THE MAKING OF STAR TREK 25TH ANNIVERSARY

SPACE MAY BE THE FINAL FRONTIER BUT STAR TREK ADVENTURE GAMES WERE PRETTY MUCH THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY IN THE EARLY NINETIES. AT LEAST UNTIL STAR TREK: 25TH ANNIVERSARY CAME ALONG A GAME THAT DARED TO GO WHERE NO STAR TREK GAME HAD GONE BEFORE

- PAUL KAUTZ

Interplay had been around since 1983, and by 1991 its portfolio was already quite impressive – but it didn’t include a typical adventure game. Company founder Brian Fargo wanted to make a point-and-click game in the style of Lucasfilm Games or Sierra, and he had always been a huge Star Trek fan. But he ran into a big problem. “I had been chasing Paramount for years to try and acquire the licence for Star Trek, me and most of the company had been major fans of the original series,” he tells us. “Unfortunately, Paramount would never return my numerous calls and I had little clout. Then one day I got a call from Emil Heidkamp from Konami and he said that Paramount was all over him to try and get them to make a Star Trek game and if I was interested. We had gotten out of developing games for other companies, mostly, but I agreed to make Konami a NES game ONLY if we could have the PC rights. Emil agreed since they did not do PC, and Paramount was happy.”