Aside from its Trek background, Klingon Honor Guard brings nothing new to the first-person- shooter table. While some Trek fans loudly proclaim it's as good as other shooters of the day (it shipped in October 1998), the general consensus among reviewers is that those are about the only folks who hold that opinion. Once again, MicroProse had seemingly squandered the valuable Trek franchise on a marginal game. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Birth of the Federation But the company's real strength has always been strategy games, and for its next Star Trek title it decided to play to that strength. Released last May, Star Trek: The Next Generation - Birth of the Federation didn't attempt at all to re-create the experience of the appeal of the TV shows or movies - there's nary a star to be found. Its appeal is similar to that of Starfleet Command in that it lets you immerse yourself in the Star Trek universe you've created inside your own head as you set out on galactic expansion and conquest. But Birth of the Federation goes beyond mere combat; as in Master of Orion, Alpha Centauri, and other space-conquest strategy titles, you're also in charge of all aspects of the empire: resource management, research and development, intelligence gathering, and more. Click to enlarge But be forewarned: This is a game of intense micromanagement, and the game's obtuse interface isn't exactly what you'd call inviting (the issue of some display anomalies doesn't help the newbie get into the swing of things either). For those who love Star Trek but aren't experienced with this sort of fare, Birth of the Federation holds little appeal. With no plans for new Star Trek games from MicroProse, this is definitely a "not with a bang but a whimper" climax to a story that began so promisingly with the first peeks at A Final Unity those many years ago. Simon & Schuster Interactive The Kobayashi Alternative and The Promethean Prophecy Interplay. MicroProse. Spectrum Holobyte. Activision. When you say Star Trek game, these are the publishers that immediately come to mind. But there's one software publisher that brought Star Trek to personal computers long before they did and which has released more Trek-oriented titles than any other company. It's Simon & Schuster, a company whose name used to conjure only images of best-selling books - so it's only fitting that its very first Star Trek game was a 1985 text-based adventure written by sci-fi and fantasy novelist Diane Duane. Unlike those text-based combat games played through the 1970s and 1980s, Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative was officially licensed (Duane has authored a number of Star Trek novels as well), so everyone's faves from the original series were able to make an appearance. Simon & Schuster's next entry, also written by Duane, was The Promethean Prophecy; it was released for PCs, Commodore 64s, Apple IIs, and even Atari 8-bit systems a year after The Kobayashi Alternative. The Rebel Universe By the late '80s, graphics had become commonplace, and the next Star Trek game from Simon & Schuster attempted to take advantage of the new technology. But while 1988's The Rebel Universe earned the distinction of being the first Star Trek graphic adventure, its garish colors and drab storyline have made it fade into the mists of graphic-adventuring history. In fact, four longtime industry veterans consulted for this story all remembered a "very ugly" Star Trek adventure from the late 1980s, but none could recall the name. Next: Interactive manuals and movies