This is a classic game from 1993 and after buying this game and launching it you are most likely wondering "What the Hell? No Tutorial and people keep shooting at me!" Well this guide is for you so before you post that negative review for your bad experience please give this at least a quick glance.

This is a old school point and click adventure game. And like most old school games you will learn though good ol fashion getting the crap stomped out of you. First the bridge hot keys

Going from left to right on your keyboard and moving down

While on the bridge

[tab] - this will alternate between flight mode where the cursor is stuck in the middle of the view screen and you fly your ship by moving your mouse. Note that all the commands can be accessed in select mode where the cursor is a hand and simply done by clicking on a crew member.

[W] - Click on Mr Checkoff - Arm/Disarm Weapons: You will fire your phasers with the Left Mouse Btn and Torpedoes with the Right one.

[E] - Click on Scottie - Engines: or the good classic "Scottie I need More Power" Simply gives you a short term boost at the cost of damaging your engines

[T] - Click on Spock - Analyses: Or Spock what do you think? Basically has Mr Spock weigh in on the current situation.

[O] - Click on Sulu - Orbit: Basically what you do once you get to where your going and must do before you can beam down

- Pause: Simple enough, do know that you cant do actions while paused and doing anything will unpause the game.

[A] - Mr Checkoff - Target: Turns on and off the targeting system

[S] - Mr Sulu - Shields: Turns shields on and off, cant beam while shields are up, Star Trek 101

[D] - Scottie - Repair: This will bring up the repair menu and you will then click on what you need fixed. Repairs Take time and you can only focus on one at a time, See Ship Systems Below

[H] - Uhera - Communications: Do this to talk to people and can tell you what your last orders were. If you get stuck try hitting this and usually I will move on to the next stage

[K] - Kirk - Options: Like repair you will bring up a menu that you can chose form See Options:

[C] - Spock - Computer: Brings up the data base computer, just type in what you want to know and the computer read that back to you.

[V] - None - Go full screen of the Viewscreen

[N] - Sulu- Navigation: Go to the Star Map and chose your destination. !!Need The Star Map!! See below

[<] & [>] - none - Zoom: Zooms in and out on the Viewscreen

[Space] - Action: Dose the currently selected action like saving and loading


Options:
Captains Log: Read up on what you just did
Beam Down: Move to the next stage. Must be in orbit and shields must be down.
More Options: Text On/Off, Save/Load, SoundFX, MusicFX On/Off, and Quit

Ship Systems: if any one of these reach 0% health than your dead so keeping up the repairs is important. You will have to prioritize in battle.

Shields:A bubble around your ship to keep things form damaging you to a extent [S]
Phasers: Lazors but cooler, fired with the LMB [W]
Torpedoes: Simple enough they move slower than phasers but pack more punch RMB [W]
Navigation: When you get hit the screen gets fuzzy, fix this to get a clear picture of your imminent death
Bridge: Where your crew is commanding the ship from, kind of important.
Hull: Your ships hit points are
Engines: You need things to make you go. Warp engines do that vary well.

Ok so you probably know that the first thing to happen to you is that your are thrown into a battle. These are tricky to beat and the first on is mealy practice and if you fail you are fine but it is ego bruising none the less

How to Fight:

(1)Turn everything on! You would think that after a while Mr Sulu would know that a attacking Klingon means you would raise the shields but he wants your ok. So polite. Just press the keys S, W, & A. That will bring on everything you need to at least not die right away.

(2) Find the other ship. Much easier said than done. You fly with the mouse after pressing [tab] to get your cursor on the screen. But you are locked into only a first person view. The trick is knowing that the little screen between Checkoff and Sulu is actually functional. The Center dot is you and all the little dots moving around are the enemy. 12 O'Clock is in front of you and 6 O'Clock is behind you. If it is green it is above you and if red it is below you. Yellow means you are in the same plane and thankfully there is no roll so keeping track of them is much easier.

(3) Fire everything! once you have a enemy lined up you may then go about shooting them till they explode. Before they do the same to you preferably. LMB fires Phasers RMB Fires Torpedoes. No you don't have a limit on shooting but there is a pause between firring rounds so try to get your timing down and shoot ahead to make sure you hit.

(4) Repair or yell at Mr Scott about how everything is on fire. The D key will bring up your repair menu and the picture on the left and right of the enterprise shows which parts are worse off than others. The more red they are the more likely you will explode.

That is it in a nutshell you fly and shoot. Its simpler than it seems at first but soon you will get the hang of it. Some will lose more red shirts than others but you can always go back to your last save. And save often especially before you go to a new system or beam down.

Now you will most likely notice that when you press N to bring up the map it will be blank. This is unfortunately due to '93 equivalent of DRM. The map is blank to supposedly make it harder to pirate over AOL. Yes even in those days Internet piracy was a thing just more assertive about it.

So Interplay had the idea of making the games map blank and you needed a paper map that came with the disk to show you where to go. Here is a link

Your Map[www.methodshop.com]

Since this game uses DOS Box and is set at a rather small resolution just have this page open next to your game window. Really I think Steam could have fixed it for the Digital Updated version but if wishes were fish's you know.

Also Dont be afraid to keep a note pad handy for any key words about your mission. It really helps knowing where to go

!! If you dont go to the right system you will be attacked by aliens that are very angry about your showing up unannounced. You will most likely die and no getting around it or escaping.

Steams DRM dose not sound so bad now does it?

Ok so you survived your first battle and got where your going but now how do you do anything on the planet. "This seams like a complete different game" you may mutter and you are right. Welcome to the point and click genera. You point at things and click them. this game just uses some simple mechanics to do a large array of things compactly.

Move: To move Kirk to a location on the screen simply click the ground and he will walk there.

Actions: Here is the trick, Click the RMB and see a gold torso pop up on the screen. Click on the relevant part of that image to do the desired action. Do know that you cant always do everything to every part of the screen. That is where the puzzle comes in.

Side note this being a point&click game means that it is 80% puzzle meaning wondering around and interacting with everything on the screen. "I Want to go back to Star Ship Dogfights" I can imagine you saying and no, this is Star Trek in its purest. All story and a little action filler.

So what can I do? Well going back to the torso you have a number of things

[L] Eyes: Observe or look at something. Just click on the screen what you want to look at.

[T] Mouth: Talk to someone. Agian just click on the mouth and then click on the person you wish to speak with.

[U} Left Hand; The ball :Use a item. Just click on the Bag to select something that you then use on the world, Phaser are green for stun and red for kill. Other things like The Tricorder are also useful for probing your world Also [I] for Inventory

[G] Hand: Give: Give a item you have to someone or something.

Star Trek Symbol: Options, same as on the ship.

That is a brief rundown of the game and after reading this I do hope you feel less angry about the game throwing you into the deep end form a 30' precipices

This is a classic game from a different time. Its not meant to be easy and requires a bit of wit to get though and you should see the squeal Judgment Rites and its dialog trees. You will immediately think Mass Effect with that one.

While this game is meant to be beatable by most everyone due to the nature of it you will be thrown road blocks that really require thinking or luck to find what item to use where.

And that really is the key to the puzzles. Finding that one item, and locating where it goes. With a bit of action thrown in to keep things lively.

So go out there and have fun with one of the best Point&Click games ever.