part above/below the background as needed. It's a pretty clever way to add some depth.
But, all is not sunshine and roses, despite the cleverness. The limitations of the 2C02 come blazing forth, with slowdown when there are too many sprites on screen, or the aforementioned flicker when Jim and his buddies are all standing on the same scanline. Some of the static characters look a little bit "muddy" and don't stand out too well from the background at times. But, they're trying to make something "realistic" out of a super limited palette, so I can let these instances slide.
Music
You have to give credit to anybody that can create a good chiptune. The guys at Capcom had it down to a fucking science. Granted, creating an original score is a lot simpler than trying to arrange an existing piece for a few triangle waves, a square, and a noise channel. Still, it can be done with great success. This game, while it does incorporate themes and background tunes from the show, tends to be very barebones and the loops are super short. The gangster theme in particular gets really annoying pretty quickly. But, you have to give them props for keeping it "in the family", as it were.
Overall
I'm not ten anymore and am not so easily amused as I once was, but I feel that this game has actually held up really well. You can tell that the guys who made it had a great deal of respect for the source material, ensuring that the characters and story telling that we all have come to know and love were represented as accurately as possible. Yes, the game is short (about four-five hours), the music could be better, and there were a couple instances where figuring out what to do next was a bit tricky (GameFaqs was on tap a couple times), but I genuinely enjoyed revisiting this game some seventeen years after first being introduced to it. That I'm now more familiar with the series now only makes it even better.
You should take some notes, J.J. Abrams. THIS is how to write a love letter to the 23rd century.
