You have to love Alan Rickman, no matter what you think of Star Trek. What do they have to do with each other? Alan is part of the all-star cast of one of my favorite movies, Galaxy Quest, and Galaxy Quest is the preeminent movie that blatantly and continually mocks Star Trek. It's awesome. You have to see it, and you have to post a comment once you have to tell me what you think of it.
But I digress... Galaxy Quest is about a group of washed-up actors from a Star Trek-like TV program that discover that an alien race has been watching their TV show for many years. They have actually built everything on the show, thinking that the TV program was actually "historical documents".
Hilarity ensues when the aliens come to earth to get their heros -- the actors from the program -- to save them from another hostile alien race.
So, why do I bring all this up? Well, at the point that the actors (one of which is played by Alan Rickman) first see the alien spaceship, which has been modeled after their ship from the television series, he comments under his breath, "It's all real!"
Well, for Star Trek fans and video game enthusiasts everywhere, it's all about to take one more step toward being real. Sort of.
When I was in high school, back in 1992, a group of us envisioned a real-life-like online video game in the Star Trek universe. When Star Wars Galaxies was released, I thought it was the closest anyone would ever get to our original idea. I played the game, but got disillusioned when they dumbed it down recently. Big attempt to reach the masses, which I understand. But implemented extremely poorly, which I don't.
Now, a company called Perpetual Entertainment is preparing to release a new Massively Multiplayer Online game in the Star Trek universe, and our dream from so long ago will finally be realized. Of course, I can't even imagine how it would live up to the design / expectations we had so long ago. We had ideas that are still not even being approached by real, actual gaming software. But at least there will be an attempt. I'll check it out and keep you posted -- since the idea's so near-and-dear to my heart.
In the meantime, check out a coupl-a-links about the pending release...
- Article on Ferrago
- Article on Game Vortex
- Article on Gamespot
- From Perpetual's news pages and weblog
Maybe also, while we wait for the release in late 2006-early 2007, let me know what you think. Are you looking forward to this release? Do you care? Are you into MMO's? Actually, I posted that last one in its own thread.
