We've been harping on the space combat in Star Trek Online for quite some time, and now Cryptic gives you a look at what we're so excited about. It's possibly the best video game representation of Star Trek space battles so far, and utilizing bridge officers as special powers and abilities during combat is rather brilliant.

UPDATE: These bundles are both UK-only Paramount says.

Each bundle comes with an Elite console and an extra controller. What it doesn't come with is an actual DVD — the "movie" part of the bundle is on a USB stick. Additionally, the Star Trek bundle includes 800 Microsoft points "to download Star Trek PDLC."

MCV also reports:

Pricing is not yet known, nor is the exact release date or price. it is assumed the packs will appear once the respective movies' DVDs are released, which are November 16th for Star Trek and November 30th for Transformers.

We've got a query in with a Paramount Pictures representative on whether or not the US might be getting one or both of the bundles. Mind you, Revenge of the Fallen is already out Stateside and Star Trek doesn't hit shelves 'til November 17. Which would you rather see in your living room?

New UK 360 bundles revealed [MCV]
Image Cred

In the midst of Brian Ashcraft's superb coverage of all things Final Fantasy XIII, I saw his post that featured this:

And it made me think of this:

And this:

Etc.

(And, yes, I see that commenters under the Elixir post spotted it to. I'm not the only one who saw those movies.)

Star Trek posters via MovieGoods.com. Font image via this Star Trek font site.

That is according to a news release, but it couldn't get any more specific about the release date than "late summer 2009." The release also said it's on the way "later this year" for the PC.

Fahey didn't review the XBLA game well, so, I'm not sure that any additions it plans for the PSN version will be enough to pump up a basic top-down space shooter.

Star Trek D-A-C PS3 Version Confirmed and Screens [Gamers Hell]

While I am a little disappointed at the lack of pointy-ear options indicated by this Star Trek send-up, I was rather ticked by the red shirts dying horrible deaths, so it pretty much balances itself out. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me rush out to purchase The Sims 3 at launch, only to realize after a few minutes of tinkering that there is no way I will ever have the time or talent to create anything this good.

Sadly, the folks at Bad Robot, production company behind this weekend's Star Trek movie, were not able to tell us this week whether the era of James T. Kirk has room for a robust video game console market.

Is there a PlayStation on the Enterprise? We may never know.

But we do have some evidence that video games, unlike money (sort of), won't be eliminated from the future as rendered by the various incarnations of Star Trek.

At a meeting with some game developers this week, I batted around some theories. Some of them — people more expert at Star Trek than I — cited some examples of video games in the Trek future.

A 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled The Game featured a virtual reality game that was played with a headset and was taking over the minds of the crew. (See the trailer above). The polygon count of the game wasn't all that great, suggesting that the Wii approach of gameplay-over-graphics may continue to win out even in the 24th century. The episode also implies in the future video games actually will be bad for you.

Several Star Trek fans consulted for this post argued that the famous virtual reality Star Trek chambers, the holodecks, are themselves the ultimate video game consoles. The real-time lighting and bump-mapping in the holodeck appears to be quite good.

That is, alas, all we've been able to dig up so far. Word has it that the new Star Trek movie features no video games.

But surely video games are the future? We're not destined to go a world dominated by books and music as the chief cultural forms again, are we?

Just as J.J. Abrams' new film seeks to refresh the aging franchise with a fresh look at an older story, Star Trek video game developers over the years have tried again and again to deliver a new experience to fans, expanding the universe beyond the television series and movies. Some stayed true to the source material and succeeded heartily, while others took risks with varied results.

Let's bodly go and explore best and worst in Star Trek video games, starting with the very first.

The First
Star Trek Text Game (1971)
Star Trek has long been a staple of geek culture, so it makes perfect sense that one of the earliest television tie-in games be based on the classic science fiction series. Believed to have been created by Mike Mayfield in 1971 on a SDS Sigma 7, the simple, unlicensed text-based strategic combat simulator saw players entering text commands in order to navigate the USS Enterprise around a grid-based map, ridding the galaxy of the Klingon menace.

The Best
What determines a good Star Trek game? Is it space combat? Character interaction? Story? A combination of all three? Over the years there have been plenty of adequate Star Trek games, but three shine particularly brightly.

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (2000 - Raven Software)
From what is generally considered one of the two worst Star Trek television series comes one of the best video games in the franchise's history, in the unlikely form of a first-person shooter. The game managed to strike a delicate balance between character interaction and intense shooter gameplay, with beautiful visuals (for the time) courtesy of the id Tech 3 engine. Elite Force used the first-person perspective to immerse players in the Trek universe, while multiplayer that rivaled that of Quake III kept the more competitive players contentedly killing each other in the background.

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992 - Interplay)
Star Trek PC games were generally ho-hum affairs until Interplay dished up this DOS classic in 1992. At its most basic, Star Trek is about space battles and character-driven adventure, so Interplay married the two in Star Trek: 25th Anniversary with amazing results. Like the show, the game was split up into several episodes, with flight sim-like ship combat woven together with adventure game segments to deliver what many fans consider to be the most authentic Star Trek game experience ever created. Even better, the CD version of the game featured the voices of the majority of the original show cast, making an excellent title even better.

Interplay followed up the 25th Anniversary game with Star Trek: Judgment Rites, continuing the story and making the ship combat sections options for those who preferred the adventure segments. Both games are still quite enjoyable today.

Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002 - Totally Games0
Star Trek: Bridge Commander was a delightfully new take on the standard Star Trek space combat simulator. Rather than simply having players direct a ship's actions, Bridge Commander has players step into the shoes of a new starship captain, delivering orders to the various Bridge officers as a "real" starship captain would. While the option to switch to an external view of the ship and handle things yourself was present, the game truly shined on the bridge, transforming countless swiveling computer chairs into luxurious captain's seats in the minds of fans across North America and Europe.

The Worst
Star Trek: Shattered Universe (2004 - Starsphere Interactive)
There have been plenty of Star Trek titles one could consider bad, but there is one in particular that raises sucking to an entirely new level. Star Trek: Shattered Universe took one of the most intriguing themes running throughout the length of Star Trek history and pretty much crapped all over it. Ever since the Mirror, Mirror episode of the original series, fans have longed for a chance to explore the dark side of Trek to a fuller extent. Instead of giving them that chance, developer Starsphere Interactive delivered a crappy shooter with Star Trek trappings slapped on that even Sulu-fueled cut scenes couldn't save. One of the biggest disappointments in the series since the opening theme to Star Trek: Enterprise.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars (2001 - Gizmo Games)
An intriguing mix of real-time strategy and space combat that followed the war between the United Federation of Planets and the invading Dominion Alliance in the last three seasons of Deep Space Nine, this PC release fell flat. Even once the numerous bugs caused by a rushed release were cleared up, regular crashing and just plain boring execution made Dominion Wars a Star Trek title that fans loved to hate.

So where does the new J.J. Abrams movie rank, when compared to the more interactive Star Trek experience that game developers have delivered to us over the years? Fans all over the world are finding out as we speak. Feel free to give us your thoughts on the new movie and the old games in our comment section below.

We asked why.

Big movies get video game adaptations, most of the time. For better or worse.

But that's not happening with this weekend's Star Trek film, which is getting the spin-off space-combat game Star Trek D-A-C but no big-game adaptation.

The official reason for the lack of a game based on the events of J.J. Abrams' Kirk adventure is that there wasn't enough time to make a great full-sized game.

"We certainly wouldn't have done a better job telling the story than the filmmakers would," D-A-C producer Ben Hoyt told me as he demoed the game for Kotaku on a Paramount floor in a Times Square skyscraper this morning.

Hoyt said the D-A-C team deliberately tried to not re-tell the events of the film, focusing on making their top-down, multiplayer-centric space-combat game that has three modes, seven maps and no plot.

Hoyt's proud of the downloadable game and makes a strong case that going the D-A-C route can produce a good game and lessen the risk of making one of those bad movie games that players are sick of. "The amount of time it takes to do a full-scale [movie] game and to make a film don't line up well," he said. "I think there's a strong correlation between that and the fact that games based on films have a spotty track record."

That philosophy led to the creation of D-A-C instead.

Some other notable movies are not being adapted to games. This spring's Watchmen game took the same spin-off approach as Star Trek D-A-C does.

But the stakeholders behind some other big movies this season, including X-Men: Origins and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — both of which are getting full-game adaptations — are moving ahead with full film-to-game adaptations.

Gamers and movie-goers alike can vote on which approach they prefer by choosing how to spend their money.

And that's probably for the best. Unless we're dogfighting in space—whether that be in real-time or in some Starfleet Battles turn-based geek out—or hacking up dishonorable cowards in a bat'leth-based Klingon fighting sim, I'm not so sure I want to spend that much time recreating the events of Star Trek. Rarely, if ever, do I feel the need to hang out on the bridge or shimmy through a Jefferies tube.

So space battles it is! This is the first Star Trek D-A-C trailer, one that you might've caught during last week's GameTrailers TV. If not, engage.

The uniforms are available to PlayStation Home users as part of a competition that will challenge those who take part in the majesty of Home to create look-alike avatars for Kirk, Uhura, and Sulu. What can you win? Star Trek stuff for your Home apartment! Beam your Home friends over and look at your spoils, should you win.

Unfortunately, the Star Trek contest is limited to PlayStation fans located in the real-world continent of Europe. But should be a representative of this mystical land, read on for the contest's rules and regulations. I'm off to grab a virtual Starfleet uniform!

1. Collect the STAR TREK Starfleet uniforms now available for free in the Threads Store in PlayStation Home.

2. Create a look-alike avatar for only one of the STAR TREK leading characters Kirk, Uhura, or Sulu using the character customization tools in PlayStation Home. Reference images can be downloaded here

3. Using a digital camera, take three pictures of your avatar on screen: one close-up headshot, one side-on headshot and one full length body shot.

4. Upload your three images to Flickr, tag them "Star Trek Avatar Contest", make sure to fill out the picture descriptions with your PSN ID, and submit them to the following Flickr group. Once approved, they will appear in the group pool and you are officially entered into the competition.

5. Entrants are asked to submit one entry (Kirk, Uhura, or Sulu) by the deadline of 7pm GMT, Friday. May 1st 2009. A winner will be chosen for each character and announced on Friday May 8th 2009 on the Silverscreen blog and the SCEE PlayStation Home forum.

Despite spending much of their time in London last week talking about Fallout, Rogue Warrior and WET, Bethesda's Pete Hines couldn't help but bring up the role-playing game as well.

"We're not talking about the next Elder Scrolls, but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything with the franchise," Hines said.

What they're doing is working with Del Rey Books on a new series of novels based on the video game series.

Penned by New York Times bestselling author Greg Keyes, the novels will be original stories based in The Elder Scrolls universe, Hines said. The first novel, The Infernal City, will be published this fall.

The Infernal City is set after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and finds the citizens of Tamriel facing an uncertain future.

"Floating high above the land is a strange and mysterious city that is casting a horrifying shadow – wherever it falls, people die and rise again as undead. It is up to an unlikely duo – a seventeen-year-old girl named Annaig and the Emperor's young son, Prince Attrebus – to rescue the kingdom from doom."

Keyes wrote the Age of Unreason Tetrology, three New York Times bestselling Star Wars novels and the Kingdom of Thorn and Bone.

Hines said that Bethesda has already been given the first half of the first novel's manuscript. And that Keyes is working with Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann, both of whom worked on The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall back in the day and on Oblivion.

"We felt this was a good opportunity for us to do something with a great new author," Hines said.

"We've been big fans of Greg's work for a long time, and we're thrilled he agreed to bring his talents to The Elder Scrolls. We see these books as a natural extension of the franchise and think fans will love the stories and characters Greg has created."

So far, it's been described as "the most surreal event in the world" by Quinto. It's also fairly well organized chaos. We're in Home now, ready to ask a handful of nerdy questions, questions that are just as nerdy as any of the other questions being lobbed at the trio. You can watch the thrill of avatars speaking to more famous avatars in almost real-time with the online stream.

Then watch as we body pop in front of world famous directors and movie stars. It promises to be magical.

Star Trek Filmmaker Q&A In PlayStation Home [Star Trek]

Paramount Pictures and Sony Computer Entertainment announced today that a series of Star Trek movie promotions would be beaming to Home users starting tomorrow. That includes "an exclusive video greeting" from Abrams and the newest Star Trek movie trailer, both hitting Home as of Friday.

Also coming to Home are Starfleet uniforms and t-shirts, arriving in the Threads Store on April 23rd. Now, here's where we nerd out.

On Monday, April 20th, director J.J. Abrams and movie stars Chris "Kirk" Pine and Zachary "Spock" Quinto will visit Home for a Q&A session with "selected press and bloggers from around the world." That means Kotaku. And that means, if you have a burning question for Abrams, Pine or Quinto, we'll try to ask it on your behalf.

And if you have a preference for which of the three you'd like us to start cabbage patching with first, we'll try to honor that too.

They'll also be holding a post Q&A "virtual roundtable" within Home. Both events will be streamed live online at the Star Trek PlayStation Home web site.

So, think of something extremely clever, cutting and maybe insightful to ask, and we'll see you there on Monday.

Beginning today, gamers can register for a 15-day sweepstakes that will give away 500 free Rock Band Music Store downloads each day from April 7 through April 21 on Xbox Live Marketplace and the Playstation Store.

The companies are also kicking off a Star Trek Battle of the Bands . The band with the highest score will win a Star Trek hometown movie screening for their band and their friends. Also, 20 randomly selected players will win a Star Trek Rock Band prize pack which includes Star Trek and Rock Band gear.

Finally, on April 27, the two are hosting a avatar creation contest, with fans making futuristic avatars in-game and exporting them to RockBand.com for Harmonix and the community to judge. The winner will be chosen on May 11 and win a prize pack that includes "top of the line" Rock Band game accessories.

Star Trek Battle and Avatar Contest!

It'll be hitting the PlayStation Network sometime after the May LIVE release. To hopefully hold you over until the game's out, Paramount has released a couple DAC screens. Well... whaddaya think?

Star Trek: DAC is "focused on fun, not a retelling of the story" of JJ Abram's upcoming Star Trek reboot, according to Ben Hoyt, senior producer at Paramount Games. Hoyt namechecked games like Subspace and Geometry Wars when describing the game, due to be released in May alongside the film, but also adding that the game has "strategic depth."

And David Baranoff, associate producer on Abrams' Star Trek and Bad Robot GDC representation, says that the game offers "no barriers to entry" nor is it "steeped in Star Trek canon," opting for arcade-style multiplayer action. But he wouldn't explain the DAC acronym, saying only that Trekkers will find out during the course of the game. That's the Abrams style, I suppose...

Developed by Roboblitz creators Naked Sky Entertainment, Star Trek: DAC will support 12-person multiplayer, with two teams of six. AI bots will fill in the blanks, should your federation of online friends be unavailable.

Three modes, including solo play, cooperative play and a versus mode

To hear Paramount and Bad Robot folks tell it, Naked Sky was on a very short list of developers the film's producers were interested in bringing on board to work on Star Trek: DAC. The Los Angeles-based dev team has had full access to the film's art assets, sound effects and even Michael Giacchino's musical score, with Bad Robot folks checking in throughout the development cycle.

The game design, however, was born of the Naked Sky team, who presented Paramount and Bad Robot with a handful of options, ultimately settling on the tried and true space combat. Like the film, Star Trek: DAC will be packed with shorter session Romulans versus Federation battles, giving players command of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Star Trek: DAC is due to hit Xbox Live Arcade in May, on or near the release of the movie. The PlayStation Network version is due later, "for a couple of reasons," according to Hoyt, but not necessarily for adhering to platform exclusivity. Both the XBLA and PSN versions will get demos, so you can see if the full version is something worth... beaming down.

But when I arrived at the EA Mobile hands-on session, the only game they had to show me was Scrabble. Which came out like a year ago. What gives?

Well — to EA Mobile, what's important here is "delivering on the promise of mobile." To do that, says VP Travis Boatman, a company has to have a great device to work with with a great operating system and a great merchandising-distribution platform.

"We've always believed in mobile," said Boatman. "We're in this for the long haul. And it's not going to stop here."

So when we got Scrabble on both Facebook and iPhone last year, that wasn't the end of it for EA Mobile. With the release of the Apple 3.0 firmware for the iPhone, they've connected the two versions so you can play against up to four people cross-platform (well, cross iPhone/PC).

I have to admit, this is pretty slick. You can see the moves your PC-bound buddy makes without refreshing the screen on your iPhone and you can even carry on a chat in the chat box.

But as nifty as it is, it's still not Wolfenstein RPG.

Look for the update to your Scrabble app sometime tomorrow or — if there's some SNAFU on the Apple side — sometime over the next few days.

While the movie studio hasn't officially announced the game, the promotional insert tucked inside the Blu-ray release of Star Trek Season One has. Trek Movie got its hands on the artwork for the home video release, which is more Star Trek (2009) than Star Trek (1996), which also promotes the Star Trek Scene It? DVD game. Nerd alert!

Development duties on Star Trek D·A·C will be handled by Roboblitz creators Naked Sky Entertainment. As employees of the company list an "unannounced PSN/XBLA title" on their resumes, we're guessing this is not going to hit retail, but the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace later this Spring.

There's not much in the way of new details, as the Paramount Pictures Games web site redirects elsewhere.

In even better news, a trio of Star Trek-scented colognes will be released later this year, giving the odorous Trekker a chance to reek of Red Shirt.

ST09 Tidbits (T-59 days): Heroes Preview?, New Game?, Spock Fu?, Nero Wart? + more? [TrekMovie]

No matter how accurately those Type II phasers were modelled, someone was always going to point out that the comms badges were slightly out of proportion or that the Bolians' skin is more of a duck-egg blue rather than the tourquoise the idiot developers went for.

To try and clear up some of the fans questions on issues as diverse as Pricing, PvP and Travel Times, Cryptic has released a comprehensive FAQ for the game.

Hit the jump for a selection of Q's that have been A'd F.

Will a monthly fee be required to play?
We haven't decided on pricing plans yet.

What races will we be able to play?
The plan is Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Orion, Gorn, and several others. You will also be able to create your own race with its own custom look and attributes.

Will everyone be the Captain of their own ship?
Yes, but you will have to earn the responsibility and skill to command larger and more powerful vessels. Remember, in Star Trek as well as naval tradition, whoever commands the ship is the "Captain," even if it is not your current rank.

Will console and PC players be on the same servers?
We would like that to be the case. There is nothing technologically keeping us from making it so.

Will there be PvP, PvE and RP rule set servers?
There will not be separate servers. Open PvP will be restricted to designated sectors of space (far-off reaches of unclaimed territory). Consensual PvP and competitive PvE will occur between the realm borders (the Neutral Zone), where players will be competing over territory and resources with the option to PvP.

Will there be realistic travel times in space?
Travel times will be semi-realistic, with a focus on fun. Space is big, and it can take a very long time to travel great distances. That travel time can be impractically long. We will introduce transwarp conduit technology and worm holes to allow players to travel to distant sectors of the galaxy without needing days or weeks of gameplay to do so.

Star Trek Online FAQ [Star Trek Online Official SIte]

You know, even for a casual fan, this Star Trek Online trailer pushes all of the right buttons. "Space, the final frontier ..." The opening notes. The old school sound effects. The new school vessels. And finally, the inimitable pan to the warp-out sequence. It's easy to imagine throngs standing to applaud at multiple intervals at today's unveiling of the game — with Spock on hand — in Las Vegas. Well done, Cryptic. Engage.

Star Trek Online Debut Trailer [GameVideos]