Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Description official descriptions
Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise are representatives of the United Federation of Planets. Their role in space is that of explorers as well as a military presence. The Enterprise routinely encounters strange adventures and bizarre situations, each laid out as a separate "episode" which must be played in order. The first episode involves the USS Enterprise being called to a world to investigate strange "demons" have appeared from the mines and begun attacking the settlers.
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary is based on the 1960s Star Trek TV series. The game is a combination of a point-and-click, side-scrolling adventure game and a first person starship simulator. This tie-in actually missed the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek's TV debut by half a year (nearly three years in the case of the Amiga version), but it uses the original series' characters and settings. Players directly control Captain Kirk, leader of the Starship Enterprise, and are able to give orders to other crew members. While the enterprise is on a peaceful mission, combat is possible. A new game begins on the bridge of the Enterprise, seen from a 3rd person view of Kirk, but a first person view out the viewscreen of the Enterprise. When on board the ship, Kirk can contact Chekov to assign a designation, raise shields or begin combat, contact Sulu to engage warp or adjust magnification, contact Spock to scan for data and search for keyword information, contact Uhura to deal with communications, and contact Scotty to change power allocation and repair damage and beam down to a planet. During combat, the player steers the Enterprise manually and is able to turn in 720 degrees of direction as well as increase or decrease speeds. Weaponry includes phaser banks which draw from the ship's energy and proton torpedoes which are in limited supply.
The adventuring bulk of the game comes in the form of many landing party missions, in which the player beams down to the surface of a planet and explores the situation. Kirk can move about on the screen, other crew members automatically follow him. From the menu, he chooses a body part to perform an action: eyes represent looking, mouth represents speaking, one hand represents using items (and crew members) while another is to pick up objects. Kirk carries an inventory of items collected which can be accessed and used at any time. In most missions Kirk will carry a communicator to contact the ship and a phaser weapon which can be set to "stun" or "kill", The point-and-click adventure has different solutions to problems, but the ideal goal of the federation is to solve things non-violently. Performance is rated accordingly as well as being based on how many extra discoveries and advances made and interaction with different beings, including aliens. The surroundings are all based on styles from the TV series and solutions to puzzles involve the skills of multiple crew members.
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Credits (DOS version)
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Discussion
Subject | User | Date |
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Gameplay Help | And Wan (0) | 2009-02-20 13:13:04 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
The PC version of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Copy protection
The game used a star map as a copy protection scheme. Without the manual, you could not navigate to the next mission.
Install time
The game was rather infamous in its day for having the most excrutiatingly long install process imaginable, despite being on only five 5.25" hd disks (resp. eight of type 3.5" dd). Average install times ran around 90 minutes. In addition, the sequel, Star Trek: Judgment Rites, had a very long install time also, at least 90 minutes, because as well as copying the data from several floppies, it had to decompress the data on the hard drive up to three times. The data files were compressed multiple times using ARJ and Sonarc was used for audio files (on top of ARJ compression). All this was very slow on PCs back then.
Manual
The manual had a rather silly error in their epileptics warning message: Avoid playing when tired. Play for no more than one hour at a time. Sit well away from the screen, preferably no closer than ten feet.
Music
Interplay faithfully reproduced several music themes from the TV show. The game is configurable to play with several sound cards and even supported General Midi.
Releases
The game was rereleased in a "talkie" CD-ROM after they became the norm. Interplay went the extra mile and reassembled the entire original crew for the production.
References
With the possible exception of Ensign Kije, all of the so-called "redshirts" in this game are named after members of the development team. By episode, they are as follows:* Ensign Everts ("Demon World"), * Lt. Christensen and Crewman Simpson ("Hijacked"), * Lt. Ferris ("Love's Labor Jeopardized"), * Lt. Buchert ("Another Fine Mess"), * Lt. Stragey and Ensign Bennie ("Feathered Serpent"), * and Ensign Mosher ("That Old Devil Moon").
In the final episode, "Vengeance", if you look at the accompanying Security Officer while on the bridge of the U.S.S. Republic, the message will read: "Ensign Kije, who wishes that Lieutenant Stackpole had drawn this assignment." Michael A. Stackpole is, of course, one of the writers.
Information also contributed by 6â…ž of Nine, EddyB43, Scott Monster, and WizardX
Related Sites +
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GOG.com
The game is available for sale (digital download) on this site. -
Wikipedia: Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Article in the open encyclopedia.
Identifiers +
- MobyGames ID: 952
- Steam App: 359650
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by IJan.
Amiga added by Martin Smith. Windows, Linux added by MAT. Macintosh added by 88 49.
Additional contributors: MAT, Roedie, Alaka, Martin Smith, Timo W., Picard, karnak1, FatherJack.
Last modified March 14th, 2023.