Star Trek: The Next Generation - Future's Past

I was pretty harsh on the Star Trek: The Next Generation game on the Game Boy. It's just that I saw what the developers were trying to do, provide an experience equal to the TV show, but incompetence on the fundamentals ruined it. I think now maybe the developers just bit off more than they could chew. There was only so much that could be done with a monochrome screen, eight bits, and two action buttons. Surely the far more powerful and versatile Super Nintendo could deliver the true Next Generation experience, right? Not if Future's Past is any indication.

The plot involves the Enterprise-D investigating increased Romulan activity along the Neutral Zone. Through a series of almost random-feeling missions and numerous VERY random-feeling ship battles, the mystery leads to a civilization long-dead and a doomsday weapon. Honestly, most players won't see where the plot goes because the pacing is absolutely glacial. It takes way too long for the overarching narrative to go somewhere, and I wanted to quit long before learning the location of the weapon.

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Of course, when I wasn't losing my attention from sheer boredom, I was cursing the absolutely terrible interface and controls. I could almost forgive the cumbersome control scheme on the Game Boy game; they did only have two action buttons and two interface buttons to work with after all. The Super Nintendo controller has six action buttons; there are no excuses for controls that suck anymore. Why is the movement so slippery during the ship battles? Why do I have to press both X and Y to open hailing frequencies (when the command could've easily gone to one of those buttons by itself)? Why is choosing away team members so cumbersome? Why is it so hard to hit enemies with phasers during away missions? Why does everyone move so friggin' slow? Why haven't the away team members been programmed with basic survival routines if I'm not directly controlling them? Those questions are just the tip of the iceberg.

Really, the only positives I can give are for the aesthetics. The graphics are quite stunning for the characters, the animations are very fluid, and the settings on the ship and planetside are impressively detailed. The sound effects sound ripped right from the show, and the 16-bit rendition of the show's theme song is quite good. The game is an amazing technical display for the Super Nintendo, but that's all it is.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Future's Past managed to be worse than the Next Generation game on the Game Boy. The older game had limited technology. This one didn't have that excuse. The slow pacing would've been hard enough to swallow, but throwing in awful controls and an annoying interface made me want to vaporize it long before I found out where the plot was going. Just stick to the show.