Star Trek: 25th Anniversary is an adventure video game developed and published by Interplay Productions in 1992, based on the Star Trek universe. The game chronicles various missions of James T. Kirk and his crew of the USS Enterprise. Its 1993 sequel, Star Trek: Judgment Rites, continues and concludes this two-game series.
The game was originally released on floppy disks. It was later rereleased on CD-ROM with expansions as well as enhanced audio including the entire principal cast of the original television series performing the game's dialogue.
Gameplay
The player takes on the role of Captain James T. Kirk on board the USS Enterprise, a Starfleet vessel as seen in the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Original Series. It is split into two main modes, a main bridge view, and a third-person mode whenever an away team is transported to a planet or space station.
The controls on the bridge are split across the crew, with Montgomery Scott allowing access to the shield and power controls, Pavel Chekov controlling navigation and weapons, Hikaru Sulu controlling the orbit of the ship, and Nyota Uhura enabling the player to send and receive messages. When the game was ported to the Amiga for a 1994 release, it was restricted to the Amiga 1200 and 4000 models with hard-drive only, which was uncommon at that time on these machines.
Following a deal with CBS, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary was subsequently re-released on the distribution network GOG.com, with additional German and French subtitles, on 7 May 2015 alongside Star Trek: Judgment Rites and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux. Shortly after, Interplay Entertainment also re-released Star Trek: 25th Anniversary to the distribution network Steam, however, only for Microsoft Windows and without subtitles. Both sequels followed the game to Steam the day after, 8 May 2015, respectively. A fangame combining 25th Anniversary and Super Star Trek was released in 2023.
Reception
Together with Star Trek: Judgment Rites, 25th Anniversary sold more than 300,000 copies by April 1994. 25th Anniversary by itself ultimately sold more than 350,000 units and was a commercial hit, according to PC Player. The original PC version of 25th Anniversary was received positively by the critics; the review in Computer Gaming World stated that 25th Anniversary was "the most outstanding Star Trek yet produced for the computer". The graphics and sound audio were praised, and concluded that "for this Trek-fanatic-turned-reviewer, [the game]'s major shortcoming is that it is over too soon". Frank O'Connor in his review for Computer and Video Games said that "this is the first one to deliver" on the promise of a good Star Trek game. He praised detailing of the sprites and the authentic music, calling it "one of the most involving and entertaining games of its type".
Next Generation reviewed the Macintosh version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "If you like Star Trek, you've just gotta have this game."
Stew Shearer reviewed the game after its release on GOG.com in 2015, saying that the plots were "predictable, but a lot of fun" and praised the voice work conducted by the original actors. He said that to his surprise, the game was still "rather enjoyable".
25th Anniversary was nominated for Best Fantasy Roleplaying/Adventure Game at the Compute! Choice Awards in 1993, but lost out to Dune. It has been listed as one of the best video games of the franchise. Mike Fahey, while writing for Kotaku in 2009, listed the game as one of the three best alongside Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force and Star Trek: Bridge Commander, saying that Star Trek games until the release of 25th Anniversary were "generally ho-hum affairs".
In 2016, Tom's Guide ranked Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (PC and Mac version for 1992) as one of the top ten Star Trek games.
Sequels
Following the success of 25th Anniversary, Interplay developed a sequel entitled Star Trek: Judgment Rites. This was set up in the same manner as the original game, with it broken into a series of episodes and the split between the adventure game away team mode and the space combat/flight simulator mode using the same interface.
A fan game based on 25th Anniversary, titled Star Trek Fyne, was released for Windows by JH-Games. The first episode was released on December 27, 2010. A demo version of episode 2 has been released and episode 3 is also planned to be released. The plot of the first episode tasks the Enterprise to search for missing Andorian technicians. Chip magazine described it as a successful adventure game with exciting story and great attention to detail.