We’ve spent more than enough time telling you about how ship combat works in Star Trek Online — now it’s time to show you.

We’ve been harping on the space combat in Star Trek Online for quite some time, and now Cryptic gives you a look at what we’re so excited about. It’s possibly the best video game representation of Star Trek space battles so far, and utilising bridge officers as special powers and abilities during combat is rather brilliant.

Each bundle comes with an Elite console and an extra controller. What it doesn’t come with is an actual DVD — the “movie” part of the bundle is on a USB stick. Additionally, the Star Trek bundle includes 800 Microsoft points “to download Star Trek PDLC.”

MCV also reports:

Pricing is not yet known, nor is the exact release date or price. it is assumed the packs will appear once the respective movies’ DVDs are released, which are November 16th for Star Trek and November 30th for Transformers.

We’ve got a query in with a Paramount Pictures representative on whether or not the US might be getting one or both of the bundles. Mind you, Revenge of the Fallen is already out Stateside and Star Trek doesn’t hit shelves ’til November 17. Which would you rather see in your living room?

New UK 360 bundles revealed [MCV]
Image Cred

In the midst of Brian Ashcraft’s superb coverage of all things Final Fantasy XIII, I saw his post that featured this:

And it made me think of this:

And this:

Etc.

(And, yes, I see that commenters under the Elixir post spotted it to. I’m not the only one who saw those movies.)

Star Trek posters via MovieGoods.com. Font image via this Star Trek font site.

That is according to a news release, but it couldn’t get any more specific about the release date than “late summer 2009.” The release also said it’s on the way “later this year” for the PC.

Fahey didn’t review the XBLA game well, so, I’m not sure that any additions it plans for the PSN version will be enough to pump up a basic top-down space shooter.

Star Trek D-A-C PS3 Version Confirmed and Screens [Gamers Hell]

What better way to market the latest version of EA’s life simulation series than to tap into one of the biggest movies of the year?

While I am a little disappointed at the lack of pointy-ear options indicated by this Star Trek send-up, I was rather ticked by the red shirts dying horrible deaths, so it pretty much balances itself out. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me rush out to purchase The Sims 3 at launch, only to realise after a few minutes of tinkering that there is no way I will ever have the time or talent to create anything this good.

There’s much that the Star Trek tells us about the future of collared shirts, the U.N. and torpedoes, but we’ve been trying to figure out what it says about the future of games.

Sadly, the folks at Bad Robot, production company behind this weekend’s Star Trek movie, were not able to tell us this week whether the era of James T. Kirk has room for a robust video game console market.

Is there a PlayStation on the Enterprise? We may never know.

But we do have some evidence that video games, unlike money (sort of), won’t be eliminated from the future as rendered by the various incarnations of Star Trek.

At a meeting with some game developers this week, I batted around some theories. Some of them — people more expert at Star Trek than I — cited some examples of video games in the Trek future.

A 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled The Game featured a virtual reality game that was played with a headset and was taking over the minds of the crew. (See the trailer above). The polygon count of the game wasn’t all that great, suggesting that the Wii approach of gameplay-over-graphics may continue to win out even in the 24th century. The episode also implies in the future video games actually will be bad for you.

Several Star Trek fans consulted for this post argued that the famous virtual reality Star Trek chambers, the holodecks, are themselves the ultimate video game consoles. The real-time lighting and bump-mapping in the holodeck appears to be quite good.

That is, alas, all we’ve been able to dig up so far. Word has it that the new Star Trek movie features no video games.

But surely video games are the future? We’re not destined to go a world dominated by books and music as the chief cultural forms again, are we?

Just as J.J. Abrams’ new film seeks to refresh the aging franchise with a fresh look at an older story, Star Trek video game developers over the years have tried again and again to deliver a new experience to fans, expanding the universe beyond the television series and movies. Some stayed true to the source material and succeeded heartily, while others took risks with varied results.

Let’s bodly go and explore best and worst in Star Trek video games, starting with the very first.

The First
Star Trek Text Game (1971)
Star Trek has long been a staple of geek culture, so it makes perfect sense that one of the earliest television tie-in games be based on the classic science fiction series. Believed to have been created by Mike Mayfield in 1971 on a SDS Sigma 7, the simple, unlicensed text-based strategic combat simulator saw players entering text commands in order to navigate the USS Enterprise around a grid-based map, ridding the galaxy of the Klingon menace.

The Best
What determines a good Star Trek game? Is it space combat? Character interaction? Story? A combination of all three? Over the years there have been plenty of adequate Star Trek games, but three shine particularly brightly.

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (2000 – Raven Software)
From what is generally considered one of the two worst Star Trek television series comes one of the best video games in the franchise’s history, in the unlikely form of a first-person shooter. The game managed to strike a delicate balance between character interaction and intense shooter gameplay, with beautiful visuals (for the time) courtesy of the id Tech 3 engine. Elite Force used the first-person perspective to immerse players in the Trek universe, while multiplayer that rivaled that of Quake III kept the more competitive players contentedly killing each other in the background.

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992 – Interplay)
Star Trek PC games were generally ho-hum affairs until Interplay dished up this DOS classic in 1992. At its most basic, Star Trek is about space battles and character-driven adventure, so Interplay married the two in Star Trek: 25th Anniversary with amazing results. Like the show, the game was split up into several episodes, with flight sim-like ship combat woven together with adventure game segments to deliver what many fans consider to be the most authentic Star Trek game experience ever created. Even better, the CD version of the game featured the voices of the majority of the original show cast, making an excellent title even better.

Interplay followed up the 25th Anniversary game with Star Trek: Judgment Rites, continuing the story and making the ship combat sections options for those who preferred the adventure segments. Both games are still quite enjoyable today.

Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002 – Totally Games0
Star Trek: Bridge Commander was a delightfully new take on the standard Star Trek space combat simulator. Rather than simply having players direct a ship’s actions, Bridge Commander has players step into the shoes of a new starship captain, delivering orders to the various Bridge officers as a “real” starship captain would. While the option to switch to an external view of the ship and handle things yourself was present, the game truly shined on the bridge, transforming countless swiveling computer chairs into luxurious captain’s seats in the minds of fans across North America and Europe.

The Worst
Star Trek: Shattered Universe (2004 – Starsphere Interactive)
There have been plenty of Star Trek titles one could consider bad, but there is one in particular that raises sucking to an entirely new level. Star Trek: Shattered Universe took one of the most intriguing themes running throughout the length of Star Trek history and pretty much crapped all over it. Ever since the Mirror, Mirror episode of the original series, fans have longed for a chance to explore the dark side of Trek to a fuller extent. Instead of giving them that chance, developer Starsphere Interactive delivered a crappy shooter with Star Trek trappings slapped on that even Sulu-fueled cut scenes couldn’t save. One of the biggest disappointments in the series since the opening theme to Star Trek: Enterprise.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars (2001 – Gizmo Games)
An intriguing mix of real-time strategy and space combat that followed the war between the United Federation of Planets and the invading Dominion Alliance in the last three seasons of Deep Space Nine, this PC release fell flat. Even once the numerous bugs caused by a rushed release were cleared up, regular crashing and just plain boring execution made Dominion Wars a Star Trek title that fans loved to hate.

So where does the new J.J. Abrams movie rank, when compared to the more interactive Star Trek experience that game developers have delivered to us over the years? Fans all over the world are finding out as we speak. Feel free to give us your thoughts on the new movie and the old games in our comment section below.

We asked why.

Big movies get video game adaptations, most of the time. For better or worse.

But that’s not happening with this weekend’s Star Trek film, which is getting the spin-off space-combat game Star Tek D-A-C but no big-game adaptation.

The official reason for the lack of a game based on the events of J.J. Abrams’ Kirk adventure is that there wasn’t enough time to make a great full-sized game.

“We certainly wouldn’t have done a better job telling the story than the filmmakers would,” D-A-C producer Ben Hoyt told me as he demoed the game for Kotaku on a Paramount floor in a Times Square skyscraper this morning.

Hoyt said the D-A-C team deliberately tried to not re-tell the events of the film, focusing on making their top-down, multiplayer-centric space-combat game that has three modes, seven maps and no plot.

Hoyt’s proud of the downloadable game, but says that nothing grander was possible. “The amount of time it takes to do a full-scale [movie] game and to make a film don’t line up well,” he said. “I think there’s a strong correlation between that and the fact that games based on films have a spotty track record.”

That philosophy led to the creation of D-A-C instead.

Some other notable movies are not being adapted to games. This spring’s Watchmen game took the same spin-off approach as Star Trek D-A-C does.

But the stakeholders behind some other big movies this season, including X-Men: Origins and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — both of which are getting full-game adaptations — are moving ahead with full film-to-game adaptations.

Gamers and movie-goers alike can vote on which approach they prefer by choosing how to spend their money.

And that’s probably for the best. Unless we’re dogfighting in space—whether that be in real-time or in some Starfleet Battles turn-based geek out—or hacking up dishonorable cowards in a bat’leth-based Klingon fighting sim, I’m not so sure I want to spend that much time recreating the events of Star Trek. Rarely, if ever, do I feel the need to hang out on the bridge or shimmy through a Jefferies tube.

So space battles it is! This is the first Star Trek D-A-C trailer, one that you might’ve caught during last week’s GameTrailers TV. If not, engage.

The uniforms are available to PlayStation Home users as part of a competition that will challenge those who take part in the majesty of Home to create look-alike avatars for Kirk, Uhura, and Sulu. What can you win? Star Trek stuff for your Home apartment! Beam your Home friends over and look at your spoils, should you win.

Unfortunately, the Star Trek contest is limited to PlayStation fans located in the real-world continent of Europe. But should be a representative of this mystical land, read on for the contest’s rules and regulations. I’m off to grab a virtual Starfleet uniform!

1. Collect the STAR TREK Starfleet uniforms now available for free in the Threads Store in PlayStation Home.

2. Create a look-alike avatar for only one of the STAR TREK leading characters Kirk, Uhura, or Sulu using the character customisation tools in PlayStation Home. Reference images can be downloaded here

3. Using a digital camera, take three pictures of your avatar on screen: one close-up headshot, one side-on headshot and one full length body shot.

4. Upload your three images to Flickr, tag them “Star Trek Avatar Contest”, make sure to fill out the picture descriptions with your PSN ID, and submit them to the following Flickr group. Once approved, they will appear in the group pool and you are officially entered into the competition.

5. Entrants are asked to submit one entry (Kirk, Uhura, or Sulu) by the deadline of 7pm GMT, Friday. May 1st 2009. A winner will be chosen for each character and announced on Friday May 8th 2009 on the Silverscreen blog and the SCEE PlayStation Home forum.