STTNG is my choice. love the layout, love the rules, love the theme. Best theme integration of any game, in fact. The custom dialog and callouts for all the missions from the actual actors on the show is a great touch that apparently can't be replicated today. (boboli boboli)

The game offers several paths to high scores:
- try to build up huge jackpots and go for Borg Multiball (the jackpot value builds infinitely)
- play missions for points / artifacts (can be very lucrative if you and your competition aren't going to make it to the final frontier)
- work the super spinner to infinity and beyond (huge points if you know how to stack it up correctly)
- try to survive to the Final Frontier, either by beating or timing out missions ... the catch is if you time out the missions, you don't collect artifacts, and the Final Frontier is not worth much -- another great feature of the rules. Most Wizard modes in pinball are worth a ton of points independent of how well you did on the missions that got you there.

each of these strategies have their uses, depending on your skill level, how brutal the game is playing, and whether you're going for all-time high score or just trying to beat your opponent one on one. There are so many games out there with basically one right answer scoring-wise. STTNG offers some great risk/reward strategy decisions.

it's also got some great goals for the long-term owner. Who here has made it to Warp 9.9? That's a heck of a challenge.

but overall there's less to do on the Stern ST, and fewer mechs and doodads to do it with. ST is basically a stripped down STTNG, with less metal, fewer mechs, lamer art, and far inferior theme integration. it flows nice, which is important, but that's really about the only thing it has going for it.

Are you saying Magic Girl is a better game than Medieval Madness?

ahhhhhhh i wasn't gonna litter the board with yet another comment from me geeking out over TNG, but what the hell. i (duh) disagree with this.

yeah, there are some clunky episodes, especially in the first two seasons, but i think the top half of TNG episodes stand up with the best of TV even today, and its very top episodes are still right at the apex of the format. i don't know if there has ever been a better 45 minutes of TV than "The Inner Light", or a better series finale than "All Good Things...". Most of seasons 3 through 6 are top notch. The cast has excellent chemistry, and the writers are still flush with ideas.

My daughter asks me to watch TNG with her at least once a week, she really enjoys it. My son is only 7, but he's starting to get into it, too.

I do pick episodes i know don't suck, though. They haven't been exposed to the pain that is "Angel One" (Riker's wang conquers Planet Feminazi), "Sub Rosa" (Dr. Crusher becomes addicted to boning her dead grandmother's lover, who is, i am not making this up, a ghost who lives in a candle), "Justice" (Wesley is sentenced to death for accidentally stepping on some flowers), or Shades of Gray (a comatose Riker dreams about lame clips from prior episodes).

I've tried to show her the original series too, because I like it, but she rejected it thoroughly. Re-watching it, i find a lot of the ideas are really outdated, and believe it or not the moralizing on TOS can be even more hamfisted than TNG. remember this goofball? :

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i do like the original series. and i can't wait to show my kids DS9 when they're a little older. But I think the good TNG episodes have aged remarkably well!

ok, sorry for the interuption. i'm done.

why the heck not? as you acknowledge, the top half of TNG is fantastic television by any standard. it doesn't deserve to be written off when it actually ages quite well. granted, it benefits from a curated tour.

bottom line ... it's kind of like an entire series of B-grade TNG episodes, with some huge stinkers thrown in for spice.

The premise was great, and the pilot episode was very good. But ultimately, the cast has neither the talent nor chemistry of the TNG cast, and the writers played it way too safe. It wanted to be TNG 2.0, but didn't quite have the chops to pull off anything as great as TNG's best episodes. That said, The Doctor and Seven of Nine were great characters, and episodes that focused on them tended to be Voyager's strongest. The show leaned a little too hard on technobabble-as-plot to both cause and resolve problems.

I loved the premise --a starship stranded 75 years away from Federation space at maximum warp, nevertheless trying to make the epic journey home, having to make due with just their wits and their resourcefulness, having to scrounge and negotiate with unknown species for supplies, having to make tough, desperate decisions that were sometimes at odds with their 24th century values. Originally, it was billed that every time they used one of their precious photon torpedoes, it would be a big deal. It was promised that over the years, without access to a Federation starbase, the ship would become increasingly rundown and makeshift. it coulda been great!

But none of that happened. The writers had Voyager acquire a bunch of overpowered technology, and they never really felt particularly threatened. I mean, at one point, Voyager basically single-handedly defeated the Borg collective. It just removed all sense of stakes or drama, and made them feel invincible, i.e. boring. Any kind of need or shortage on the ship never felt particularly urgent -- shortages were only mentioned not to really up the drama, but instead as an excuse for why they were visiting planet X, Y, or Z, where they would inevitably kick the ass of whoever opposed them. The writers then introduced Species 8472, a race that had fully conquered an alternate dimension and was making short work of the Borg. So Janeway and her ship encased in plot armor go defeat those guys too, just for fun i guess. An entire UNIVERSE worth of aliens versus one Federation ship designed for exploration ... and Voyager wins. okay. great. sure. fine. whatever. go humans.

I dunno, i guess i was expecting a series where the characters were more desperate and endangered, forced to make more compromises and sacrifices. Also, there was never really much sense of a journey taking place. It felt a lot like TNG, where they were just kind of tooling around the galaxy having random adventures. And then in the final episode, they get home instantaneously by using a Secret Borg Warp Zone or whatever. Hooray, i guess. Voyager's premise would have thrived from a more serialized take (a la DS9), but somehow they managed to make it feel like there was even less continuity than TNG -- a show which was deliberately episodic.

i know it sounds like i'm totally clubbing it, but i don't hate Voyager at all. it was mostly basically fine. not great, but fine. i am just disappointed that it didn't come close to living up to its great premise.