The missions of this are similar to the SNES game. It was made for the Sega 32X add-on for the Mega Drive. The biggest difference for this is the graphics, which look much cleaner and less pixelated and the 3D models have a lot more texture and detail to them.

Playing this game on a standard 3-button Mega Drive controller is a nightmare as you need to press combinations for basic features, but the 6-button is good – although using the face buttons to tilt instead of shoulder buttons isn’t as intuitive (that said, you rarely need to do it). The one thing I couldn’t work out to do is how to pause the game.

Another addition to this version is pool, which you can play against your fellow cadets (or a second player). There’s not really a lot to it, it’s just a standard top down pool game.

The control nitpicks aside, this is a really nice version of the game. The wider screen gives a bigger view. The bridge itself looks more like an actual starship bridge rather than the more video game look of the SNES one.

I was quite impressed by this game. It’s a series of 20 simulations (plus some bonus ones) where you command a team of Starfleet Academy students. The main buttons are used for flying (thankfully you can turn off inverted controls) and weapons, with the L and R buttons being used to spin the ship, which is more control than previous games. Press the select button and the viewscreen will bring up a menu where you can give commands to your crew – sensors, red alert, hailing and things like that.

The missions start off with little focus on combat, one has you moving a radioactive asteroid from the planet, the most interesting one has you investigate a protostar which ends up with contact with a new species, others have you investigate missing/destroyed ships. A few of them let you complete your objective and leave an area without defeating the enemies there.

Each mission concludes with the lesson it was built to teach, and will also give you a score based on your performance, telling you anything you did wrong (I kept forgetting to cancel red alert when going back to starbase). If you fail and get a score of zero, you’re supposed to carry on finishing the current set of 5 missions and redoing all of them if you don’t reach 75% (or just use the passwords to reload the mission – which makes it strange that it isn’t just an option).

After you complete the 20 missions you get your final mission: deliver some supplies. When you start, you get hailed by a ship called the Kobayashi Maru, which is losing power but has stranded into the neutral zone. I was surprised that you aren’t forced into combat and I was able to choose the option of getting higher ups to ask the Klingons to help, as I don’t think the mission is worth starting a war over. You can also enter codes in the character creation (it’s just male/female and some pre-set names) to unlock names. If you play as James T. Kirk, you get to play an alternate version of the test.

While the later mission are mores combat focused, which still feels a bit clunky as you can only fire directly forwards, I found it to be a mostly enjoyable game. It also has some very early 3D, and they’ve done well with the limited resources of the SNES.