(Link to video)
This point & click adventure game released in 1992 for DOS features the original Star Trek crew (Kirk, Spock, McCoy and redshirt). You play through seven episodes, each assigning you with a mission that you need to complete in order to go on with the next mission.
This game is considered one of the best games of its time, and one of the best Star Trek games. The game received a sequel Star Trek: Judgement Rites that offers more episodes and world-exploring. If you do not want to play but are interested, I recommend watching one of the longplays on Youtube.

Objectives

  • Uses death/Takes damage to save time
    • I let my ship get beaten in the beginning tutorial
    • Redshirt is killed in mission 5
  • Genre: Adventure
  • Emulator used: Enhanced JPC-rr v11.2

Getting the game to run

Here I explain how to build the game image and set up JPC-rr to run the game.
  1. Obtain the game (Floppy version)
  2. In JPC-rr, go to Drives->Import Image
    The following files must be included:

    DATA.001
    DATA.DIR
    DATA.RUN
    INTRPLAY.CFG
    SAVEGAME.NEW
    SETUP.EXE
    STARTREK.EXE

    Set Image Type: Hard Disk
    Set Tracks to 64 (I did this because I assumed it would help with performance/memory).
    Save the game image.
  3. System->Assemble
    Fda image: FreeDOS
    Fdd image: Game image

    Keep everything as is and click Assemble.
  4. System->Start
  5. Load the movie

Version choice

Two versions exist, Floppy and CD-ROM.
Floppy Disk CD-ROM
* Released in 1992
* Very short mission 7
* Released in 1993
* Features improved sounds / voices
* In response to fans complaining, mission 7 has been extended
The Floppy version was chosen for this run for the following reasons:
  1. The CD-DA audio is not emulated in JPC-rr,
  2. getting the CD version to run is difficult (but not impossible). It requires a FreeDOS image that installs the CD-ROM driver, see here for more details.
  3. the Floppy version has a shorter final mission. The wikipedia article claims that the CD version lets you choose whether you want to play the long or the short version of the mission, but I have not come across such a choice option in any of my CD playthroughs... If it is discovered that you can play the short version, and JPC-rr can one day emulate CD-DA audio, then the CD version should definitely be used.

Run Comments

I've been interested in TASing DOS games for a very long time but JPC-rr has been difficult for me to handle (not knowing if audio is working, not knowing how to create a video, having to use lua to move the mouse cursor). This has been a very frustrating experience and I gave up attempt after attempt.
But recently c-square has hinted me towards his enhanced JPC-rr that made handling the mouse cursor very trivial to do. He and DrD2k9 helped me with getting everything up and running - much thanks to them!
One major problem I ran into was getting sound to work properly. It took a while until I figured out that I need to create dump files of the BIOS section and the game seperately.
I chose Star Trek as my first DOS TAS due to the game's simple nature, it is easy to optimize movement and not many actions are required in addition to controlling the mouse.
During making this run, I found a large amount of interesting glitches, including some dialogue skips that unfortunately almost always lead to dead-ends. I will detail the useful glitches in a section below.

Level Comments

The game starts with a tutorial battle that I lose on purpose.
Some missions feature ship to ship combat. I abuse the cooldown trick (pause the game between shots) to destroy ships quickly.
Episode 1: Demon World
Settlers belonging to a religious sect have reported being attacked by "Demons" near their mines. Kirk must discover the truth behind these "Demons".
We obtain the Klingon's hand and quickly make it through the mine, not caring about the dying miner and the other sick person. After giving the metal key to the creature, the mission ends.
Episode 2: Hijacked
The USS Masada has not reported in. Upon investigation, The Enterprise discovers that the ship has been captured by Elasi Pirates who are holding the crew hostage. Kirk must discover a way to recover the ship and crew unharmed.
We anger the Elasi Captain, causing him to kill hostage after hostage. After five hostages are killed, Starfleet contacts you and tells you your behavior will be reviewed for disciplinary action and you go to the next episode.
Episode 3: Love's Labour Jeopardized
Romulans have crossed the Neutral Zone and attacked the Federation Research Station Ark 7. Unfortunately, the attack has created a biohazard situation that Enterprise crew must deal with, as well as the Romulans.
We play through this mission normally for the most part, creating the TLTDH gas to render the Romulans unconscious and creating a cure against the Oroborus virus. Funnily, the TAS is going so fast that Kirk doesn't manage to untie Carol in the end.
Episode 4: Another Fine Mess
When responding to a distress call from a ship under attack by pirates, the Enterprise discovers none other than Harry Mudd is involved. He is traced to a derelict alien spacecraft. The Enterprise crew must discover the connection between the derelict, the pirates and Mudd.
We do not give a damn about the ship, the pirates and Mudd and just do whatever actions necessary to allow us to beam back to the Enterprise.
Episode 5: Feathered Serpent
A Klingon battle fleet is about to cross into Federation space, in pursuit of a "War Criminal". The Enterprise must find this "War Criminal" to prevent a war.
The war criminal named Quetzelcoatl is a demi-god who has spread his philosophy of peace to the nearby Klingon planet Hrakkour, which caused Admiral Vlict, commander of the Klingon fleet, to kill off life on Hrakkour due to the "danger" posed by Quetzelcoatl's philosophy.
After Quetzelcoatl makes us undergo a series of trials, we would help him and save him from death by Klingon "justice". But in this run we just hand him over and peace out.
Episode 6: That Old Devil Moon
Strange power readings have been detected from a large asteroid approaching a pre-warp star system. The Enterprise discovers an ancient nuclear missile base that does not realize that the war ended 1000 years earlier, and must prevent it from destroying the native civilization a second time.
This mission is pretty straight-forward and we play through it normally.
Episode 7: Vengeance
The Enterprise, responding to a distress call from the USS Republic, finds it nearly destroyed. Kirk must figure out what destroyed the ship and stop those responsible from striking again.
We don't give a damn and beam right back to the Enterprise.
In the final battle with Breddell and his Enterprise II, I had a bit of trouble optimizing shots but I managed to make it work. My final ranking is 17% which is the worst known possible score ("Pathetic Kirk, go practise or the Enterprise will end up decommissioned soon.").

Techniques and Glitches

I posted about all of my finds on the Game Resource page or the Forum topic. Only the useful tricks will be listed here:
Ship Projectile Trick
You can normally fire the photon shots once every 1.5 sec or so, and the Phaser every 0.8 sec or so. During the downtime, you can pause the game (done in this run by pressing K) and wait until the weapon is ready again. This allows you to completely destroy ships before they can escape from your view. This trick has been found by CDiFan237 and me independently.
Use other crew members
You can make your crew members perform a simple "use" action, allowing you to open something or use a machine's controls. This allows two things going on at the same time.
Use of hotkeys
While on a planet or station, you can press Escape or right-click (I believe) to bring up a verb menu. But you can also:
press L to get the "Look" cursor,
U to get the "Use" cursor,
W to get the "Walk" cursor,
G to get the "Get" cursor and
T to get the "Talk" cursor directly.

If you have the Use cursor, you can press I to go to your inventory instantly.

While in the ship, you can:
press N to go to the star map,
V to go into first person view,
K to bring up Kirk's menu, allowing you to beam over or save the game,
W to arm weapons,
S to raise shields,
O to orbit a planet,
H to hail a nearby ship/station, ...

Having perfect control over these keys speeds things up a lot in the TAS.
Pathing
When clicking on a door, Kirk may not walk directly to it but go a point in a room and then change direction. It is more optimal to make Kirk go to the door in an as straight as possible way, by first clicking on a point on the floor and then on the door.
Do an action during waiting time
In the ship, there are often instances where you have to wait 2 seconds before the next message shows up. The hotkeys will be disabled. But pressing F3 (which switches the cursor from the window to your crew) and clicking on your crew will still allow you to do things such as beaming, orbiting a planet, etc. In some instances this can skip dialogue and save time, in other instances beaming or orbiting does nothing at all.

This trick was discovered late into the run, at the end of mission 5, and therefore it could have uses earlier in the game that haven't been discovered yet (I'd like to look into this soon).


Thanks

  • slamo, Ilari, c-square, DrD2k9 for their thorough help and work.
  • Rasitalon for his speedrun. It was thanks to him that I learned about being able to press I after pressing U (in order to quickly select items to use).
  • L-1011 Widebody for his "The Adventures of Captain James T. Jerkface" video series and other Star Trek videos.
  • Everyone I forgot
I'm interested in running more DOS games in the future!

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: The movie looks well enough made. Entertainment-wise, viewer response was not great, with the movie generally looking rather slow and uneventful. Accepting for the Vault.
fsvgm777: Processing (soon(tm))

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5850: MUGG's DOS Star Trek: 25th Anniversary in 13:33.18
DrD2k9
He/Him
Editor, Expert player, Judge (2037)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1009
Location: US
Just a quick comment on Version Choice. I still have been unable to get the CD version of this particular game to work. It may be due to the CD-DA issue, or other settings. I have gotten some degree of success with other CD based games in JPC-rr (see forum post linked in submission text). Thus it is currently still 'impossible' to run the CD version of the game in JPC-rr (but that doesn't mean it will always be). As such, this run's use of the floppy version should not be used as grounds for rejection. Looking forward to watching this...will vote after I do.
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
DrD2k9
He/Him
Editor, Expert player, Judge (2037)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1009
Location: US
Looks pretty well done. Honestly it's not as entertaining as I'd hoped. Primarily because it seemed like there was as much time spent watching repeated cutscenes as there was watching actual game play....but that's not your fault. As far as voting, I'm borderline between 'meh' and 'yes'; but I'll give it a 'yes' simply because I understand how much of a pain DOS TASing can be (which adds a bit to impressiveness/entertainment in my opinion). Congrats on your first DOS TAS. Side Note: I don't remember the crew of the Enterprise having quite the Arnold physique.
GJTASer2018
He/Him
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
DrD2k9 wrote:
I don't remember the crew of the Enterprise having quite the Arnold physique.
It's better than what was going on really. The shirts would keep shrinking (every time they were washed) while Shatner's waistline kept expanding over the course of a season. And you wonder why so many of Kirk's shots were framed from the chest up. :P Anyways, this is a neat TAS. Hope to see a "100%" version some time in the future!
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Active player (372)
Joined: 9/25/2011
Posts: 652
Congrats on your first DOS TAS, MUGG! Well done. I'm glad you took this on, and I'm looking forward to your next one!
L1011Widebody
He/Him
Joined: 3/12/2018
Posts: 3
Hello there! A link to this TAS was shared to me by a friend, and when I saw you were inspired by my James T. Jerkface videos, I just had to register just to say thank you so much, and I am glad you enjoyed my series! And found it inspirational. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun to make them. It's an honor to see my work have such an effect. Thank you again! :-)
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
L1011Widebody wrote:
Hello there! A link to this TAS was shared to me by a friend, and when I saw you were inspired by my James T. Jerkface videos, I just had to register just to say thank you so much, and I am glad you enjoyed my series! And found it inspirational. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun to make them. It's an honor to see my work have such an effect. Thank you again! :-)
I'm very glad to see your message! Thanks It's a nice thing to meet other people who are interested in those old games. And I didn't know about Judgment Rites until 1 month ago; I'd like to play through it at some point. On that note, I would look forward to a Jerkface series of Judgment Rites, although I'm aware that it depends on your motivation and time. I'm sure there are loads of funny (bad) scenarios to discover in Judgment Rites. Again, thanks for your message
L1011Widebody
He/Him
Joined: 3/12/2018
Posts: 3
MUGG wrote:
L1011Widebody wrote:
Hello there! A link to this TAS was shared to me by a friend, and when I saw you were inspired by my James T. Jerkface videos, I just had to register just to say thank you so much, and I am glad you enjoyed my series! And found it inspirational. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun to make them. It's an honor to see my work have such an effect. Thank you again! :-)
I'm very glad to see your message! Thanks It's a nice thing to meet other people who are interested in those old games. And I didn't know about Judgment Rites until 1 month ago; I'd like to play through it at some point. On that note, I would look forward to a Jerkface series of Judgment Rites, although I'm aware that it depends on your motivation and time. I'm sure there are loads of funny (bad) scenarios to discover in Judgment Rites. Again, thanks for your message
I couldn't be more thrilled with the reception to my series of videos of these old Star Trek games. They're really fantastic, they play out just like episodes of the television show. The two games are under-appreciated gems that still hold up today (even the space combat is thrilling and challenging). I'd advise anyone who has an interest in Star Trek to try and pick up a copy of these games. You won't be disappointed. Oddly, I actually wound up with the CD versions of these games without realizing there *was* a floppy disk version. The voice-acting adds so much to the game, but I might trade it for a shortened version of Vengeance... goodness they made that stupidly hard and complicated (but rewarding) in the CD version. I am pleased by how many people have enjoyed the Adventures of James T. Jerkface, it was a lot of work to do 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites is... about a dozen times bigger. I'm just not quite sure how to tackle it but I really really want to. I'm thinking of doing a 'straight' Let's Play playthrough of it, and doing an alternate version of each mission as James T. Jerkface. If you don't know, Judgment Rites will remove you from command if you screw up too much. It became so time consuming doing the editing on 25th Anniversary, I don't even want to think about the effort it would take to cut and edit Judgment Rites... I would probably do Jerkface with audio commentary in a more straight-forward LP style... Regardless, it is incredibly flattering to find my work being such inspiration. I should get in on a Let's Play of Judgment Rites soon.
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
I'm flattered that you are flattered... :P I know the CD version's voices and ambient music really add to the game. But in TAS, voices would be skipped and ambient music alone is just not enough to justify the long episode 7 (if the CD version was available for TASing to begin with, that is).
L1011Widebody wrote:
I'm thinking of doing a 'straight' Let's Play playthrough of it, and doing an alternate version of each mission as James T. Jerkface. (...) I should get in on a Let's Play of Judgment Rites soon.
I thought you already did one here. I'm not sure I understand, but I would suggest not to change the "recipe" of the idea behind James T. Jerk too much. A compilation of clips that delves into funny dialogues and bad scenarios is what was so successful the first time around. Interesting that Judgment Rites actually does not let you go on if you mess up, unlike 25th Anniversary. Please keep us posted, here or in the Star Trek topic. I think James T. Jerkface is at least as entertaining as a TAS would be! :)
Skilled player (1403)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1976
Location: Making an escape
It's kinda humorous how Kirk & Co just roll through these missions without actually solving anything. Any chance for a 100% run?
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
L1011Widebody
He/Him
Joined: 3/12/2018
Posts: 3
MUGG wrote:
I'm flattered that you are flattered... :P I know the CD version's voices and ambient music really add to the game. But in TAS, voices would be skipped and ambient music alone is just not enough to justify the long episode 7 (if the CD version was available for TASing to begin with, that is).
L1011Widebody wrote:
I'm thinking of doing a 'straight' Let's Play playthrough of it, and doing an alternate version of each mission as James T. Jerkface. (...) I should get in on a Let's Play of Judgment Rites soon.
I thought you already did one here. I'm not sure I understand, but I would suggest not to change the "recipe" of the idea behind James T. Jerk too much. A compilation of clips that delves into funny dialogues and bad scenarios is what was so successful the first time around. Interesting that Judgment Rites actually does not let you go on if you mess up, unlike 25th Anniversary. Please keep us posted, here or in the Star Trek topic. I think James T. Jerkface is at least as entertaining as a TAS would be! :)
What I was thinking of -- and it was fun but very very WERY taxing 'shut up- Chekov' XD -- was that since I already played the game straight through (It's a really wonderful game by the way, have I mentioned that?) is more of a display 0f what is in the game and everything. This game is incredible (and the last time we'll hear Spock and Dr. McCoy having a disagreement. Some sort of Mirror Universe... I have so many ideas! Thank you for reigniting my interest in this game.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3688] DOS Star Trek: 25th Anniversary by MUGG in 13:33.18
Editor, Expert player (2310)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3854
Location: Germany
L1011Widebody, who has inspired the making of this run, has passed away. https://twitter.com/L1011Widebody I'm really saddened by this... My deepest condolences to his family and friends.