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Star Trek: The Next Generation
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Table of Contents:
01 - Introduction
02 - General gameplay
03 - General mission structure
04 - Specific mission elements
04a - Combat
04b - Entering orbit
04c - Boosting power to a system
04d - Using the transport beam
05 - Rank progression and passwords
06 - FAQ
07 - Helpful tips
08 - Other junk
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Version History:
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I first played Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was a kid, and I didn't
really appreciate it at the time. I thought it was too hard to understand what
was happening, and what I was expected to do. I didn't have the manual, which
would have been a huge help in some of the more obscure parts of the game.
Considering this is a game based off a TV show, it's a very good game. It
could have been yet another sloppy side-scrolling platform game, where they
just tell you "uhh, you're Commander Riker on an away mission. Shoot all the
bad guys with your phaser." And it would have gone in the pile with the rest
of the low-effort platformers. But this game does a decent job of translating
the TV show into a playable game with a similar feel.
The game seems very complex at first, but if you can push past the steep
learning curve, it's not bad at all.
NES game - As far as I can tell, the Game Boy version is almost an exact port
of the NES game. Just a few minor visual differences. So any tips or details
you can find about the NES version should apply here as well.
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02 - General gameplay
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According to the manual, you are a Starfleet cadet, training in a holodeck
simulation. But aside from Captian Picard telling you what you need to do for
each mission, you bascially play as though you are Captain Picard himself.
After you receive your mission, you will see planet Earth, with 5 icons across
the bottom of the screen. Each icon lets you give orders to specific crew
members. Select an icon and press A to talk to each crew member.
Each crew member will have his own set of icons for the various functions he
can complete. Select an icon with left/right, and press A to go deeper into
each function.
Worf
----
- Raise/lower shields
Shields should be raised during combat with other ships, but cannot be
raised if you are trying to use the transport beam. The game will tell you
if the shields need to be lowered.
- Arm/disarm weapons
As far as I can tell, there's never a reason to intentionally disarm the
weapons. Phasers and torpedoes are armed and disarmed together.
Data
----
- Navigate to a different planet/system
Press up/down to select the different systems. Keep pressing down to scroll
through all of your options. Press left/right to select your warp level. You
will see the arrival time for each speed. I have not found any reason to go
slower than warp 9. Sometimes you are limited in how fast you can go, if the
ship is damaged. But if you can, you might as well go super fast.
- Sensors
This will show you a top-down view of the current sector. You can zoom in
and out with UP and DOWN. This screen can also be accessed by pressing START
while in Combat mode.
- Orbit
If you are close enough to a planet, you can attempt to orbit it. See
"Entering orbit" in section 04.
La Forge
--------
- Power boost
Here you can play a mini-game to determine an on-board system to which you
can boost power. See "Boosting power to a system" in section 04.
- Repair
LaForge will automatically conduct repairs on the most important system that
needs repairs. But you can choose which system he repairs if you want to.
- Damage
Here you can see an overall percentage of the status of the ship. Pressing A
will show you a useless graphic of the Enterprise, with damaged parts
blinking.
O'Brien
-------
- Transport stuff up
See "Using the transport beam" in section 04.
- Transport stuff down
No mini-game is necessary to transport people/items off of the Enterprise.
- Intruder
Only applies if Worf tells you an intruder is on board. See "Using the
transport beam" in section 04.
Riker
-----
- Re-cap the mission and see what time it is. Thanks a lot, Riker. I could
replace you with a notepad and a stardate wristwatch.
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03 - General mission structure
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Captain Picard will give you a mission. You need to complete each mission
within a certain amount of in-game time, shown as a "stardate." In many later
levels, there are more pressing matters that can end your mission sooner than
reaching this stardate. You don't usually have to worry about running out of
time.
Every mission starts you at planet Earth, and will require you to travel to
another planet/sector. If you have time, you can come back to Earth to boost
and repair your ship's systems. The manual says these processes are done "more
efficiently" when you're orbiting Earth. I've never actually tried it.
Here are a few examples of missions and the individual steps involved:
Evacuation mission
- Travel to a specific sector.
- Use impulse engines to get close to the planet/starbase/ship.
- If it's a planet, take the Enterprise into orbit around the planet.
- Transport/beam people off the planet/starbase/ship.
Combat mission
- Travel to a specific sector.
- Use impulse engines to get close to the planet/starbase/ship under attack.
- Destroy all enemy ships.
Escort/transport mission
- Travel to a specific sector.
- Use impulse engines to get close to the planet/starbase/ship.
- If it's a planet, take the Enterprise into orbit around the planet.
- Beam up people or things.
- Exit orbit if applicable.
- Travel to another planet/starbase/ship.
- If it's a planet, take the Enterprise into orbit around the planet.
- Beam the people or things down.
These are just examples, you may get something completely different, need to
do more tasks than one, or some details may change.
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04 - Specific mission elements
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04a - Combat
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Combat is the most annoying part of the game. I'm not the only one who
thinks so. If there is a secret to the combat system that I haven't
figured out, I'd love to hear about it.
On the main screen with the 5 icons across the bottom, you can press
SELECT to enter Combat Mode. This changes the controls so that A fires
your phasers, and B launches a photon torpedo. Under normal conditions,
you have an infinite supply of both. Phasers are easier to use, but they
are weaker. Photon torpedoes are stronger, but nearly impossible to aim
without just getting lucky. You cannot "lock on" to a target like on the
TV show.
Combat mode also changes the UP/DOWN buttons to point the ship up and
down. You can't change your impulse speed while in Combat mode; you have
to hit SELECT first if you want to change your impulse speed. Also, the
START button won't pause the game, it will take you to the Scanner screen.
This is actually pretty useful, unless of course you are actually trying
to pause the game.
Combat is a matter of spinning your ship around and trying to shoot enemy
ships. In any mission where you come across enemy ships, you have to
destroy them. There is no diplomacy or any other way. There are some
missions where you have to evacuate passengers off of a ship, and there
may be some "neutral" ships flying around, that you don't have to destroy.
You'll have to develop your own strategies for effectively taking out
enemy ships, because nothing I do seems like the best way to do it. Here's
everything I know, in case it helps anyone:
- I'll fire photon torpedoes here and there, in case I get lucky, but for
the most part I rely on the phasers.
- If a ship is circling around you, just fire at it when it comes around,
following it just a little. Then turn back the other way to anticipate
its next appearance. Trying to chase it all the way around is less
effective.
- If you are not moving at all, the enemy's torpedoes will always hit you.
If you are moving at half or full impulse, they will miss you more
often.
- Fighting two or three enemies at a time is a recipe for failure. (Except
maybe with Ferengi ships. Those are generally weaker and easier.) If you
can manage to just fire at one ship and draw it away from the other(s),
it will be much easier to defeat just one ship, then move on to the
next.
I'm fairly sure I'm missing something, because it's very common for me to
try and rescue a ship which is under attack by 2 or 3 enemy ships, and the
enemies destroy the ship long before I've even defeated one of them. Maybe
I could draw them all away and fight them somewhere else, but defeating 3
enemies at once just doesn't seem possible. Please email me if you know
something I don't.
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04b - Entering orbit
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To take the Enterprise into orbit around a planet, you have to get close
to it. When you first arrive in a sector, you may need to use the sensors
to find the planet. Either go through Data's menus to view the sensor, or
you can press Start while in Combat mode. You may need to look up or down
slightly to find the planet. Center the planet (a dot with brackets around
it) on your display, then press UP to move toward it at half-impulse
speed. Press UP again for full-impulse. When you get close enough, the dot
will grow into a small ball. Then a medium-sized ball. Then a large ball.
Once it has "grown" three times, you are close enough to orbit it.
When you are close enough to the planet, tell Data to orbit the planet.
This will start the "orbiting" mini-game. You have to steer yourself
through all the squares to establish orbit. If a square is off the screen,
an arrow will point you toward it. Each square will expand out when you
are close enough to it. The key to success is trying to stay in the very
center of the square when it is fully "expanded." Try to be in the middle
when the square grows to the size of the screen itself. You'll hear a
sound to tell you if you did well or not, and the bars at the bottom will
show how close you were to the center of each square. SHORT bars are good.
TALL bars are bad.
After you pass all the squares, you may or may not establish an orbit
around the planet, depending on how well you completed the mini-game. If
you didn't succeed, it's really no big deal. Just try it again, and maybe
you'll get easier squares this time. I remember getting really frustrated
with this game as a kid, because I thought it was a huge problem if I
failed. It isn't. Just try it again.
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04c - Boosting power to a system
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Geordi LaForge will let you boost power to either the ship's phasers,
shields, or teleporter, using another mini-game. You do not select which
system you would like to boost before starting the mini-game. In the
mini-game, you will see sparks traveling along wires, and passing through
nodes that either show an 'X' (the spark will switch wires as it passes
through) or an '=' (the spark will not switch wires; it will pass straight
through). You can select and change the symbol on each node.
At the end of the wires, there is a terminal for each of the three systems
you can boost power to.
[P]hasers
[S]hields
[T]eleporter
The terminal that collects the most sparks will be the system that gets
boosted.
The trick to this game is the Pause function. Move your cursor straight to
the bottom where you can see the terminals. Notice that for each terminal,
there are two wires that feed into it, which come from two different
nodes. Note which two nodes feed into the terminal you want; for example,
they may be the Top and Middle node. Then move your cursor over to the set
of nodes BEFORE the final set, I'll call it the second-to-last set. You'll
be using these nodes to direct every spark to the Top or Middle 'final'
nodes.
It may help to switch all of the nodes in the previous set (the horizontal
set) to all '=' to reduce confusion. Now wait for a spark. Once you can
see one coming, pause the game. You can still see everything while paused.
Note which second-to-last node the spark is heading to, and decide which
symbol it needs to show in order to route it to the Top or Middle 'final'
node. It shouldn't matter which one, you just don't want to send it to the
Bottom node. (in this example.) Unpause and make the change quickly. Then
scoot over to the 'final' set of nodes and pause again. Now you can set up
the rest of the spark's path into the desired terminal. Note which wire
the spark is on, and change the final node to direct the spark where you
want it.
Again, Top and Middle is just an example. You'll decide which two 'final'
nodes to focus on in your own game.
There may be as few as 4 sparks, and as many as 7. In later missions where
you tend to get more sparks, you can stop worrying about sparks after you
get 4 sparks into a terminal, because no other terminal will get more than
that. It's also no big deal if you get two sparks too close to each other,
and you only manage to steer one into the right terminal. Just get a
majority.
If LaForge tells you that the Life Support system is failing due to loss
of power, press A to go into the System Boost mini-game, and you'll see
that all terminals show a letter 'L' for Life Support. You will get only 3
sparks. Use the trick above to direct exactly one spark into each
terminal. This will allow LaForge to repair the Life Support system. (if
you don't do the mini-game, Life Support will slowly deteriorate and end
your mission. You can ignore this if your mission is very close to being
finished; otherwise you need to do the mini-game.)
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04d - Using the transport beam
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Remember playing the hot/cold game as a kid? Good. When you enter this
mini-game, you'll see a big grid that scrolls in all directions, a LOCK
meter that shows you how close you are to your next target, a POWER meter
that fills as you're transporting stuff, and a number of total
items/people you need to lock onto. The items/people must be transported
in a specific order, so it doesn't matter if you see something on your
grid; if the LOCK meter isn't full, you have to go find the right one
first.
If you are transporting items, or people who are not panicking, it's just
a matter of scrolling around and checking the LOCK meter to see if you're
getting closer or farther from your target. Hold A to show a cursor on the
screen, and move the cursor to an object to beam it up. You have to hold
the cursor on the target for long enough to fill the POWER meter. If the
POWER meter isn't filling, then you are on the wrong target.
Transporting gets tricky when you're trying to lock onto people who are
panicking. If you're rescuing people from a ship that's about to explode,
for example, then you'll find that nobody is standing still. They run
aimlessly around the grid, making it a little harder to find them and keep
a steady lock on them. If you boost the Transport system with Geordi
LaForge, the POWER meter will fill much quicker, which is helpful for
evacuation missions.
If Worf tells you there is an intruder on the Enterprise, select this
option to beam him... into jail or something? The mini-game is similar to
the regular "beam up" minigame, but you'll need to select different decks
of the Enterprise to try and find the intruder(s). Hold B and press UP or
DOWN to move up and down through the decks of the Enterprise. Sometimes an
intruder will jump decks while you are chasing him. If you are on the
right deck to transport the next intruder, the LOCK meter will at least
show a small sliver. Move through the decks until you see that sliver. The
shields do not have to be lowered to transport an intruder.
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05 - Rank progression and passwords
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As you complete missions, you can rise through various ranks. Missions are
harder at higher ranks. According to the manual, there is a certain number of
missions you have to successfully complete at each rank in order to progress
to the next one, but you are not told what that number is. There's no way to
tell how close you are to achieving the next rank.
I also don't know what happens to your progress when you fail a mission. Every
time I've gotten a promotion, it followed a solid streak of successful
missions. So I'm not sure, but it feels like every time you fail a mission, it
"resets" your progress as though you had just entered your password.
But here are the passwords you can enter to skip to these ranks:
These are things I got stuck on as I played the game, so perhaps this will
help people who are playing for the first time.
I warped to a sector but I don't see anything!
- Warping to a sector doesn't always point you right at your target. Press
SELECT and then START (or talk to Data) to pull up the Sensors. You may need
to press DOWN to zoom out, but you should be able to see the ship or planet
you're looking for. The Enterprise icon should show which way you are
pointed. Hit SELECT and turn to face the target.
The sensor shows me looking right at the planet but I still can't see it!
- You may need to tilt up or down to see the planet/starbase/ship you're
looking for. Also note that the Enterprise icon on the scanner is only shown
facing one of 8 basic directions. So you might not actually be pointed
in the exact right direction.
The orbit mini-game is hard!
- If you fail to achieve orbit, just try again. There are definitely rounds
that are way easier, and some that seem impossible. Remember that you want
the enterprise to pass through the center of each square when it's at its
biggest. Don't start steering toward the next square until you hear the
tone. Look at the bars at the bottom of the screen to see how you're doing.
Short bars are good. If you think you hit a square perfectly, but you get a
tall bar, you're not centering the ship at the right time, or you're
steering away too soon. It's no big deal to just try again until you achieve
orbit.
I'm trying to get close to a ship to evacuate it, but it keeps moving away!
- If a ship is moving away from you, then stay at half-impulse to keep up with
it while you go talk to Chief O'Brien.
How close do I have to be to this planet/starbase/ship?
- Each planet/ship in the game seems to have four "sizes" it's shown at, to
show how close it is to you. It goes dot -> small -> medium -> big. You want
the ship to appear "big" if you're trying to get close enough to transport
things or people off/onto it. You'll typically use impulse engines to get
close enough, then come to a stop so that you don't move past it.
I'm at a sector to evactuate a ship, but there are a bunch of ships!
- If the mission doesn't say anything about any enemy ships or people, then
they are likely neutral and you don't have to destroy them. I've only seen
this in evacuation missions. Typically there are 3 ships between you and the
target ship, and the target looks different than the other 3.
Why did my ship take damage? I'm not fighting anyone.
- Sometimes going into warp is enough to damage the ship. In the later
missions, it's more common for bad stuff to spontaneously happen.
Where did these intruders come from? Did they just appear out of thin air??
- Yes. They just appeared out of thin air. Or thin space.
I have to destroy the enemy ships? I can't negotiate with them or anything?
- Nope, you just have to kill them. This is nothing like the TV show, where
destroying other ships, even really mean enemy ships, is a last resort.
When does the game end?
- There is no known "ending" to the game. Once you achieve the rank of
Captain, you can keep doing missions forever. There is a mission where you
encounter the Borg, that you can only see at Captain rank.
I did everything as quickly and as perfectly as I know how, but I still died!
- This is my biggest complaint about the game. It's common for me to feel like
I'm doing everything right, then still blow up the ship and kill everyone. I
get that I'm not an expert when it comes to perfctly handling combat
missions, but I'm talking about stuff like intruders, where they can tear
the ship apart before I can do anything about it.
In the words of Captian Picard himself, from the episode "Peak Performance":
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness;
that is Star Trek TNG for Game Boy, and probably the NES one too."
- If you 'boost' the phasers or shields with Geordi LaForge, they will already
be armed/raised. I've made the mistake of boosting the shields, then going
to Worf out of habit, and accidentally LOWERING the shields, because I
hadn't deliberately raised them. I wasn't paying enough attention. If you
lower the shields (or disarm the phasers) when they are boosted, they will
NOT be boosted when you raise/arm them again.
- Boosting the phaser system will strengthen your phasers so that enemy ships
take fewer hits to destroy. Boosting the shields allow you to take more hits
from enemies before the ship starts taking damage. Boosting the teleporter
system makes the POWER meter fill more quickly, which is very useful when
the people are scrambling around, and you have to find a lot of them.
- When you select an icon to talk to a crew member, DO NOT PRESS ANYTHING to
"confirm" what they are telling you. All of your controls are exactly the
same as if they were not telling you anything, you simply can't see the
icons beneath the text box. This was a huge problem when I was a kid.
LaForge's icon would blink, so I would select it. He'd say something like
"the torpedo system is damaged" and I would press A, thinking I was
acknowledging his message, to make the text go away. But pressing A just
takes you into the Boosting mini-game. So I thought I was doing something to
repair the torpedoes, wondering where in the world I was supposed to be
directing the sparks. Then when the mini-game was finished, the torpedoes
were just as broken as before, if not more. If a crew member tells you
something, just hit SELECT and continue your game as normal.
- The more you play, the more you'll recognize the same mission structures
coming up again and again. If there's a specific kind of mission you're not
particularly good at, (cough, Klingon combat missions) then just keep
playing through the missions, until you get better at the harder missions,
or finally get a lucky streak of missions that you are consistently good at.
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08 - Other Junk
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This FAQ was written by me; my name is Splain. Copy it if you want, but credit
me.
Comments, questions, or corrections can be sent to peoppozo.msn@com. But, you
know, switch the . and @ around.
