The wrath of Macintosh
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary For Macintosh GET ready to explore the incredible space action scenes, to interact with dozens of alien creatures, and to navigate yourself, Spock and McCoy through exciting new worlds.
If you are a fan of ''Star Trek'', you will become addicted to Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (ST25), inspired by the famed television series about the starship USS Enterprise and its crew including Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Commander Scott, Lieutenant Sulu, Ensign Chekov, Commander Spock and Lieutenant Uhura.
In ST25, you play the role of Captain Kirk. You can check reviews of past missions by selecting the Captain's Log Icon, choose the Transporter Icon to dispatch the landing party, and control the ship by issuing orders to various crew members.
There are seven separate episodes. Each begins and ends on the bridge of the Enterprise. At the beginning of each trip, information including the mission objective will be revealed to the player via Star Fleet command or an excerpt from the Captain's Log.
Most missions begin with space combat. When under attack, you must begin your defence by raising the shields and arming the weapons.
Your task in each mission is to reach a planet, or rendezvous with another ship. On arrival, a landing party consisting of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a red-shirted security officer has to be organised and ''beamed'' to the target through the transporter.
By calling up the Command Icon, a small window showing a humanoid figure with the Star Fleet emblem, you can perform actions like ''look'', ''talk'', ''get'' and ''use''. The Star Fleet emblem also allows you to save and load games and to turn music and sound effects on and off.
Beginners will find space combat difficult, even frustrating. But once used to the play interface and experienced in controlling the ship's speed and weaponry, you will enjoy the action.
To play you need a 256-colour Macintosh with 1,500K free memory and System 6.0.7 or higher, although System 7 Savvy with 68030 or better processor is recommended.
ST25's music and sound effects are of a high standard. The musical theme is wonderful when played through a Sound Blaster, while other sound effects like the noises from the transporters, the whistle signalling the arrival of messages, and tricorder noises are also very interesting.
The game has a save function allowing you to resume a particular stored game at almost any time.
So are you ready to trek off into the stars? Fine, go ahead, but remember, be decisive while at the same time listening thoughtfully to your crew.
MEGAHINT: To beam down to a planet, your shields must be down. This also applies when beaming to another ship.
MEGAHINT: Scoring 100 per cent for a mission will win you four commendation points. This, in turn, boosts your performance in combat.
MEGAHINT: Solving puzzles, aiding others, and behaving like a representative of Star Fleet in general is the key to a high rating. Violence never helps your rating, and may even hurt it.
MEGAHINT: In the last episode, there is a lethal Elasi ship that fires three torpedoes. Concentrate on destroying the first torpedo, and then, if you have not suffered great damage, save your game. Try to avoid confrontation with the other two until yourshields are repaired.
MEGAHINT: Don't under any circumstances forget to refer to the star map provided with the manual in order to navigate at the beginning of each episode.
