Message-ID: <363@terak.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 19:43:51 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.363
Posted: Mon Feb 11 19:43:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 03:29:12 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Terak Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 50

Game review:
Star Trek (Sega) C-64 cartridge  list:$40?  discount:$22
    One player -- one joystick recommended (else use keyboard)

Overall grade: D-   (boy, am I gonna hear about this one!!)

You are in command of the Starship Enterprise.  Your assignment:
destroy everything in sight.  Continue destroying until you are
yourself destroyed.

OK, first off I'll state that I'm not a fan of "destroy everything
in sight" arcade games.  But this one not only doesn't tickle my
fancy, it's downright crummy!

The screen is divided into three parts.  The bottom 1/3 is an
"out-the-front" viewscreen.  The upper right is an overhead view.
The upper left shows your ship status (fuel left, screens left, etc.)
The graphics are like on the first Atari VCS games (do you remember
"Combat" tanks?).  Terrible.  And the "out-the-front" viewscreen
picture does not work well at all.  Images flicker onto the screen
that don't belong there, then vanish quickly.  And I couldn't *believe*
the screen that they present during the intermission between levels:
just red and yellow horizontal stripes, with a cryptic number in the
middle.

The sound effects are also vintage VCS.  The best they can do is
at the beginning of the game and in the intermissions between
levels, they play just a couple bars of Star Trek theme music.  On
just one voice.  The rest of the time it's the usual blips and bloops.

The joystick is simple enough -- left to rotate left, right to rotate
right, forward to move forward, backward to fire photon torpedoes,
fire button to fire phasers.  Holding the fire button and pulling
backward gives warp drive ahead... but you can't go far.

The "universe" is small indeed -- there is barely enough room for the
6 Klingon cruisers, 3 starbases, and the Enterprise.  The edges "wrap
around" from left to right and top to bottom.  No running room, no
manoeuvering room.  Just hold down the fire button and spin around!

The instructions are useless.  Not only don't they tell you which
port to plug the joystick into, they tell you to use the keyboard to
start the program -- thereby causing the program to *ignore* the
joystick!  The descriptions of the "enemy" are incorrect, and the
descriptions of the "levels" are incorrect.

I was thinking about giving this program an "F", but then I thought,
"Well, it *did* at least run!"  There's little else to be said for it.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug