Who remembers the electronic game based on Star Trek: The Motion Picture as produced by Coleco and listed in their Coleco 1980 Catalogue?
No, me neither. Still, let’s take a look at it since it’s almost Christmas and you might sink one too many Snowballs then feel like whipping yourself around the sun in reverse and travelling back to purchase it from a better time in every way except for wages, health, technology, general safety, cleanliness, entertainment, and disturbingly scratchy clothing that you couldn’t get too close to the three bar electric fire while wearing if you didn’t want a trip to the Burns & Melting ward to be your overriding memory of the festive period.
Looks sort of like the Enterprise, so that’s good, although sort of like the Enterprise after the episode Encounter At Trash Compactor, so that’s less good as that was one of the early Next Generation episodes before they thankfully killed off Flippy the Space Toad (though not in the trash compactor, sadly). I wonder how you play it.
It’s the U.S.S. Enterprise versus V’ger in this action packed, electronic space game for 1 or 2 players! The opposing forces orbit over a runaway planet – their mission to gain possession. They fire at the planet attempting to neutralize it and claim it for their own! V’ger fires a green energy bolt – the Enterprise raises a protective shield around the planet – the bolt is deflected! Now, the Enterprise fires a photon torpedo – V’ger raises its shield too late – it’s a hit! Photons are fired again – and again – five hits and the neutralization is complete. The planet is won for the U.S.S. Enterprise!
I see.
I have a few problems with this game. I’m going to have to put my nerd hat on and I’m not going to take my nerd cap off first.
- The runaway planet didn’t appear in Star Trek: The Motion Picture; the runaway planet appeared in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier but it was cut from the movie as the studio felt its story arc wasn’t as strong as that of the bald guy with bad teeth protecting his holes from the emotional Vulcan.
- Roddenberry was very specific when it came to warfare in his space opera. The Enterprise usually neutralises a planet by having Kirk (later: Riker) give everything on it a venereal disease and for privatised healthcare provided through insurance from the shadowy “Federation” to then quell the global populace.
- Any Star Trek fan will tell you that you can’t just press a button and extend the shields around an entire planet. You’re supposed to flick a switch to extend the shields around a planet. That’s almost the first thing you learn from watching the original series.
- Green energy bolts!? Green!? Did nobody watch the film? V’ger fired mauve energy bolts you idiots! The Enterprise fired tartan bolts (Scotty’s whimsical weapons upgrade) which did include a little bit of green to represent the moss on the Highlands but not enough to excuse this travesty of accuracy.
I know that electronic games from 1980 can’t be expected to be too complicated what with having 6 bytes of RAM to play with running on a CPU capable only of integer arithmetic so long as you don’t count above nine or confuse it with subtraction. And I know that there probably had to be some leeway when you’re creating a game based on a movie because nobody can possibly be expected to budget for allowing the game’s creators a look at the script. But even with those allowances there still has to be more to it than a passing shape-resemblance and stickers adorned everywhere. A shame.
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