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Captain's Log: Stardate 4107.4

The Enterprise is alone in a sphere of hostile space. According to our briefing, the Klingons have been using a new weapon, the Psimitter, to take control of 20 Federation crews and their vessels. Contact with each ship was broken just after they entered the area to investigate previous losses, and now the Enterprise is to be the last starship sent into the quarantine zone before the whole area is sealed into a Klein Sphere, thus preventing the further spread of the mutinies.

Our mission is to find the location of the Psimitter and reverse its effects within five years. After this time, the Federation will be forced to make the Klein Sphere permanent, locking us into this Rebel Universe forever... Unless we fall victim to the Klingon weapon first...

Kirk out.

The Enterprise's bridge crew and their instruments are at your disposal through a windowing system which splits the display into seven small screens, any of which can be activated by pulling them into the larger main screen. Crew members are in their traditional posts - Mr Scott reports on fuel levels, Chekov controls the ship's phasers and photon torpedoes, and Sulu sits at the helm.

Courses between star systems are plotted on a spinning star-globe - but once inside a solar system, the Enterprise can move into orbit around any planet in the system. Clicking on a planet or star, then moving to Spock's screen, provides information in its alliances, and what is likely to happen if you approach it. There are 21 planetary types, some dangerous, some which will provide information or items to aid your mission.

Planets designated as Life Supporting can be explored by a landing party. Obstacles usually guard useful equipment, but each member can come up with a plan for overcoming it, which can either succeed, be ineffective or injure the party.

There are 33 types of item to be found on planets, and at least five ways to use them to end the Klingon mutiny plan.

Unlike Paul, I was never much of a Star Trek fan so I didn't really get a lot out of this game. It all looks and sounds very nice, with spinning 3D star charts and spacecrft, and a good few 'Trekkie' effects, but the gameplay is just a bit shallow.

It just seems to be a matter of moving from system to system blasting the odd spacecraft now and again (in a pretty undemanding shoot-out).

Even the planet exploration isn't very interesting because the game doesn't create any atmosphere by describing your surroundings of going into any detail about the obstacles.

The solutions to the 'puzzles' aren't particularly stimulating either and my favourite strategy was to go through each crew member's suggestion becasue the correct option seems to be random.

Overall, it's very nicely presented and Star Trek fans should lap it up, but anyone expecting a space exploration game along the lines of Elite should put their phasers on stun for another game. Er.. yeah.

When I first saw the *definitive* Star Trek game on the Atari ST, I was really impressed by the window system, the digitised graphics and the sampled sounds, but the disappointment was there there wasn't an awful lot of gameplay underneath it all.

However, I'm happy to say that the C64 version is surprisingly good. It's very well programmed in all respects - the 3D vector graphics, the selection systems and even the sounds, which are pretty close to the real Enterprise effects, compare very favourably, even with the ST version, and the game even plays slightly better.

It's still obvious that the game is biased towards strategy rather than arcade action: attacking enemy ships doesn't really require any skill at all - just plonk the targetting circle on the ship and watch it disappear a random number of shots later!

Not terribly exciting.

Still, any Trekkie willing to stick with it should find it a romp through the galaxy with Jim and the gang very satisfying.

Presentation 87%
Excellent window and icon selection system.

Graphics 89%
Very good character graphics, and fast vector graphic spacecraft.

Sound 88%
Brilliant rendition of the Alexander Courage theme tune, and fairly accurate Enterprise FX.

Hookability 88%
Icon selection system is fairly self-explanatory so it doesn't take long to get into the game, but some manual reading is required to get the most out of it.

Lastability 78%
A lot of exploring to do, but unless you're a Trekkie the action might seem repetitive.

Overall 81%
Very well presented - but the basic strategy/adventure gameplay will appeal much more to fans of the Star Trek series than to arcade fans.