Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual (1994) (VG)

Writers:

Michael Okuda (book)
Rick Sternbach (book)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Plot Keywords:

Star Trek Spinoff | Video Game | Based On Book

Cast

Jonathan Frakes

...

Commander William T. Riker (voice)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

I wish a new edition of this could be made:

Of course this material is mostly culled from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Technical Manual of 1994. As a book, it is excellent, and Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda have actually come up with such a good way of describing how Warp Engines work that we almost actually believe it.

This of course is a version for computers that came out in 1995 or so: I had seen a version of this for Mac that allowed you to use the voice function to pull up menu items, but that does not work with the PC version, which does not actually work with Windows 98 until you install Apple Quicktime version 2.12 - Ther version of Quicktime 2.0 that comes with the program only works under windows 95. Also, you must set your screen resolution to 800x600 pixels at 16bit depth (High Colour) Since a lot of people still actually USE windows 98... I highly suggest that anyone who has this and wants to enjoy it, they can get apple quicktime version 2.12 from http://oldversion.com and install that after installing the "full" version of ST:TNGTM.

I was able to get this program to work under Windows 98 SE, at a resolution of 1024x768 by installing Quicktime 2.12 and setting the colour depth to 16-bit. The program is obviously designed to run at 640x480 at 16-bit... You can get it to open up at resolutions higher than 1024x768 but it will be all squished into the centre of the screen.

This program has panoramic views of all of the "sets" of the USS Enterprise NCC 1701 D. It is actually a nifty thing, and as you rotate around the room, you will see a prop and you can click on it, and it will show you what it is. For example, when you are in Picard's quarters, you click on Picard's Reisican Flute and it brings up detail, which is great, except that it ought to be playing the music from "The Inner Light" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708803/ ) This is a kind of neat thing to have, although it is not really a game. If you can get it to work, you have a few choices: You can have Majel Barret "Read" to you as the ship's computer, or, you can have William T Riker give you a "Tour" of the ship.

The graphics are kind of neat, considering that they were done in the early 90's. If this were re-done for Windows XP/Mac OSX- And were updated to include information from Star Blecch: Deep Space 9 and Voyager, then it would be kind of a compleat document.

But I would not buy any new editions if Rick Sternbach has not pitched in, as I believed the team of Sternback/Okuda was what made ST: The Next Generation enjoyable on the "technobabble" end of things.

EDIT- This program has just been installed on a machine running windows 2003 "enterprise" sever- So, it should be assumed that this program can be installed on Windows XP Pro edition at least. Under Server, I do not see the limitations on colour depth that constrains the program running under windows 98 SE.