Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative

So many things have to go wrong for a game like this to make it to market. It took Paramount over a decade to start participating in the video game market that had in very significant part sprung up directly around Star Trek. It took several more years for them to sanction a non-arcade game of any quality. That sad track record begins in the deep end with this failure.

In trying to innovate around the traditional (but at least well-understood) limitations of parser games, the Kobayashi Alternative team instead presented something which made the basics of map navigation and inventory management opaque and confusing, while breaking no new ground with the conversation interface. What could have been an engaging story with the tremendous advantage of an established world is instead an unrelenting exercise in frustration.

Awful, awful, awful game.

I had the docs to this game hanging around for the C64 version, so I wanted to see why I had never finished it. Now I know. It's not a text adventure. It's a simulation. That's the biggest problem right there. There are so many things wrong with this thing that it's not worth my time writing them all down since the game is so old.

Don't bother searching this out. If you don't have the docs, you won't be able to play the game anyway. To quote it: "You thought this was a game?" (Yes, it actually has this line in it.)

Barf.