Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury

A print advertisement published in 1997 featuring character renders of Kirk, McCoy and Spock that were said to be "as they appear in the game."
Developer(s) Interplay Entertainment
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date(s) Cancelled
Genre(s) Adventure, action
Mode(s) Single-player

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury is a PC game that was in development by Interplay Entertainment in 1997 but was later canceled.

Gameplay

The game is set in the 23rd century and places the player in six different episodes which revolve around ancient secrets in the history of the Vulcan and Romulan races. The episodes allow the player to assume the roles of Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Lt. Sulu, Ensign Pavel Chekov, and Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott. Among the plots in the stories are sabotage and murder in which the fate of Vulcan and the Federation are at stake.[1] The interface for the game revolved around a menu which appears after the mouse button is held down while the cursor is hovering over an object.[2]

Development

The game was announced by Interplay Entertainment on 19 June 1997 and was scheduled to be released on CD-ROM for Windows 95 in November 1997. Interplay had previously produced a number of Star Trek games, including Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and Star Trek: Judgment Rites.[3] The game was developed by Trible Dreams, an in-house division of Interplay.[2]

The storyline was written D. C. Fontana, who was a writer on both Star Trek: The Original Series and season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation,[4] and the script was directed by John Meredyth Lucas who had previously written and directed episodes of The Original Series. Fontana and Lucas had previously collaborated on the episodes "The Enterprise Incident" and "The Ultimate Computer".[2] The entire main cast of The Original Series recorded their voices for the project.[4] Brian Murray was hired to storyboard the game, who suggested such elements as the camera spinning around the Enterprise crew as they used the transporter to merge their original location into their destination.[5]

The game was expensive to create,[4] and used motion capture techniques of clay models for the on-screen 3-D animation.[6][7] The game used the same graphics engine both for normal gameplay and for cutscenes. The quality of the footage was described as similar to the cutscenes in Blade Runner (1997).[2]

It cancelled by February 1999,[8] following the continued departure of staff and because of financial problems at Interplay. At the time the project was shut down, it was estimated that less than 5% of the game had been completed.[4]

Notes

  1. ↑ "Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury Set To Warp Adventure Games To New Galaxy". Interplay Productions. TrekCore. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Green, Jeff. "Secret of Vulcan Fury" (PDF). Computer Gaming World (166): 104–105.
  3. ↑ Plunkett, Luke (September 9, 2011). "The One Star Trek Game Every Star Trek Fan Should Play". Kotaku. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "19: Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury". UGO. November 16, 2010. Archived from the original on 8 March 2012. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
  5. ↑ Murray, Brian. "Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury storyboards". MurrayStudios.com. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
  6. ↑ Stentz, Zack (July 10, 1998). "Humphrey Bogart Lives on at Virtual Humans Conference". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
  7. ↑ Grevstad, Eric (February 1, 1998). "Advance and be recognized". Computer Shopper. Retrieved January 26, 2013. (subscription required)
  8. ↑ Lileks, James (January 2, 1999). "New Trek title lets you (yawn) build starships". Star Tribune. Retrieved January 26, 2013. (subscription required)

References

External links