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The Trek is back on!
The first new game in the Star Trek franchise for almost three years has been confirmed.

By Rich Greenhill

17 Jan 2006
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Bethesda has boldly gone where one publisher got severely burned before... not since Activision filed suit on Viacom for 'failing to exploit the Star Trek franchise' has a company dared to produce a Trek game. (Click here to read the news story.)

Yes, it was July 2003 when the somewhat comically worded lawsuit was filed. The beloved Star Trek franchise was in pretty bad shape, coming off the last film's poor box office take (Star Trek: Nemesis) and the waning TV spin-off franchises.

Activision's contention was that the value of the Star Trek license -- something it probably paid a handsome fee to exclusively develop games for -- had severely diminished. This was, say Activision, thanks in no small part to Viacom not putting out enough new Trek content and generally botching up the stuff that it was making.

But Star Trek's woken out of its nearly three-year coma, and it's no surprise that Trekkies are going as strong as ever. It was the fans that managed to break the news online that Star Trek: Legacy, a new real-time strategy game for the PC and Xbox 360, is underway.

Mad Doc is the developer, an outfit responsible for the competent strategy titles Star Trek Armada II (and fortunately not the first incarnation of that franchise) and Empire Earth II, so I'm definitely looking forward to getting more info on this one. Interestingly, this also marks the second real-time strategy game announcement for the Xbox 360 in one week -- this is a genre that has previously had no chance on consoles, but the 360's high definition output and potential mouse/keyboard support may be what was needed to bring it to living room screens.

Talking of fan tenacity, here's a mission for sci-fi fans: Lobby for video game treatment of the killed-before-its-time Fox series, Firefly! A great game could generate enough interest to bring this fantastic show back, and then we'd have... well, a great game and a fantastic show back.

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