If you like yourself something Star Trek – and what an intelligent, attractive person do not do? – there are definitely lots of it at the moment. New series, new movies, new games; it’s a rich time for fans of the final frontier. Star Trek: Picard is currently deep inside his second season, with the full lead role of The next generation confirmed to return in season 3 and the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Worlds seems to offer a return to the episodic planet-of-the-week style that fans of ‘Legacy’ Trek fancy.
But we recently stumbled upon the beginning of a fan project that even filled our torpedo bays with more nostalgia than that. Watch a daring encounter with two of our favorite things in the universe: Star Trek: TNG and Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Artist-animator @Amaruuk is the genius responsible, and writes on their fan art Twitter account @SpinaSanctuaryand as you can see from the tweets below, the low poly blend of MM X TNG looks absolutely incredible.
The idea seems to have started recently when they tweeted the fabled words “What if Star Trek but Zelda 64 ??” before sending a 64-bit rendition of Captain Picard’s Ressikan flute from ‘The Inner Light’ shortly after:
The artist decided that the episode ‘Masks’ – a rare late-TNG bug that falls into so-bad-it-is-fascinating category – was another natural fit for Majora’s Mask mash-up. See a beautifully blocked Picard who has just found Korgano’s mask:
From there, the artist made rapid strides with low-poly versions of iconic Trek objects, plus Commander Data, who played his violin and the dubious Commander Riker on the ‘bone, both rendered in brilliant 64-bit form:
And finally some sound for Jean-Luc’s Ressikan flute. Give the tissues, will you? We’re getting a little crying …
For fans of both franchises, this feels like the most perfect mix imaginable. We’ve already considered where the big Star Trek console games are – and a Star Trek: Prodigy game was recently announced for Switch – but it’s amazing to see that there is still hope for nostalgic Nintendo fans who can like a bit of TNG.
The likelihood that this “ongoing personal low-poly project” will ever become something that can be played is remote, but we like to take a constant stream of gifs like these into our feeds. You can see more of the artist’s work on their Artstation page or via Twitter. They are also open for subs on Ko-fi and also stream on Twitch (where we saw a glimpse Lieutenant Worf with his credible bat’leth). Be sure to express your great joy and gratitude.
Tell us below on a scale of 10-10 how much you would love to play Star Trek 64.
Further reading: