Star Trek games

Phyde Wice · Post by **Phyde Wice** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:42 am

I used to play Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites at my friends house when I was younger. These were games with a Scumm-like engine. Interplay published them for the PC. They also published them for Macintosh under the MacPlay banner. They were published about 12 or so years ago.

In 2000, Interplay sold the MacPlay brand to United Developers. Interplay went under in 2002, and Titus bought them out later that year. Then Titus went out of business in 2004.

I looked at Interplay's website, or what's left of it. They only give specs, hints, and patches for the PC games they've made over the years in their self-support page. The Star Trek games are listed, so I'm assuming they still own the copyright for the PC version.

On MacPlay's site, they state anything published under the MacPlay banner before 2000 is no longer supported, along with a list of games. They are on there, and so I'm assuming they own the rights to the Macintosh version.

cappuchok · Post by **cappuchok** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:56 am

I think Activision currently holds the Star Trek computer game license, so they might have a say.

As far as I can see Interplay may not exist as a company anymore, and nor might Titus, so the matter of who owns the copyright on these particular games now is anyone's guess.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:42 pm

cappuchok wrote:I think Activision currently holds the Star Trek computer game license, so they might have a say.

As far as I can see Interplay may not exist as a company anymore, and nor might Titus, so the matter of who owns the copyright on these particular games now is anyone's guess.

Interplay still exists as an entity. They no longer have physical offices, but you can still buy stock in Interplay on the over the counter stock exchange.

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 8:38 am

But the whole Star Trek trademark is owned, IIRC, by Viacom. It's possible that they hold parts of the rights, too, at least indirectly (via a license to use the Star Trek name). So in any case, the legal situation is complicated.

In any case, the usual things apply: If you provide source code to use (obtained by REing, or by getting the game creators to donate it), we will consider accepting it into ScummVM.

P.S.: I liked ST: Judgement Rites a lot, never played 25th anniversary, though. I once wrote a decoder for their "bundle" file format, and some of the subfiles contained therein have been analyzed, too. But the hardest part, i.e. decoding whatever script format they may have used, is left. Plus, they seem to have coded a lot of stuff directly into the engine).

joachimeberhard · Post by **joachimeberhard** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 11:55 am

fingolfin wrote:never played 25th anniversary, though.

Heh, you've missed the best.

The game is higly complicated, has a lot of space to travel to and even includes action scenes (Space Combat in pseudo-3d which is in fact 2d).

And the game really assembled all the feeling the Original Series had.

The locations were mysterious and very interesting.

That game would really fit into the range of high-standard adventure games ScummVM supports upto now.

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 12:28 pm

joachimeberhard wrote:Heh, you've missed the best.

The game is higly complicated, has a lot of space to travel to and even includes action scenes (Space Combat in pseudo-3d which is in fact 2d).

And the game really assembled all the feeling the Original Series had.

The locations were mysterious and very interesting.

That game would really fit into the range of high-standard adventure games ScummVM supports upto now.

I thought 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites were quite similar, both in look and feel. The most notable difference to me was that Judgment Rites allowed you to adjust the difficulty of the space combat (yes! yes! yes!), and had no expendable redshirts on its away missions.

But I have to admit that I'm not really familiar with the original Star Trek TV series.

lifeisabitch · Post by **lifeisabitch** » Fri May 12, 2006 3:25 pm

It's a while since February now, but it has to be mentioned that one mustn't forget that both 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites were dubbed by the original cast of Star Trek TOS

Conroy Bumpus · Post by **Conroy Bumpus** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:29 pm

I'd really like to see Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity on ScummVM its point n' click and its a possibillity that the engine could work on ScummVM if not then I'd leave it on DOSBox which its difficult to get this game to work on that sometimes

clem · Post by **clem** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:39 pm

Conroy Bumpus wrote:I'd really like to see Star Trek TNG: A Final Unity on ScummVM its point n' click and its a possibillity that the engine could work on ScummVM if not then I'd leave it on DOSBox which its difficult to get this game to work on that sometimes

great, how far are you with reverse engineering?

Dark-Star · Post by **Dark-Star** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 11:45 am

fingolfin wrote:P.S.: I liked ST: Judgement Rites a lot, never played 25th anniversary, though. I once wrote a decoder for their "bundle" file format, and some of the subfiles contained therein have been analyzed, too. But the hardest part, i.e. decoding whatever script format they may have used, is left. Plus, they seem to have coded a lot of stuff directly into the engine).

How about posting that information on the REWiki?

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 8:51 pm

Just came across this again by chance. I wanted to upload my decoder, but actually can't find the source anymore :-/. However, it seems all the information contained in it is in another Wiki already, namely here: http://wiki.xentax.com/index.php/GRAFs/S.