STAR TREK: BORG
In 1996 Star Trek: Klingon gave us an educational view of the war-loving race. Later that same year, Simon & Schuster Interactive tried to do the same thing with the Federation's other great nemesis: the Borg. Except this hive-minded species doesn't really deserve an empathetic history lesson.
Borg does away with any attempt to educate us on the assimilated creatures and instead is its own stand-alone story. You are an upstart Starfleet Academy cadet who, along with every other non-essential personnel, has been grounded due to an imminent Borg threat. This is more than just disappointing for you, it's personal. When you were a boy, your father perished in the Wolf 359 battle against the Borg along with the rest of the crew of the USS Righteous. Now that they're back and headed towards Terra, you want some sweet revenge. Your appeal to stay and fight is denied so dejected, you head to your quarters and pack ready for evacuation. Then, out of nowhere Q appears, offering his omnipotent powers to take you back in time and turn the tides of the Righteous.
That's quite a synopsis for the non-Trekkie to get to grasps with. "Borg? Wolf 359? Q? What are these words you spout?" I hear you say. Well, as anyone with a passing knowledge of the Trek-verse should know, the Borg are the half-human half-robotic bad guys. The Battle of Wolf 359 (a real-life star over 7 light-years away) is a major battle in Star Trek lore between the United Federation of Planets and the Borg Collective. The Borg completely obliterate their unprepared opposition with little damage to their cube-shaped ship. And fan favourite Q (played by a wise-cracking John de Lancie on top form) is a higher alien being unbound by the constraints of time, space and reality. He also has a sharp wit and a pathological need to amuse himself, however dire the situation.
Got it? Well, don't worry if you haven't. The game explains it all far better than I ever could. Much in the same way as Klingon, you can pause the game and click on whatever you want to know more about it. Instead of the dry encyclopedic narration of that earlier game, we're instead treated to the acerbic wit of Q commenting on your surroundings via your nifty tricorder. This contraption is also the catalyst for some light puzzling, though it gives the answers directly to you on its hand-held screen. It's more than what Klingon gave us at least.
Those puzzles are few and far between, easily being counted on one hand with fingers to spare. Most of the 'interactive' parts of this interactive movie boils down to multiple choice. It's not always clear what's the right way to go either. This means getting through the game successfully is nothing more than trial and error. At least Q will show up after each mistake to offer a quip or two.
The controls offer some slight differences to Klingon's that are tough to work out without foreknowledge. Q and S quit and save respectively, but this time the confirmation windows are in binary. In true Borg fashion '1' is the affirmative while '0' is the negative. A single right mouse click will pause the game so you can scan your surroundings while clicking on an empty space resumes play - a little easier to figure out than before. (Note: the Windows 95 version uses the same control method as Klingon - left click to pause, double click to resume)
Borg also has added support for the DOS platform. A step backwards, maybe but it opened up the game to a wider market back then. It does make it easier to run through DOSBox but the compression used to support full-screen video leaves some ugly black lines across the screen. In order for the developers to fit over 90 minutes of footage on three CDs (and to have it play at a decent framerate), every other line on the image is black. I've managed to soften it a little using DOSBox Daum for this release but it's not as crisp as I would've liked. Thankfully it doesn't hinder gameplay in the slightest. (Note: Version 2 runs on an emulated Windows 95)
At the end of the day, I rate this much the same way as I do Star Trek: Klingon. It's a good short film that's well directed and acted but it's not much of a game. As someone who can forgive a hell of a lot when presented with a good story, I really enjoyed it.
To download the game, follow the link below. This exclusive installer uses the DOSBox Daum build of DOSBox 0.74 running Windows '95. Tested on Windows 10.
IMPORTANT - Remember to shut down the emulated version of Windows before exiting DOSBox. This could potentially result in errors, lost saves and corrupt data. Press Ctrl-F9 when it is safe to do so.
27.08.2017 - Version 2 - Switched to Windows 95 which fixes crash late in the game
Added The Picard Dossier. Note: there's an error in the videos that I can't seem to figure out.
You can play them directly from the Media folder on the CD.
File Size: 1.20 Gb. Install Size: 1.63 Gb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ
Star Trek: Borg is © Simon & Schuster Interactive
Star Trek (the franchise) is © CBS and Paramount
Labels: Adventure, FMV, Science-Fiction, Star Trek, Windows '95
Thanks, I was waiting for this one!
You sir are a God (Q?). I am actually stoked for this. Thank you!
Hi, the game hangs towards the end for me when I'm supposed to click on the hand of Targus before she shoots the borg. What should i do?
Just tested it and found the same thing. I thought I completed it for the review, but I must've been mistaken. I'm looking for a fix now, but I'm not sure where the error is coming from. It appears to exist in standard DOSBox and the unofficial Daum build. I thought it might've been an error when the CD was ripped, but I've found and tried several different versions now and it's the same.
The entire game is essentially AVI video files which you can play fine in a media player so my thinking could be code in the game itself. I'm trying new things and will try my best to make it completable.
Version 2 is being uploaded now. It now plays the game through an emulated Windows 95. I've also managed to remove the need for disk swapping and added a rather glitchy Picard Dossier encyclopedia that originally came with the game. I thought there was enough to it that made it worthwhile.
Load the save game to get to the point where the trouble starts.
Thanks! I'll try it out!! Great job with these games by the way.
Dongamer 26 September 2018 at 15:59
Hi, I did not turned of with proper shutdown and now game has no saves even the earlier ones, what can I do?
Hello! Nothing I can do I'm afraid. Always shutdown the Win95 emulated games as suggested. It should continue running, but if the HDD has become corrupted, you may need to install it again.
Well thank you for your work anyway, you are doing much good to this world.
And as I got your attention already I would like to make some game requests if possible for your future projects, thank you for your consideration.
1991 - Alice Interactive Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice:_An_Interactive_Museum
1992 - L-Zone https://www.mobygames.com/game/l-zone
1997 - GADGET Past as Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadget_Invention,_Travel,_%26_Adventure
1997 - A Fork in the Tale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fork_in_the_Tale
Alice: An Interactive Museum is already on my radar although I've not played much of it. I've added the others to the ever-expanding request list.
Patrick 27 January 2019 at 20:16
I ran into a really weird bug with this game, maybe you could have a look? It's fairly early in the game where you go hunting the Borg with Furlong. Afer you knock him out, you take his phaser and turn it around. You should then press the round button to reset it, but that just doesn't work. Not matter how I position the cube cursor the round button does not become interactive and CAN simply NOT be clicked on! :( First I thought it was me being to stupid, but after trying it more than 20 times I'm now pretty sure it's some kind of bug.
Biffman 101 30 January 2019 at 11:13
Just tested and it works. You have to press the button that looks like a screw when he turns the phaser around.
Patrick 1 February 2019 at 08:27
Thanks, it works now! I don't exactly know what was wrong but I slowed down DosBox a bit for that particular scene and suddenly the game recognised me clicking on the button :)
And a suggestion: Maybe you could also have a go at "Star Trek: The Game Show" or at "DS 9 - Harbinger"?
Biffman 101 1 February 2019 at 12:07
There is some more Star Trekking in the pipeline, but I've not attempted to get running either your suggestions. They're on my radar though!
I'm having the same problem. How did you slow down the game?
Downloaded the game, came to install it and it crashed before getting past 3% can you tell me why??
Was it a crash or a hang? The installer will appear to hang or stop working when unpacking a large file such as an ISO or IMG file. Be patient and it will install. There's more info in the FAQ.
It comes up saying not responding and stays like that for more than five minutes
At the time of last reply it has now installed
Solo 6 June 2019 at 00:09
Hey Biffman!
Your Borg Game version works! Nicely done! :)
I tried some other sources earlier and had issues.
Your installer hangs at the begining (as described in one of earlier comments here), but if you are patient and give it a few minutes, it will unfreeze and finish its work.
I just started to play... and it turned out that it's 1 AM at night. It's such a cool game. I'm back at Star Trek TNG era. :)
I appreciate what you are doing over here.
I'm downloading other Star Trek games as well now. ;)
Thanks you! That 'hang' that confuses a lot of people isn't really a hang but the program unpacking a particularly large file. Nothing much I can do about it unless I'm missing something in the program I use. As least it ultimately works, even if it's a bit worrying to those not expecting it.
I was able to download all of the files except for the executable. Every time I try it says that there was a temporary error and it is retrying. I was able to download all of the files and the executable for the Klingon game, so I'm not sure what is going on here. Is there any way you can post the executable in another folder or something?
Alex 17 September 2020 at 10:11
firstly - thank you so much for this and oh somany of the other ganes you have on here!
Secondly - likely Kristen am having issues trying to download this, the EXE file doesn't want to play ball
Hello. I've just reupped the files and it appears to be downloading fine now. Thanks for letting me know
That worked great. Thank you so much for the quick response and for all that you do here. My husband played this game when he was growing up and we now get to play it as a family. So excited! :)
Thank you, really appreciate this!
Would changing to dosbox-x improve the game at all? It claims to have official win9x support. The dosbox-daum builds are pretty old.
https://dosbox-x.com/
Biffman 101 18 December 2020 at 20:55
I did look at it several years ago, and found it a little lacking. It has the benefit of still being supported, so I might take a look at it again. If I recall correctly, DAUM play the game part of this quite well. I remember completing it this way. The Picard Dossier, which is a bonus encyclopedia, had some issues so DOSBox-X may help with that. I've put it on my to-do list.
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