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L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

7 Comments

  1. Jacob Nanfito
    September 11, 2015 @ 4:18 am

    Yeah! I love this game. I only ever played the NES version, but my little brother and I couldn't get enough of it. I still play it with my kids.

    I need to play the PC version. Perhaps I should make that happen. 🙂

    Too bad they never made a TNG game this good.

    Reply

  2. Andrew Morton
    September 11, 2015 @ 7:12 am

    I don't know. While I'll admit it is not as good, I enjoyed A Final Unity a lot.

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  3. Andrew Morton
    September 11, 2015 @ 7:20 am

    I love this game too. I was always a point and click fan so the frustrating aspects of the puzzles didn't worry me so much, since I recognized them as part of the genre.
    My experiance of it was the PC CD release and the addition of the voice acting does help sell TOS world.
    I didn't know about it supposedly being set in the last two years of the five year mission (and it doesn't add or take away from anything if you ignore that) and so I would have said the most fanwanky bit was the introduction of Carol Marcus with the Genises device clearly behind her.

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  4. Ross
    September 11, 2015 @ 9:42 am

    One of the things I found most memorable about this game was that its hint book was in narrative form. Rather than a walkthrough or an invisiclues-style question-and-progressive-answer format, each mission was presented as a short story in which Kirk and company worked through the puzzles as they encountered them.

    My one disappointment about Judgment Rites was that its hint book was traditional.

    (Of course, for me, it wasn't the "first" Star Trek Video Game. By this point in my life, I'd already played The Promethean Prophecy, The Kobyashi Alternative, Commodore 64 and PC variants of the Star Trek Text Video Game, and TI-99/4A port of Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. And possibly the PC Star Trek V game. Don't recall which one I got first)

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  5. Daru
    September 14, 2015 @ 9:16 pm

    I have never played this and really did enjoy hearing about it from you Josh – so thanks! I was never a big computer gamer – though I did potter about with them in early computer days up to my very early twenties. But didn't know this one.

    This essay is quite a nice counterpart to Phil Sandifer's Super Nintendo project – all fascinating for me from the point of view of being a non-computer gamer, and there is a kind of lovely vicarious pleasure for me in hearing about and discovering games I know zilch about through the lens of those who are fascinated about them.

    Reply

  6. Josh Marsfelder
    September 15, 2015 @ 7:16 am

    Thanks for saying so! I enjoy writing about video games and hope I'll be able to do more of it both in and out of a Star Trek context.

    Reply

  7. Daru
    September 17, 2015 @ 3:58 am

    Yeah sure thing, I hope you do! Despite not being a massive computer gamer I do feel a big affinity with the medium.

    Reply

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