Star Trek Message Board

Disruptor Beam, the developers behind Game of Thrones: Ascent, announced the development of Star Trek Timelines today. Published by CBS, Star Trek Timelines is a story-driven strategy RPG for iOS, Android and browsers in which players explore galaxies and resolve conflicts through diplomacy, combat and science. Players will build a starship and crew and go on missions with characters from the many series of Star Trek TV shows and movies.

The studio's CEO, Jon Radoff wrote a blog on the developer's site detailing its vision for the multiplayer game, comparing it to Game of Thrones: Ascent. While Radoff said the game will be familiar to Game of Thrones players, Star Trek Timelines will feature a "more immersive exploration system" as well as "a more detailed tactical system" for conflict resolution. Disruptor Beam currently doesn't have a release schedule for the game. [Image: Disruptor Beam]

A Star Trek strategy role-playing game that allows fans to build their dream crew out of characters from every generation of the television series? You have my attention, Disruptor Beam. Read more...

Honor is never enough! This superbly-edited trailer parody of The Wolf of Wall Street by Grant Gourley throws new light upon everyone's favorite Klingon.Read more...

We might not have Jetsons-style mass-produced hovercars, but when you look at some of the tech humanity has developed, you could say we're kind of living in the future. So to speak.Read more...

Star Trek: The Next Generation had a huge legacy to live up to. Not just the thought-provoking storytelling of the original series — but also the amazing insane costumes. But TNG rose to the challenge. Here's our roundup of the most epic costumes in the Next Generation's first few seasons.Read more...

The developer behind the critically-panned Star Trek: The Game has responded to J.J. Abrams' criticism of the project.

Star Trek is a game mired in technical and design issues. According to Deadline, its most vocal promoter, Paramount senior vice president of worldwide marketing partnerships and licensing Brian Miller, is leaving Paramount.

The decision for Miller to vacate his role was mutual, according to the report, so he'll finish out the year before making his exit. Miller has spent the last 14 years working at Paramount and will look to explore personal projects after his time with the company is up.

J.J. Abrams, director of the new Star Trek series of films, said he was involved with the game at the outset but backed out early on due to concerns over where the project was headed. Ultimately, J.J. Abrams felt the video game "didn't help" his latest film, Star Trek Into Darkness, and "arguably hurt it." Abrams is currently working with Valve on a few projects, one of which could be a Half-Life or Portal film.

Leave it to a Japanese lube maker to keep Captain Kirk's seat free of rust. Oh my.Read more...

You might think Lord of the Rings' Elvish, Star Trek's Klingon and Game of Thrones' Dothraki are all just collections of silly words, but nope. They're actual, real languages, no different from English, Spanish or Japanese.Read more...

Though his team was involved at the project's outset, Star Trek film series director J.J. Abrams distanced himself from Digital Extremes' poorly received Star Trek: The Video Game prior to its completion, describing the finished product as a "big disappointment."

"The last game was obviously a big disappointment to me," Abrams told GamerHub in a recent interview. "We were actually involved at the very beginning of it, and then we realized that it was not going in a place where we were going to get what we wanted. So we dropped out and they continued to do it."

Abrams continued: "To me the video game could have been something that actually really benefited the series and was an exciting, fun game with great gameplay and instead it was not. For me, emotionally, it hurt, because we were working our asses off making the movie and then this game came out and it got [...] universally panned. I think that it was something that, without question, didn't help the movie and arguably hurt it."

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell spoke with Abrams recently regarding the possibility of films based on Half-Life and Portal.

"We're working with Valve right now on a couple of projects," Abrams told GamerHub. "The dream is to say, 'Despite its existence as a game or movie, what makes this great?' and starting from scratch -- from a place of, 'Let's make this from the ground-up great, regardless of what's come before.' [...] Anything that is based on something else needs to exist on its own terms. A lot of times, these things seem to exist as ancillary product. In which case, it will suck."

The things people manage to do in Minecraft never cease to amaze—case in point, this fantastic Star Trek creation by Maravrin—which used original deck plans such that the ship is at a 1:1 scale.Read more...

The ever-gluttonous Games on Demand stuffed more unsuspecting morsels into this gob this week, including the spicy pawn salad that is Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.

The fresh-faced game'n'expansion version of the 2012 RPG is now on Xbox Live priced $40, joined by also-new arrivals Star Trek and the Dragon Ball Z Budokai HD Collection at $30 and $35 respectively.

Keeping the dining descriptions going, our Dark Arisen review said "if you didn't bite before, then Capcom's "souped-up re-release" is "easily the best introduction to the land of Gransys." Sounds yummy.

Green Man Gaming is tempting the dark side of discounts with its 666 sale, which offers six deals every six hours for six days straight. The 666 sale sports Killing Floor, Star Trek, Guns of Icarus Online, Lucius, Resident Evil 6 and Borderlands 2 (plus the season pass), each for 50 percent to 80 percent off.

The 666 sale includes a bonus offer: a coupon for an extra 10 percent off any game in the sale. Find that code on the right side of the screen, directly above the six games currently on sale. Being bad never felt so cheap.

Since I was a child in the early 90s watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV, I have always dreamed of being the captain of my own starship with a crew at my command. Last weekend, I finally got my chance. Late last year, thanks to a post on i09, I learned about Artemis. Artemis is a game for six players where a different player manages each of the five consoles on a starship bridge: helm, communications, weapons, engineering, and science. The sixth player does not have a station—this player doesn’t push any buttons or interact with the game directly in any way. Rather, he or she is the captain and it is this player’s job to issue orders. From the moment I heard about Artemis, I desperately wanted to play it. The game is affordable at $40—even more so as you are allowed to share it with the other members of your crew, bringing the price down to $8 per person. The problem I had was finding a crew and a place to play. Many people I knew were interested; but as Artemis can only be played on a local network (i.e., no online connections supported), my friends were less than enthusiastic about hauling around their laptops—even less so if they only had desktops. So it looked like my dream was dead before it had really begun. However, two weeks back I discovered something amazing: There was now an iOS version of Artemis (which cost only $2.99 to download). Suddenly, people were coming out of the woodwork with an iPad or two each. Setting it all up was no longer the hurdle it once was. The crew, consisting of me, some friends, and fellow Kotaku East writer Toshi Nakamura, gathered in a small Japanese apartment to play. One of the best things about Artemis is that practically any computer can play it. So my eight-year-old laptop served as the server and output to a 42in TV that was the main viewscreen. The helm was also a laptop, but everyone else was playing on the iPad. Despite using a mix of PCs and iPads, the game worked great for the most part. Surprisingly, for most stations, the iPads worked even better with the touch controls than with the mouse on the laptop. And even though we were short a person (we had only five players, not six), we were still able to play with the science officer doubling up with communications. We ended up playing for almost six hours and everyone was able to try out each position (if they wanted)—and yes, I did enjoy playing captain the most. It wasn't a perfect experience though. More than once we had iPad crashes—losing an important station at a pivotal moment. A few times the ship got stuck in some sort of glitch loop and would teleport back to its previous location endlessly. Saddest of all, though, it was the missions where we had the most problems. Many of the fan-made missions replace system files and are thus unplayable on iOS devices. But even with the official missions we had problems. One time a mission had a ram scoop installed so that we wouldn't run out of power—but it never worked. Another mission had us head into a nebula only to glitch out the damage control teams and leave the ship dead in space. And while we successfully completed a mission or two, we ended up spending most of our time in invasion mode, fighting off random incoming waves of enemies across a randomly generated map. It was fun—a lot of fun actually—but I would have liked to have had a bit more plot in my Star Trek-like bridge experience. In the end, while not without its flaws, Artemis is an amazing experience for any Star Trek fan. Having it on iOS really fixes the hassle of getting a game set up and even feels a bit more authentic playing with a pad in your hands than on a PC. If you can get a group together, you owe it to yourself as a fan to give Artemis a try. Artemis is available on PC for $40 (per crew) at the official website and on iOS for $2.99 (per person) on iTunes. To contact the author of this post, write to BiggestinJapan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @BiggestinJapan.

Xbox One, Microsoft's upcoming next-generation console, will allow multiple apps to run simultaneously. Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi demonstrated the functionality while watching Star Trek, allowing him to instantly access Internet Explorer through the Xbox One to research trailers for the sequel film, look up movie times and even purchase tickets.

I love Star Trek. Some of my fondest early memories are of staying up late to watch reruns on the old black-and-white television we had on the third floor of our duplex on Oakwood Avenue in in good-old Norristown, PA. With the exception of Enterprise (It's been a long...no) I've watched it all, but I couldn't make it out this weekend for Star Trek: Wrath of Abrams. In my sadness, I turned to Hasbro's LEGO alternative. The LEGO folks have already left, probably to get pitchforks and torches. Kre-O is Hasbro's building toy, no doubt created in part to LEGO's reluctance to depict particularly violent properties in their iconic bricks. It's why Mega Bloks has Halo, World of Warcraft and Barbie. Hasbro, with their wide variety of violent properties, decided to make its own damn block toys, and they aren't too shabby. My first encounter with Kre-O was with the Transformers brand sets, which feature Transformers that don't transform — you have to rebuild them. I bought many of these sets, just to get the little collectible figures — Kreons — included in each box. I still don't have them all, and this makes me sad. My second encounter came with a set based on the movie Battleship. It had aliens and flippers and lasers and frankly I was no impressed. The whole project was silly, and the toys doubly so. I was intriguied by the Star Trek Kre-O sets, but hesitant to buy. Hasbro addressed my hesistation by sending me a set or three. The first set I cracked open was the Spock's Volcano Mission set. Consisting of a shuttlecraft, a small volcano that shoots red dots, and Kreon representations of pensive Sulu and spacesuit Spock, it's a rather lovely bit of building for $14.99. You can't see it here, but the set comes with a light-emitting block that makes the hatch on the underside of the shuttlecraft glow in welcome as it opens. It also features a bit of string, so Sulu can drag Spock across the ground like the uppity jerk deserves. I am not a really big fan of J.J. Spock. More on that later. Next comes the big daddy of them all — NCC-1701 — the U.S.S. Enterprise. This piece demonstrates Kre-O's main advantage over LEGO. The LEGO version of the Enterprise would cost $300.00 and include figures of all 300 of the ship's crew. This one's $50.00. Want to watch me put it together? I sure hope so — otherwise I wasted two hours clicking together 432 pieces. This one lights up as well, but I didn't put the batteries in because I was already recording and didn't have a screwdriver handy. I'll get around to it. It doesn't, however, play RAC Agency's version of the Star Trek theme, which is never leaving my MP3 player again. The set includes five Kreons — Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy and a pair of "specialists", whatever those are. I generally use them to beat up Spock while Kirk is hitting on girls. Another fine set. I had some trouble (and continue to) keeping the saucer layers flush witch each other, though I suspect that's a problem on my end. If you watch the video closely, you can see where I had a little trouble. Basically, if the ship leaves the screen, I am struggling with it. The whole build took me about two hours from start to finish. I am pleased with the result, as is Captain Kirk. Finally we have the $24.99 Klingon Bird-of-Prey set, which I did not build because I got distracted making Kirk and Uhura make out while Klingons violated Zachary Quinto. When all is said and done, I feel I've gotten much more enjoyment out of the Kre-O Star Trek sets than I would sitting in a theater crying for two hours. My time with them has changed the way I look at everything. Once I thought I had seen it all. Now the world is an endless series of places to take pictures of Kirk flirting while Spock dies. Thanks for the new timeline, Abrams!

You walk into a room. You're standing up, feeling pretty good. You're master of all you survey. But now it's time to sit down. How to sit while maintaining ownership of the room? Try Commander Riker's tried-and-true technique. It's amazing. We all know I prefer to stand up, all things considered. But now that I've seen Riker in action, I might have to sit more often. This video, uploaded by WeirdHat and spotted by Tim Norton, documents Riker's moves: - Lift the leg, go over the back. - Sit. - Resume eye contact. - Carry on the conversation as if you didn't just sit down in the most boss way possible.

A new Star Trek game hit the shelves this week, and only a few days remain until the premier of the 12th movie. As the tone of the movies and the series has changed a lot, we decided to take a look how the games evolved over more than 30 years. The variety in genre is wide—with both good and horrible examples—most of them being space simulators, shooters and graphical adventures. If 716 Star Trek episodes and all the movies were not enough, it's the perfect field to explore. Star Trek (1971 - PC, Apple II Plus) The first Star Trek game came early. It was text-only and featured the USS Enterprise (that's the "E" on the pic). The goal was to hunt down the invading Klingons. Star Trek Strategic Operations Simulator (1983 - Atari 2600) Sega's arcade game featured both a 2D and 3D display. Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1991 - NES) Most of the time, we had to control the away team in Interplay's 1992 graphical Star Trek adventure game. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past / Echoes from the Past (1992 - PC / 1993 - SNES, Sega Genesis) The 1994 adventure game (with some strategy included) took Picard & Co. to the Romulan Neutral Zone. Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity (1995 - PC) With added in-game cinematics and amazing graphics for a 1995 point-and-click game, A Final Unity is among the classic Trek games. Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999 - PC) Similar to a tabletop wargame, now in 3D we could control six races in Starfleet Command. Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (2000 - PC / PlayStation 2) This one is a first-person shooter based on the Voyager series, so the game had more action than usual, and it was full of Borg. Star Trek: Klingon Academy (2000 - PC) A handful of full motion video sequences (those are always funny to watch), and the fact that we control Klingons made Klingon Academy a special title. Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002 - PC) A space sim, made in 2002 with fully customizable quick battle scenarios. Star Trek: Shattered Universe (2004 - PlayStation 2, Xbox) The crew of the USS Excelsior swap places with another one from a mirror universe in Shattered Universe. The game is one of the forgettable Star Trek games and not because it's not focused on Picard and his crew. Star Trek: Conquest (2007 - PlayStation 2, Nintendo Wii) 4J Studio's Star Trek game had turn-based and real-time strategy elements and featured the main races of the Deep Space Nine series. Star Trek: D.A.C. (2009 - PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) Deathmatch Assault Conquest was based on the 2009 movie, and brought a huge variety of multiplayer modes to the Star Trek universe. Star Trek Online (2010 -PC) Everyone controls their own ship in the first massively multiplayer online RPG based on Star Trek. Star Trek (2013 - PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) Kirk and Spock have to deal with the Gorn in the recently released third-person action game. You should show us your favorite moments from these games or from the ones that are not on our list! sources: darkmercury77, CiphersSon, Flagostomos, Boomer2k6, Go Rin, StalwartUK, Nitros14, comedymovi, Memory Alpha

Star Trek is Now Available on Steam.

Play as two of the greatest science-fiction heroes ever -- Kirk and Spock in the award-winning STAR TREK, a completely original co-op experience that expands the Star Trek universe even further. Set in the 23rd Century world of the massively popular Star Trek reboot, this cover-based shooter immerses players in a rich, original story and action-packed combat.

It’s finally appeared. After being much-delayed, apparently to coincide with the film that’s out next month, Star Trek The Videogame (as I think we’re calling it now) is out in the States now, and other parts of the world tomorrow (but for some reason Namco Bandai accidentally forgot to send review codes to ANYONE!). Perhaps I showed my hand regarding my thoughts on Star Trek, when I tweeted yesterday, “Wow. Star Trek is terrible.” But maybe I was bluffing? Here’s wot I think:

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Star Trek: The Video Game (right now linking to a 404) is out now! Unless you’re not in America! Because publishers and stores are still living in 1992! So it is that if you’re in the western colonies, you can now buy and play the game and tell us if it’s any good. Meanwhile we, in the Mother Country, are stuck with an ironically named ‘launch video’ and a pre-load option. [Piracy dances across the screen, waggling its hands and tipping its hat.]

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"I'm really hurting here," exclaimed the dashing and courageous Captain James T. Kirk, bruised and bloody on the cold metal floor of the space station, phaser gripped tight in his shaking hand. "That's the logical result of charging face-first into a fortified turret, you stupid son-of-a-bitch," I replied in a calm, measured tone. My Spock is a bit of a potty mouth. I lay the blame for my Vulcan vulgarity largely on the shoulders of Digital Extremes, the developer behind Namco Bandai's Star Trek, released yesterday on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Largely, but not wholly — I shouldn't have expected miracles soloing a game designed with cooperative multiplayer in mind. Set between the first and upcoming second films in the J.J. Abrams reboot, this Star Trek drapes a series-standard plot over a framework of friendship. It's about the United Federation of Planets' Odd Couple. We've got James T. Kirk, a young man who has absolutely no reason to be sitting in the captain's chair of a Federation starship, and his best pal Spock, the only being in the universe that can accept Kirk's rank with a straight face. The plot is one that Star Trek writers love to pull out for special occasions. An outrageously powerful technological thing has been created by the Vulcans, one of the most intelligent and logical races in the pantheon of face prosthetic aliens. Blinded by all of that logic and intelligence, the Vulcans are caught completely off-guard when a race of evil velociraptors arrive to steal the powerful technological thing in order to do evil. It's up to Kirk and Spock to save the day, because Mr. Should Not Be a F***ing Starship Captain doesn't know how to delegate responsibility. Senior staff members are continuously telling him that he should stay with the ship, maybe send a couple of the dozens of highly-qualified, more experienced people on away missions. His response? "Where's the fun in that?" This man is in charge of a starship. I can't stand New Kirk. They never should have changed the formula. Kirk Classic was smooth. He didn't give a shit because he didn't have a shit to give. New Kirk is pooping all over the bridge like an excited puppy, and there are no rolled-up newspapers in the future. The poopy little puppy metaphor works particularly well with artificial intelligence New Kirk. On the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise we were given our very first mission, my tricorder (a rather nifty Metroid Prime-like educational tool) directing us to the turbolift located not five feet from where we were standing. Kirk goes shooting off into the opposite corridor, tail wagging excitedly. I followed, thinking perhaps he knew something my player-controlled Vulcan did not. Nope, he was just wandering about. Maybe he smelled bacon. He hung out in the corridor while I returned to the lift. The game tried pathing him back to me but eventually gave up, teleporting him to my side so we could continue our mission. This happened quite a lot in the five-or-so hours I put in last night. Later, during a particularly thrilling bit of gameplay that saw the two of us climbing about the outside of a space station orbiting a sun as the heat shielding intermittently failed, I had to continuously remind AI Kirk that he should not stand out in the open as the full fury of a dying star raged about us. Space was on fire, and he just stared at it. Shiny. Had I given him the chance, he probably would have charged it, heedless of danger. AI Kirk isn't good at heeding danger. He'll run into a room filled with lizard men with assault rifles and then beg to be healed when nature takes its course. He will try to hug turrets as they fire lasers powerful enough to pierce a ship's hull. He will, from time to time, try to hump a turbolift, which, as sexy as it sounds, seems pretty dangerous. Mind you, AI Kirk isn't completely useless — just mostly useless. He knows how to fire his weapons, and will actually take out the enemy if you give him half a chance. He'll listen to your commands to hack doors, move to specific locations or attack specific enemies. He'll try to revive you should you fall in battle, often while enemies are standing right next to him, shooting him in the face. The biggest failing of AI Kirk has nothing to do with his boundless enthusiasm — it's almost endearing, really. The biggest problem with AI Kirk is that he's not a real person, and you really need a real person to help you wade through the more broken bits of Star Trek’s experience. When the velociraptors (not calling them Gorn) get stuck behind cover and forget you exist, laughing with another player makes it better. When a piece of scenery explodes, leaving bits of climbable rubble for no other reason than to remind folks that Digital Extremes put climbing in the game; when you spend two minutes trying to place a phaser on a table because the game only lets you turn in 180 degree increments while standing still; when Chekov takes two minutes to shut down the turbolifts (seriously, isn't there just a switch?) — these are the moments when having a real player by your side makes the hurt go away. Plus the hacking mini-games are more fun with two players, and there are plenty of opportunities to make suggestive comments as Kirk and Spock wiggle against each other while squeezing through pried-open doors. You can taste the sexual tension. If you're going to play Star Trek, it's best you play it with a real person, be it a friend or a stranger. There are just some things you should not suffer alone, and who knows — you might get lucky.

Kirk may be all smiles, but I fear that beneath the charm lies a sad, beaten, red shirt.

Kirk may be all smiles, but I fear that beneath the charm lies a sad, beaten, red shirt.

Fernando Acosta, formerly of Colombia but now residing in Canada, worked on the Star Trek video game that was released very quietly this week. Below you'll see examples of his Trek work, but be sure to visit his site for more images, like personal project Bounty Hunter Wars and some stuff he did for Halo 4 map packs. (Thanks CAW!) To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the bottom-right corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you're in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you'd like to share, drop us a line!

Enter to win a PS3, Xbox 360, a DOA prize pack, Cheech and Chong's Animated Movie, or Star Trek: The Next Generation blu-rays. Oh yeah, plus it's the last show!

There's around a half-minute's footage of Star Trek: The Video Game in this trailer, but we admit it, we just wanted the excuse to post a video with William Shatner in it. Either way, we reckon you're Gorna enjoy it.

Star Trek has been in development for about three years at this point, which is a "huge amount of time when you're talking about a movie game," Paramount senior vice-president Brian Miller told us during a GDC-adjacent viewing of the game earlier this week.

"Most movie games that we've ever worked on, and I would say most people ever work on, you're lucky to get twelve months," Miller said. "You're in the middle of production on a movie, you're trying to hit a target date of when the movie comes out, all the assets aren't in there, so you wind up having to rush things through."

In Star Trek's case, however, the situation was reversed - development on the game was extended by a full year in order to coincide with the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, the franchise's latest theatrical romp.

"This game was going to come out at a different time," Miller said. "We didn't know when the next movie was going to be, we didn't know if it was going to be holiday, we didn't know if it was going to be summer, and we were just striving for it to make a game. Then when they all started lining up, it was like 'Okay, the movie is going to be here, let's give ourselves a little more development time to make sure they line up and come together.'"

An entire extra year may seem like more than "a little more development time," but that's the sort of call you get to make when you're Paramount. Miller told us that while interaction between Paramount, developer Digital Extremes and writer Marianne Krawczyk was an "amazing collaborative back-and-forth," Paramount's wishes are still, well, paramount.

When the Gorn make their reboot debut in Star Trek The Video Game this April, we imagine it being nothing like their appearance in the original series. Like, not even one little bit.

Oh, marketing. Attaching a line to your Star Trek Making Of video that says “The Ultimate Co-op Experience” is just asking for trouble, isn’t it? I know I barely get to be in charge of anything in this universe, but in this case I’d definitely have gone for “Look, Spock and Kirk Can Hold Each Other.” And they can, as the video explained: it had to be a co-op game, because Kirk and Spock are opposites who attract. I mean, they don’t fist-bump, but do have each others backs. So to speak.

Hrm.(more…)