ACADE ACTION CLOSE-UP
Little in life could ever be so predictable as the inevitable arrival of the Star Trek videogame. It was only a matter of time that the two forms met formally, shook hands, and put us all in Captain James T. Kirk's driver's seat. After all these years, it's both an honor and a challenge to be asked to fill those boots.
ACADE ACTION CLOSE-UP
Little in life could ever be so predictable as the inevitable arrival of the Star Trek videogame. It was only a matter of time that the two forms met formally, shook hands, and put us all in Captain James T. Kirk's driver's seat.
After all these years, it's both an honor and a challenge to be asked to fill those boots.
The big surprise is that none of the famous television characters appear on the screen of Sega's difficult and sophisticated game. No Kirk (We're supposed to be Kirk). No Scotty. No Uhura, or Sulu, or Dr. McCoy, or pointy-eared Mr. Spock. No dapper costumes. No "beam me up." Not even a Khan or a Tribble.
Star Trek is remarkably free of cute or multi-layered graphic composition; concentrated effort has been put into the design of game action itself, not in giving the player a visual show.
The U.S.S. Enterprise looks like a dime-sized dogtag floating in screen space, encountering Klingons of various colors and power. Once every sector, the screen is cleared to admit the deadly distributor of space mines, the Nomad. Mission: Destroy Nomad while avoiding Klingons and purple Anti-Matter Saucers.