When Star Trek: The Next Generation was at its peak in the early 1990s, it wasn’t uncommon for the Boomer Trekkies from the 1960s and 1970s to complain. Kirk vs. Picard debates were all too common back then, with one of the most common complaints being that the Enterprise-D crew sat around and talked way more than the classic crew ever did. How can you hope to have a great action-adventure sci-fi story if people are discussing the minutia of alien artifacts or how to disrupt a tractor beam? Well, it turns out, not only did the contemplative and talky nature of TNG make it a wonderful show, but in 1995, these defining narrative features also made it a wonderful game.
On June 30, 1995, developer Spectrum HoloByte released the game Star Trek: The Next Generation — A Final Unity for DOS and Mac platforms of the time. This was a full year after The Next Generation aired its last episode, “All Good Things...” and almost a year after the first feature film, Generations, was in theaters. So, at the time, A Final Unity represented a kind of instant nostalgia for TNG fans, who were rewarded with a kind of Valentine to the fandom. A Final Unity features the entire TNG cast reprising their voice roles throughout the game, which isn’t just for wonky cut-scenes, but also every aspect of gameplay.
