​Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity is an adventure game by Spectrum HoloByte, based on the Star Trek universe. It puts the player in control of Captain Picard and his crew of the Enterprise D and features traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay as well as free-form space exploration, diplomatic encounters and tactical ship-to-ship combat.

It was released on May 31, 1995 and came out on CD-ROM for both the PC and the MAC. One of the most appealing aspect of the game is that the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reprise their roles in this game, providing the voices of their respective characters in the game, except for Wil Wheaton who played Wesley Crusher in the series. 

The storyline takes place around stardate 47111.1, according to the opening sequence of the game. This would place the events of the game between the first two episodes of the seventh season of the series, "Descent" and "Liaisons". 

A Final Unity was Spectrum HoloByte's second Star Trek video game, following the 1994 game Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past. Spectrum Holobyte acquired MicroProse shortly thereafter, and continued developing Star Trek games under the MicroProse name. As you can see the box has the MicroProse logo on the back and the Spectrum Holobyte logo on the front.

The majority of the gameplay takes place by controlling an away team on various space stations and alien worlds, which is the pure adventure game part of the game. The away team is selected by the player and is then controlled in a point-and-click manner by selecting the desired command from the interface in the lower area of the screen. Upon completion of the away mission, the team is beamed up, and the Enterprise awaits further orders or acts with the new information provided by the away mission. ​

The manual that comes with the game is quite substantial and heavy. Also every page is in color and has that RPG feel to it, where you could just sit with the manual in a cosy sofa and get immersive with the game without even turning on the PC :) 

Also like many other PC games in this era of Big Boxes, we get a Catalogue of upcoming games and released ones. Which is also a nice touch but you have to remember that getting information like this was not via internet. So you could spend hours just reading and dreaming of your next purchase. 

I would recommend this game to any adventure fan and also Star Trek fan. It was a huge commercial success and sold 500.000 the first year of release. The game was also a runner-up for Computer Gaming World's 1995 "Adventure Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Which is no surprise as that game was a masterpiece, but being in second to that one is not a bad place to be :) 

​It’s rare that famous actors get together and make a video game, let alone one aimed at an adult audience, but here we have one of the best examples: Toonstruck from 1996. Check out the names involved below:

​Unfortunately Toonstruck had a rocky development and lacklustre release. Delays and money problems let to the game eventually being split into two titles, but sadly the second part was never released at all, though attempts are ongoing.

​Despite its troubles Toonstruck is a blast to play and well worth a spot in any respectable video game museum, like ours. :)

Extra details on the development :

The project began in October '93 and was completed over three years later in November '96. The total cost of production: over $8 million. The animation was produced at unnecessarily high levels of sophistication, exceeding even Disney movie quality. However, only 35% of this animation made it into the finished game. The game's engine was based off of Westwood's Kyrandia series' engine, and required the project's team to spend an extra 18 months ironing out bugs and glitches.

​This 1989 version of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? is a Macintosh video game where players have to travel through time to collect the clue and the warrant necessary to capture Carmen Sandiego or one of her henchmen. The goal of this game is to track Carmen's villains through history and arrest them and ultimately arrest Carmen herself.

Similar to Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, the player plays as a secret agent for the Acme Detective Agency, and has to use the research books to crack the clues given to them on where the crook went to, and also decode the physical attributes or interests of the crook based on other clues. They must achieve both these objectives in order to secure an arrest warrant, which allows them to identify the person at the end of the case as the crook. The player travels through time and space with a device known within the Carmen Sandiego universe as the Chronoskimmer. 

The game is time limited, and every action one takes uses up some of that time; the player needs to solve the case within the allotted time in order to be successful. As well as teaching the player about both geography and history it also provides practice with using a research book – the New American Desk Encyclopedia comes with the game for assistance, although it seems sadly to be missing in our edition of the game. The people, events, and inventions featured in the game hail from period in history ranging from 400 AD to the 1950s – the past 1500 years of human history. The game comes with a 28-page instruction manual.

​Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice is an adventure game developed and released by Infogrames. This version is for PC and came out 1995 Europe. It is based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, particularly At the Mountains of Madness, and is a follow-up to Infogrames' earlier Shadow of the Comet. 

​The game involves solving puzzles through a point and click user interface. The player can examine any item and, depending on the item, either pick it up, use another item on it, or operate it in some way.

Some puzzles, if not completed within a short span of time (always less than a minute), will result in a game over. To ensure that the player does not get stuck by saving their game at a point from which they cannot possibly complete a puzzle in time, the game autosaves onto a separate save file at the beginning of each timed puzzle.

​Prisoner of Ice begins during the run-up to World War II, primarily around Antarctica. The main character is a young U.S. intelligence officer, Lt. Ryan, who has been assigned to a British submarine, HMS Victoria, for a special mission. As the game begins, the submarine is fleeing the Antarctic after rescuing a Norwegian who has recently escaped from a secret German base in the Antarctic (it is later revealed that the base is built atop the Ancient Ruins mentioned in At the Mountains of Madness). Along with the Norwegian, the sub has picked up two mysterious cargo crates stolen from the Nazis.

Late in the game, in Argentina, Ryan meets John Parker, the central character from Shadow of the Comet, and reveals the links between the two games. Narackamous, the main antagonist of Shadow of the Comet, also returns.

The game has a choice of two endings, though there is little difference between them.

In our collection we also have Alone in the Dark and it is displayed here with Prisoner of Ice, although there is no connection between these games other then Infogrames. It is fun to see that they have similar artwork and design on the front covers.