Play Star Trek - The Rebel Universe Online

Star Trek: The Rebel Universe came out in 1987 for MS-DOS, developed by Interplay Productions. It was a time when games were figuring out how to blend different genres, and this one tried to merge space simulation with adventure elements, all within the technical limits of the era. You take command of the Enterprise, but the presentation is stark, relying on text and simple graphics to build its world.

You control the ship from the bridge, managing systems like navigation and weapons, then beam down to planets where the game shifts to a first person, screen by screen exploration mode. Your main goal is to investigate a rebellion, which involves solving inventory based puzzles, negotiating with characters through text parsers, and engaging in simple combat. The pacing is deliberate, even slow, and the difficulty comes from managing your limited resources and figuring out obscure puzzle solutions. It feels like piecing together a mystery with outdated, sometimes frustrating tools.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".