Another recycled video review converted to text format, although I am shocked that the only review “posted” on GameFAQs is the old Classic Game Room review from ages past. If other Vectrex games are in need of local review offerings, then I might be more than happy to oblige.
The Human Adventure Is More Violent Than I Remember It
1977 proved to be a pivotal year for the Star Trek franchise because that was the year in which a little film called STAR WARS was unleashed to the masses and I assume you all know what happened from there. Now how this relates to the Star Trek is that there were attempts to bring this series back into the fold before they eventually settled on putting out a sci-fi epic for the ages… and so they begat Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979…. and I assume you all know what happened from there and if you don’t, don’t worry about it because none of that is relevant to today’s subject matter; Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1982 for the almighty VECTREX Arcade System.
STORY: Whereas Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the… motion picture was roughly 45% beauty shots of the Starship Enterprise, 45% alleged sex metaphors, and a generous 10% of actual science fictional content, Star Trek: The Motion Picture the game… or just Star Trek: The Game as it says on the title screen or just Star Ship in other markets… goes into the only thing people wanted to do when they’re in command of the Starship Enterprise back in the 80s: blow up some Klingons and dock with your starbase to replenish your weapons. Very basic plot, nothing too thought provoking, and considering they’d market the game under different names afterwards, a light plot is all that’s needed for an arcade space shooter. 5/10
GRAPHICS: For what it’s worth, Star Trek sports some decent vector graphics and the general shape of the enemy ships are somewhat Klingon-like, but only in the barest sense. You could easily change the name of the game to something else and it really wouldn’t matter… and to be fair, that’s what they eventually did. At the very least, the scaling of the ships are fairly smooth. And the overlay it comes with is rather nice. 8/10
SOUND: Sound department isn’t too bad, but again, nothing special. You have a couple jingles that play; none of which can be described as Trek-like. Sound effects are fairly stock sound effects… the powerlinking sound with the starbase is somewhat grating, but there’s a volume knob right there if that hurts your ears. Not much you can do about the static, though. That’s part of the Vectrex charm, I suppose. 7/10
GAMEPLAY: Star Trek is a very simple space shooter with a fairly simple premise; your goal is to clear the star sector you’re patrolling of attacking Klingons and once that’s done, you move on to the next sector. Every ninth sector will pit you against the Klingon mothership (their words, not mine) – the equivalent of a “final” boss in this game. Your ship has a finite amount of laser fire – again, their words, not mine – and in order to restock on resources, you’ll need to dock with a starbase. This is done by executing a power link with the starbase that will restore your wares… so long as you don’t blow it up beforehand.
Sometimes, you’ll encounter portals that the manual refer to as “black holes” and if you manage to powerlink with those, you’ll skip ahead to the final sector and face off against the mothership. Black Holes will always appear in a specific sector and you can choose which sector it appears in by selecting the “game mode” before starting a new game. So if you pick Game 5, for example, the black hole will appear in Game 5. One hit is all it takes to destroy your ship, but you can activate your shields to defend against enemy attacks for a short while… or you can just shoot the projectiles, though some projectiles are trickier to shoot down than others. Once you lose all your lives, it’s game over… naturally.
This is a fairly basic arcade shooter thing and the best thing you could say about it is that it offers 360 degree movement so it feels like you’re flying around in space rather than flying within a rail. Control is fairly basic and functional; though the game doesn’t make use of the analog stick, so if you had something with a D-Pad, you could probably use that instead. I would’ve liked to have seen a radar system implemented so you could keep tracking of where everything is within your current sector, but as it is, it plays just fine. 8/10
REPLAY VALUE: Star Trek can be a challenging game for some folks, but it’s not a deep game. Your overall enjoyment of the game will determine whether you return for repeat sessions and if you don’t care for this sort of thing, then you’ll be one and done. Even Trek fans will struggle to find a reason to return to this once they’ve got the mileage they could muster out of it. 5/10
OVERALL: Star Trek: The Motion Picture on the VECTREX ARCADE SYSTEM is a fairly basic shooter game that might not follow the movie it’s named after and only vaguely resembles the universe it’s supposedly adapting, but as a first-person arcade-style flight game thing, it’s actually not too bad. It’s not what I would call one of the better Star Trek games nor would I even consider it one of the Vectrex greats, but it does what it does well enough and that’s all you could really ask for with a game like this. 7/10
dtm666 