Counting on iconic details

At the offices of video game developer Cryptic Studios in Northern California, certain rooms look like a Trekkie's nirvana: Posters from the television series Deep Space 9 and movies Generations and Nemesis line the walls, along with original sketches of the Borg Queen and new designs for Federation ships.

Those who became Trekkies in the past year, however, might not be so dazzled.

There are no posters, no sketches and almost no trace of last year's JJ Abrams-directed Star Trek movie that relaunched the dormant franchise.

In Star Trek Online, which Cryptic and publisher Atari released recently after more than two years of production, there's no evidence of the Abrams film that went back in time to tell the story of youthful Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy.

Instead, the game is set in the year 2049, about 20 years after 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis, the final movie starring the Next Generation cast.

Like the ultra-successful World of Warcraft, Cryptic's new title is a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game, in which players pay $US15 a month to interact in a virtual world.

For Star Trek Online, that includes flying through space at warp 9 and beaming down to alien planets.

Many video games based on movies and TV shows find their fates decided by the vagaries of Hollywood.

Last year's hit Batman: Arkham Asylum benefited from the massive success of The Dark Knight in 2008, even though it features a new story.

French publisher Ubisoft's plan to produce a Heroes video game, however, was scrapped after ratings for the NBC series tanked.

So the pool of fans for Star Trek Online is exponentially larger than a year ago thanks to the success of the new movie.

But because the new Star Trek is so different from the old version on which the game is based, the game may have a tough time appealing to a new generation of Trekkies.

"The timeline's different, but a lot of the elements are iconic stuff that you find in the new movie, the old movies and the TV shows," said John Needham, chief executive of Cryptic.

Among the iconic details found in Star Trek Online: the Enterprise, Klingons, the planet Vulcan and Borg cubes.

There are even nods to Star Trek's less serious moments, like a mission involving Tribbles, the adorable fuzzballs that once overran the original Enterprise, and "red shirts," anonymous crew members in red uniforms who beam down on missions and inevitably end up dead.

There are plenty of familiar elements missing, though.

Most notably, captains Kirk, Picard and their crews.

In the game's time period, most characters would be old or deceased, but in a future when time travel is de rigueur, that's not necessarily an impediment.