I’m I was thinking about writing this weeks piece on Star Trek: New Worlds, after I had sent some feelers out about it on social media a weeks ago. But, to be honest I didn’t get many responses except one that more or less stated that at best it was a mediocre game. The harsh reality is this games following is pretty much none existent, and even YouTube seems devoid of videos about the game.

At least the intro sequence is available on YouTube!
I bought Star Trek: New Worlds, after seeing the trailer for it on my original copy of Starfleet Command. I mean why not it had everything I loved in one place, Star Trek and an RTS game, how could you go wrong? Well apparently you can!  I won’t go into RTS (Real Time Strategy) games, I already covered that in a previous article. But, let’s just say the Command & Conquer series was, and is, the ultimate definition of what RTS games should be. As they say though “imitation is a form of flattery” and the C&C series has had many imitators. Some like Starcraft, Homeworld, and Halo: Wars have been pretty good, while others like Star Trek: New Worlds on the other hand, not so much.

As if Star Trek: New Worlds janky graphics, and awkward controls weren’t enough, what’s even worse are the bugs that may or may not allow it to work. I picked up Star Trek: New Worlds back in 2000 when I was playing The Sim’s pretty heavily. So to give myself a break from the monotony of playing one game, I plugged New Worlds in and after the usual instillation rigmarole of games back then (yes, even on Windows 95/98) I got it up and running. I played through the first two levels, saved my game and went on to something else. I could forgive the jankiness, and awkward 3D RTS gameplay, after all this was an era when a lot of 3D play looked janky (consult the N64), but when I came back to the game to pick up where I had left off a few days later my saved game had been wiped out. Turns out it was so buggy, the save state didn’t work correctly, and a few days later the game itself just stopped working altogether. Even after a re-installation, it still wouldn’t work. So the game went into a cabinet with the hopes that someday a patch would come out, or that perhaps it was my computer that was the issue. Now I could pick on this game, but buggy games where pretty common back then, and there where more than a few that I just gave up on and took back to the store like Wargames: Defcon 1 the RTS version of the Playstation game of the same name. Years and several computers and operating systems later, Star Trek: New Worlds is still collecting dust on a shelf.

So with that said your going to find this is one of my shortest Trekking Through Games articles yet, since I really have no gameplay to speak of, nor footage to show. What I can end this article with, is saying that yes, there are some bad Star Trek games out there, but at the same time there are some equally good ones. In a way Star Trek: New Worlds is an excellent example to use in this argument, since it was developed and published by 14° East, and Interplay who also developed and published Starfleet Command one of my favorite Star Trek games, and truly one of the best Star Trek games overall, only adding to the juxtaposition of great games and awful games. At the same time you have to think this is also something that can be said for most major franchises, even Star Wars has had really great and really awful games, you just have to look to the PS1 for examples of that.