Genre: First Person Shooter, Strategy
Release Year: 1997
Developer: MicroProse
Publisher: MicroProse
Age Rating: 12+
Playability Status: Unplayable
Tested On: Windows 8 x64, Windows XP
Availability: Copyright retained - Out of print/unavailable
If the only question you ever thought was hard was “Do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?” then the 1994 film Star Trek – Generations would definitely have had you firing your photons. At least until you went to see it of course, as perhaps predictably the movie was quite mediocre. While you can still easily watch the movie on Netflix, playing the game of the movie is somewhat harder and despite our best efforts we haven’t been able to get trekking with this one.
Installation
The game would not install at all on our Windows 8 PC. The installer simply exited before it even started. Using our Windows XP virtual machine, we were able to install the game. If the installation appears to stall, make sure to close the readme file that may open at the start of installation. During installation you will be asked if you want to install Direct X version 3, you should decline this invitation. We also recommend doing the full/complete installation.
Running the game
Before attempting to run the game, you should set the compatibility mode options to run the game in compatibility mode for Windows 95. See this tutorial if you do not know how to set these options.
Even with compatibility mode set, the game did not run correctly. In the Stellar Cartography section of the game, the graphics for Captain Picard and Data flickered on and off, making this section of the game difficult to enjoy. When attempting to beam down to the space station to complete the first mission, the game simply crashed.
One slightly surreal workaround was suggested online. Some users claim to have the missions loading by clicking the screen frantically with the left and right mouse buttons as soon as you choose to beam down. We were not able to get this to work, however.
Can you submit a fix?
Know how to get this game working? Help the community and let us know in the comments below.
when the screen fade to mission just right click and it should work we it did for me
This will install on and run on Windows 10 32 bit (if set to w95 or w98 compatibility) but not on 64 bit. The reason is because setup.exe on the CD is a 16bit stub which cannot run in 64 bit Windows. If you could install it, it would probably work.
Believe me there’s way more issues with this one than just the installer.
Reduce your virtual machine’s CPU speed, either directly set it to under 1ghz or set it’s maxium utilization to somewhere between 40%-60%.
Then right click, rapidly, as you trigger a transition between scenes and it should work. So long as you get to the loading screen, it worked. Remember to save regularly though, in case you forget to rapidly click and loose a bunch of progress.
The reason the fix didn’t work for you is simply down to reaction time, slowing the virtual machine down gives you more time to catch it.
I’ve realised that you must hold down the left mouse button and click the right mouse button repeatedly and this will make the mission load instead of crashing