Your top 10 Star Trek games?

[Ghost]

Ugh, dammit! I must not have paid attention when I wrote that. I meant that I wanted to see an Elite Force 3.

Guess you still have Judgment Rites to play Kor.
Speaking of Judgment Rites, I have found a non talkie version that includes an additional movie pack. I would like to get that to run one of these days to see what additional materials it contains.
I saw a few screenshots already, showing us for example the Starfleet science ship in the second storyline. It is not shown in the talkie version.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Good Lord, I'm old, apparently. Also, my taste in Trek games is very subjective, and what I enjoyed about them may or may not have much to do with why you would or wouldn't, honestly.

My top 10 Trek games:

10. Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. The arcade machine from 1982. I got it as a cartridge for my Atari 400 computer in 1984. I've loaded it up in an emulator recently. It wasn't that great - basically, just a very simple move-to-the-right-place shoot and don't get shot sort of thing. But it certainly seemed awesome back then. I think mostly it was the Trek theme playing and the fact that they got some of the sound effects (like Red Alert) right.

9. Space Quest V and VI. PC. So you like the worm, huh? So you want to ride the worm, huh? I LET YOU RIDE THE WORM! Not actual Trek games, per se, but both games featured PLENTY of Trek parody. V put you in the captain's chair of your own ship. And VI was, well, VI. A lot of it defies simple explanation, but, well, here:

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Just one tiny part of what made it great.

8. Star Fleet I: The War Begins! - Apple, Commodore, Atari, PC. This was basically an expanded version of EGA Trek released in 1984. Great music (for MIDI), a great manual, a bit of story added, and of course, Klingons were "Krellans" and Romulans were "Zaldrons", because it didn't have an official Trek license.

7. A Final Unity. This would probably be higher if it hadn't been such a pain in the ass to run and to work around glitches. But overall, a great game, even so.

6. Star Trek Online. I really, really enjoyed the game City of Heroes before it was cancelled, and this is made by the same studio and is very similar in how it works. I'm a little disappointed that I can't fly like I could in CoH, but that wouldn't be very Trek, I don't guess, so... I also get a little annoyed with how railroad-y missions are. But still, there's so much neat Trek stuff to see and play with, and I can sometimes play with my son, who isn't at home anymore.

5. Star Trek 25th Anniversary / Judgement Rites. This is on everyone's list, somewhere. No need to explain.

4. Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative and Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy. 1985 and 1986, PC, Amiga, Apple, Commodore. Text-based but with an unusual interface for a text game that worked really well to allow conversations with crew, ran in under 512k, still the best simulation of life as Captain Kirk I've seen in any game.

3. FASA's Federation Ship Recognition Manual. Yes, I'm aware this was only one part of FASA's Star Trek RPG. I don't care - it was the only part of it I cared about, since I didn't have anyone to play the game with. It sparked my love of drawing starships as I would copy the pictures, and it contributed heavily to developing my love of Trek in general.

2. Armada/Armada II - played this on networked PCs with my son when he was growing up.

1. A homebrew Star Trek / Star Wars / BSG / and whatever else we felt like pencil and paper RPG that my wife, three of my best friends, the mom and sister of one of them, used to play and I used to run using d20s, d6s, and half-remembered, half-made-up 2nd edition D&D rules and a lot of Rule 0. Absolutely the best. Their ship and the ship they were fighting were disabled and racing to see who would get power back to weapons and propulsion first. My friend's sister was playing a Data-like android, and she had the Wookie (played by another friend) *throw* her out of the airlock at the other ship, so she could go finish them off. Good times.

 

[Ghost]

I am tempted to open a "Star Trek 25th Anniversary / Judgement Rites" appreciation thread as I would like to talk with people what they like about this game and what they would have liked to have seen in a third game if there had ever been made one.

 

[Wbino]

The best Trek game might be this mod for Sins of a Solar Empire:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-armada-3

 

[JD]

I'm a big gamer, but since I'm mostly a console guy I haven't played many Trek games.
My favorites in no particular order:
Elite Force 1 & 2 - I see most posters seem to like 1 better, but I actually like 2 a bit more.
Invasion - I know that fighter combat wasn't in the shows, but I still really enjoyed this game. I'm a huge Worf fan so I got a big kick out of his role in the game.
2013 Kelvin Timeline game - I'm still amazed this got such a horrible reaction, I thought it was a lot of fun. I know it's basically a standard 3rd person shooter in a Trek shell, but I like these kinds of games, and I really enjoyed the story.
Star Trek Online - I haven't play this much, but I enjoyed what I did play.

I also played Encounters, but I didn't care to much for it so I traded it in pretty quickly. I also tried Shattered Empire, but for some reason I can't remember now, I also traded it in very quickly.

I remember playing an old side-scrolling DS9 game for Sega Genesis, but don't have any specific memories of it. Same goes for one of the old PC TOS games, and a Genesis TNG game.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I remember playing the 1982-83 Sega Star Trek arcade game. Last ST game I played too.

 

[Crazyewok]

1)Birth if the federation
2)Starfleet command
3) Klingon academy
Why they cant make games like this I dont know.

STO would be good if it wernt for the awful ship designs. It beyond fan wank terratoty and more fan bukkake.

 

[DrBob]

My pick of Trek video games high to low:

Voyager: Elite Force II
25th Anniversary
Trek Trivia (DOS)
Star Trek: Away Team
Klingon Academy
Star Trek (Xbox 360)

I cannot think of 10 ST video games that I really enjoy, some of the 3rd party mods are interesting like Homeworld and the Voyager TCs. I'd love to see a Voyager or Kelvin timeline Away Team with a multiplayer coop mode & better AI or a remake of Elite Forces that covers all the Trek eras.

Anybody ever play the TOS Bally pinball game? I saw one being repaired, the board looked great + the artwork:
http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2355

 

[donners22]

1) Judgment Rites
2) 25th Anniversary
3) A Final Unity
4) Birth of the Federation
5) Elite Force
6) Generations
7) Klingon Academy
8) Borg
9) Armada
10) The Fallen

Ah hell, let's keep going since I have more:

11) Starfleet Academy
12) Hidden Evil
13) Starfleet Command
14) Bridge Commander
15) Legacy
16) Starfleet Command 3
17) Starship Creator
18) New Worlds

I tried STO, but only for a few hours a couple of years ago.

I also own Dominion War, but the bloody thing never worked.

I'm quite annoyed that I never managed to play DAC or the other Kelvin game (bad as the reviews were, I would have liked to try it myself).

 

[BillJ]

Mass Effect 2.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Recently, I've managed to get pretty much all of my favorite Star Trek games working again, so I might post screenshots and describe the cool things happening, like visiting ancient ruins in Generations and killing rebel petaQ in Klingon Honor Guard, making the thread like an After Action Report (AAR) - hopefully it will inspire new gamers to try these amazing retro classics.

Some of the games I might consider taking screenshots of are:

• EGA Trek
• Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
• Star Trek: Judgement Rites
• Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
• Star Trek: Klingon Academy
• Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity
• Star Trek: Generations
• Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen
• Star Trek: Birth of the Federation

...because those are basically the best Star Trek games ever made.

Honestly, many of these games add so much to the enjoyment of Star Trek, that they enter your head-canon, and you actually learn and notice new things about the show in return. I'm sure that playing EGA Trek made a lot of people more aware of the best situations to use phasers, torpedos and shields, even though TOS had never explicitly given any system - fans took in the idea that maybe phasers are better against shields, but torpedos devastate an unprotected hull - or other little things like that.

Here is an image of the planet Qualor II (where the starship graveyard from Unification is) - the weapon is a Klingon assault disruptor.

1) Judgment Rites
2) 25th Anniversary
3) A Final Unity
4) Birth of the Federation
5) Elite Force
6) Generations
7) Klingon Academy

Absolutely, some of my favorites

Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect 1 was the game I knew would be my favorite non-Trek/Wars game ever made, even before it was out - talkable alien races - exploration - Mass Effect 2 just perfected the character side of things and is perhaps the best third person shooter/RPG ever made, but the first game was the real trail blazer and remains my favorite/best plotted.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

I agree with you list! The greatest Star Trek games of all time - top ten:

• 1. Star Trek: Birth of the Federation
• 2. Star Trek: Judgement Rites
• 3. Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
  
• 4. Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity
• 5. EGA Trek
• 6. Star Trek: Generations
• 7. Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard
• 8. Star Trek: Klingon Academy
  
• 9. Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force
• 10. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen

Honourable mentions: Starfleet Academy, Starfleet Command, Tactical Assault.

 

[JD]

What's EGA Trek?

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

What's EGA Trek?

EGA Trek was a game programmed by a guy called Nels Anderson in the 1980s, which simulated the operation of a Federation starship in a time of war with the Klingon Empire. It had a briefing, which explained combat, the political situation, and made you feel like you were being given orders by Starfleet Command. Movement, and the use of weapons was directed by a coordinate system on an 8 by 8 grid. So, for example, you would fire say 400 phaser power at a Klingon warship located at coordinates 4,7 in your local sector, and the beams would do more or less damage depending on distance. Torpedos were directed the same way, with three torpedo tubes. I'll use some images from another thread, in the DSC forum, to illustrate:

This was the briefing screen, which went into possible commands, and explained your orders.

This was a shortened explanation of the commands, gained by typing HELP into the command box.

Here the Enterprise can see two enemy ships, at 8,4 and 1,1 respectively, and has taken damage from both.

After doing damage to a cargo ship, the Enterprise accepts it's surrender, gaining supplies.

You could also send landing parties down to planets (one is seen in coordinates 4,3 in the final image above), dock at starbases (one can be seen at coordinates 4,8 in the second image), conduct repairs on your systems, and had an 8 by 8 chart of unknown space to secure from Klingon control. The game enjoyed a high reputation in early PC gaming, being very popular with early computer nerds, passed around on disk, and could be compared to modern stripped-down games such as Roguelikes in it's appeal. See the first page of the thread for more.

 

[unimatrix7]

I dabbled in Star Trek Online a bit. I kind of wish I could just pay a monthly fee to avoid the grind-heavy, microtransaction based design. It really is quite a wonderful piece of fan service, despite the hokey fan-fiction stylings of most of its narratives. I kind of liked being followed around the spacedock by a pet tribble.

I want to check out Bridge Crew, but meh...Kelvinverse.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

To be fair on Star Trek Online, it's not as bad as I sometimes think (MMOs are in general horrible of course, flat worlds, where NPCs just stand around doing nothing like a sign post), but I think I am sour that the first ever Star Trek RPG we got was some bland flat MMO with poor dialogue instead of something like KOTOR or Mass Effect. No worse than some Diablo clone I suppose, and sometimes they capture elements of Star Trek in the missions, at least late Voyager-style Star Trek. As long as people are aware of the problems with online-only games.

EGA Trek is begging for a remaster however.

Imagine - modern GUI, add some extra lore elements like spacial phenomenon, landing parties, but same gameplay - you could have two guys program that and do the art - and sell it for like £4.99 on Steam, PSN, XBLA, Nintendo eShop, and GOG.com - have it on like 7 consoles and PCs - PC, Mac, Switch, PS3, PS4, 360 and XBONE, just completely unaltered almost.

 

[JD]

I dabbled in Star Trek Online a bit. I kind of wish I could just pay a monthly fee to avoid the grind-heavy, microtransaction based design. It really is quite a wonderful piece of fan service, despite the hokey fan-fiction stylings of most of its narratives. I kind of liked being followed around the spacedock by a pet tribble.

I want to check out Bridge Crew, but meh...Kelvinverse.

THey did add an option to play a TOS version.

 

[Ghost]

The quality of Star Trek Online's story lines and also how much the writers recycle from the five Star Trek series (I should include the Kelvinverse now and probably Discovery) are some of the reasons why I am not interested in Star Trek Online. (another reason is the grinding in order to get better equipment. Sometimes enemies are also ridiculously overpowered)

I understand that a Star Trek MMO should refer to characters, species, subjects etc that appeared in the five series, but I feel that is all it does. It barely does any world building of its own.

A lot of the quests are in general also rather boring. I felt I had to go through a lot of filler before I finally came across some interesting missions.

The 50th anniversary expansion "Agents of Yesterday" was enjoyable though. I am not a die hard original fan but it was fun playing in the same era that the Original Five Year mission took place.
If anything I am rather disappointed that it was so short and had to tie so much into that temporal cold war arc.
I feel an opportunity was missed here to create a full Original Series setting with its own campaigns.

 

[Destructor]

The best Trek game might be this mod for Sins of a Solar Empire:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-trek-armada-3

My biggest problem with Sins is that it's so old you occasionally run into compatibility problems. I basically can't play MP with friends because the files always desynch. The New Horizons Stellaris mod provides a similar experience in a much more modern engine.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

The quality of Star Trek Online's story lines and also how much the writers recycle from the five Star Trek series (I should include the Kelvinverse now and probably Discovery) are some of the reasons why I am not interested in Star Trek Online. (another reason is the grinding in order to get better equipment. Sometimes enemies are also ridiculously overpowered)

I understand that a Star Trek MMO should refer to characters, species, subjects etc that appeared in the five series, but I feel that is all it does. It barely does any world building of its own.

A lot of the quests are in general also rather boring. I felt I had to go through a lot of filler before I finally came across some interesting missions.

The 50th anniversary expansion "Agents of Yesterday" was enjoyable though. I am not a die hard original fan but it was fun playing in the same era that the Original Five Year mission took place.
If anything I am rather disappointed that it was so short and had to tie so much into that temporal cold war arc.
I feel an opportunity was missed here to create a full Original Series setting with its own campaigns.

Yeah I feel this is the main difference between modern Star Trek games and old ones. The old ones expanded and built the setting. They did so really really damn well. You felt you were inside the world. The mechanics made sense and reflected the setting. The voice actors sold it. The modern games however, refer to and recycle ideas all the time, without building much.

Take Generations, an old PC game which almost nobody remembers; although it was 'just' a tie-in to a film, it was actually more like a full separate video game. It managed to create about a dozen really interesting planets, never seen in a Star Trek episode, which followed the spirit of Star Trek well, and also there were missions on Romulan bases and Klingon outposts that actually felt like logical and realistic looks at life in those environments. I'm not saying it was great gameplay by today's standards, but it excelled when it came to making someone feel they were really exploring the Star Trek setting.

The screenshot above shows Arvada II, an archeological ruin, one of the planets where Dr Soran has set up one of his facilities to try to harvest Trilithium, blow up stars and direct the Nexus. It was built by the Minosians, the arms dealers from Star Trek TNG, who were wiped out by their own creations. It's full of their ancient automated machinery, still functioning after their extinction. Brent Spiner gives commentary as Data on what he is seeing, what he finds interesting to him as a Starfleet science officer in a scientific ruin. It's just a little bit of genuine Trek.

In one mission, Worf is sent down in disguise to a secret outpost built by House of Duras forces in uncharted space on Halee II. If you can see the tiny screenshot, the outpost is inside a crater, and features several landed Duras ships, plus a central base, and cave system under it. Worf comes across Klingon personnel who have been killed by the native life, and Michael Dorn has to play Worf as if he were pretending to be Duras forces, greeting passing officers, etc.

Because Deanna has lived in disguise on a Romulan ship before in TNG, she is sent down to Galorndon Core in disguise, where a secret Romulan base providing Soran with Trilithium in exchange for his star-killing weapons is found. The mission has Marina Sirtis playing Deanna as she has to say "hail" to passing Romulan officers, and has dialogue about interesting things she is seeing while other Romulans aren't present. They show Romulan disruptor rifles that were never seen in the series, and they logically function as you might expect from what we saw on screen. You see scout ships being launched out of hangers, and you can break cover and shoot them down with a fixed turret if you want, but it will make the mission hostile. You must find who has the access key to get further, and acquire it. You can even order things from the Romulan replicator in their barracks.

Star Trek Online has some odd bits and pieces in its missions that feel Trek-like, such as stabilising a warp core on a freighter during an early tutorial (Starfleet solution to a humanitarian problem), but its largely like all other MMOs; shooting stuff, flat areas, no character acting. It also does something I don't like; it takes vague and mysterious concepts from Star Trek, that should probably remain mysterious, and makes them into generic enemies, as if all ancient civilizations are inevitably a race of conquering demons. I'm glad this isn't canon. I would urge people to play classics like Judgement Rites or A Final Unity or Generations or Klingon Honor Guard.