Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (lost build of cancelled PC sci-fi/adventure game; 1997-1999)

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Stsecretvulcanfury ad2b.jpg

Promotional poster for the cancelled game, dated around Summer, 1997.

Status: Lost


Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury is a unreleased PC game that was scheduled for release by Interplay Entertainment in 1997. The game would get delayed many times with the final release date being confirmed in 1999, however, the game later got cancelled for budget cuts along with the complexity and size of the project.

Background

The script for the game was written by Star Trek: The Original Series writer D.C. Fontana, and included the original cast that contained William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, and Nichelle Nichols in their original roles. During the recording sessions, DeForest Kelley's health was a concern for some production crew working on the game, and had Maurice LaMarche to represent McCoy in later sessions. As of 2021, any model or voice work that was done on the game has not been surfaced.

Announcement, Demos and Promos

The game would officially be announced by Interplay in June 1997, with a release that was originally scheduled in November of that year. Three different non-interactive demos were released around that timeframe, with the first one being released in Autumn of that year and another one in Winter 1998, and was going to be a technological breakthrough for Interplay, if they released and completed the game.

During this time, Quaker Oats would make a expensive deal to sell cereal boxes that contained snapshots from the later-cancelled game, with instant win sweepstakes.

Production

Interplay's game developer, Tribal Dreams, took over the project in 1997 and spend a year and a half working on the game. The game used lots of motion-capture and voxel technology.

Due to Interplay's financial difficulties around the time the game was being worked on, lots of staff that were working on Secret of Vulcan Fury had either quit or resigned from their position at the company, which resulted in Interplay going into liquidation, and sending off all of the computers that had copies of the cancelled game to creditors, in an attempt to pay off any debts they owned.

A working demo was produced for the game around 1998, where Spock would be dubbing a quote from Goodfellas.

Plot

Unlike Interplay's other Star Trek games 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites, The plot outline of the game was going to be longer with six chapters, with every chapter focusing on one of the original cast members from the series. The first chapter in the game dealt with some conflicts on Vulcan.

In one of the episodes, McCoy was going to investigate the death of a Romulan ambassador that was participating in the peace talks in the first chapter in the game, and during this time, the game was going to reveal that the Romulans were actually behind the murder in an attempt of starting a new war.

The other chapters primarily focused on the Vulcan/Romulan wars, with the main characters being Sulu and Scotty. The final chapter was supposed to be involving a Romulan attack, with the Federation aiding the Vulcans.

Gallery

External Links

Secret of Vulcan Fury: Trek's Lost Adventure | Retrohistories Retrieved 22 Jun '17

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (unreleased game) - trailer #1 (ver. #1) Retrieved 5 Sep '12

Secret of Vulcan Fury - What Almost Was...A Captains Log April 7th, 2017 Retrieved 7 Apr '17

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (1999) - Advanced facial motion capture in video games Retrieved 12 Jun '18

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury | Unreleased PC Game Retrieved 8 Apr '17

Sculpting For Star Trek - Secret of Vulcan Fury Retrieved 10 Apr '16

Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (unreleased) New Unseen Gameplay Footage Retrieved 26 Jun '18

VulcanFury.com Retrieved 29 Jan '21

Digital Magic - Dec '97 Retrieved 29 Jan '21

Wikipedia article of the cancelled game. Retrieved 29 Jan '21

A section of the website devoted to Secret of Vulcan Fury. Retrieved 29 Jan '21

Spanish article regarding the cancelled game. Retrieved 6 Apr '08

Archived website for Secret of Vulcan Fury, from 1998. Retrieved 10 Jul '98

General article by Jeff Green on Interplay’s upcoming Star Trek game offerings, including SoVF. Retrieved 29 Jan '21

Former Interplay Programmer Tells All On Disastrous Star Trek Games Retrieved 21 Sept '09

Analysis of the game’s trailer. Retrieved 29 Jan '21

Star Trek: 10 Awesome-Sounding Projects That Never Got Made Retrieved 11 Feb '13

Erik Bethke mentions SoVF in his book, Game Development and Production. Retrieved 29 Jan '21

Vulcan Fury – Is it out there anywhere? Retrieved 14 Nov '07

Unseen 64 article that covers the rumors behind the game, its development and cancellation. Contains some tidbits of truth but replete with errors found in other sources. Retrieved 09 Sept '17

The final paragraph details about SoVF. Retrieved 10 Jul '98