Boldly Modding the Enterprise D (Diamond Select) - Part 1 - Stripping down the saucer

Captain Picard is coming back! At a time when we all need a little spark of hope for the future, news that Patrick Stewart will be returning in a new Star Trek series had me welling up - Riker might finally get a shot at that chair! After years of keeping an eye on ebay, I took the plunge on a model of my favourite Enterprise, the D. It's a beautiful, curvaceous ship that I’ve dreamed of being on since I was a little kid.

I already had an old AMT model (modified with a moody black paintjob), but the saucer would never stay attached without glue and the stand has long since been lost. No, I needed a fresh start, but I don’t have the model-making tools or expertise of the incredible builders I found while doing research. I’d seen the Diamond Select version released a few years back – which comes with rudimentary lighting for the engines, plus some superfluous sound effects and a saucer held in place with strong magnets – and I’d always had the idea of modding it with some extra interior lighting and a fresh paintjob. There’s no time like the present.

After acquiring the model, I searched for mods but found only one video and no instructions. So, I thought I’d document my effort for posterity, and in case anyone wants some guidance before cracking open their own. For whatever reason, this model is hard to come by and prices are ridiculous. Mine was unboxed with a broken stand, but the ship itself is in perfect condition (for the time being).

So! After dismantling, my idea is to:

• Drill out all or some of the windows for lighting, depending on feasibility.
• block out light bleed with an interior coat of black paint.
• remove the ugly copyright text from the underside of the saucer.
• paint the hull with green and blue (plus the base grey of this model) to approximate the look of the original studio model, and improve the neck.
• perhaps add some more details or decals such as thrusters or lifeboats.
• modify to make it easy to open and replace batteries, etc.
• buy a custom acrylic stand.

I’d toyed with the idea of sanding down and painting the aztec panelling anew, but 1) that would take ages and require masks and airbrushes I don’t have, and 2) there are some nice touches on the ship (sensor bars and phasers, for example) I don’t want to lose. The AMT model is 1:1400 scale, and this one is a touch smaller (to the eye the saucer is about an inch shorter from port to starboard – I’ll measure with a tape later), so decal sets for the AMT kit would be too big. The lifeboats might still work, but I’ve decided to paint onto the existing raised aztec detailing. I also have no idea what I’m doing with electronics, so my additions will come straight from Ikea’s lighting department – I’ve seen some rolls of LEDs on a tape which should stick nicely to the inside of the hull. I’ll just have to find somewhere discrete to add the switch.

Before any of this can happen, I need to open the damn thing up – easier said than done. I’m going to concentrate on the saucer section first. I have a special hard plastic spatula tool, plus a small phillips screwdriver. I’m also using a special bit of plastic a bit like a guitar plectrum to help prise the model apart without destroying it, but without a guide, I’m expecting some damage.

On the underside there are five obvious panels which must cover screws. The first one I remove is labelled ‘C’ and it snaps off relatively painlessly. Two small tabs keep it in position, plus a dollop of glue – I’ll need to find a solution to keep these from falling off. Blu-tac should do the job if I can’t think of something sexier. During the removal only one panel (’A’) fractured a little, but working around the edges with the spatula, none of them broke.

I then set to work prising the oval tabs on the topside near the bridge, which I assume are hiding screws. Shaka, when the walls fell! These tabs exist so that the ‘All Good Things’ variant can use the same model mould – this is where the extra phaser cannons slot in. It’s no biggy as the damaged plug can be repaired or filled in with modelling putty. Going in blind like this, accidents are inevitable.

With the five screws removed, the saucer is still very solid, so I turn my attention to the Captain’s yacht on the very bottom of the saucer. The rear side lifts quite easily but the front is more stubborn. I can see the small speaker beneath. Fifteen minutes of prising leads to a crack, but I decide to persevere and take the whole thing out.

Shaka! It’s screwed in place from the inside with two screws. Well, I needed a place to add a switch for my new lights, so I guess I just made it! I have an idea to use the old AMT model to cut and fashion a replacement part for this damaged section – we’ll see how that pans out another time. The damaged part, unlike the rest of the hull, appears to be transparent red plastic painted grey.

After removing the battery pack cover between the bridge and shuttlebay to check for screws (the little tab in the pictures can be left put but removing it gives you a little more purchase to slide the cover out), I decide to begin prying apart the saucer.

There is already a gap on the underside (which I may try to seal with another screw when I reassemble).

Working the spatula around to the impulse engines, a small piece of hull snaps near one of them – again, not a massive problem as it’s easily repaired with putty later on. Some unnerving cracking follows but with the help of a sharp knife (careful, kids!), I eventually manage to cut through hidden support tabs beside either impulse engine. It seems that, in addition to the screws, these tabs also connect the two halves and they were glued during assembly.

Carefully moving around the saucer, I pry open just enough to get a knife in and cut through the supports. Eventually I make it all the way around. The space between decks 10 and 11 is painted black and forms part of the lower section, with the four thrusters (dabs of yellowy-orange paint on this model) attached to the upper portion. Everything’s mostly intact, but I plan to shave the black plastic down and replace it with a thin piece of rubber. The four thrusters will also need some work with putty and, perhaps, decals.

With the two halves separated, I take a look at the magnet (marked with pen which indicates the right way up so it attracts its counterpart in the battle bridge), the electronics and speaker assembly, plus the button which forms the bridge module. An LED appears to be embedded and glued into the bridge module – no wonder there’s so much light bleed. I’ll decide what to do with that later. The sound effects on this model are a bit naff and I may well discard the speaker entirely. I’ll also need to tidy up all these wires, especially as I plan to add a separate lighting circuit of my own.

That’s enough for today! I’ve ordered two paints – pale grey-blue (FS 36473) and grey-green (FS 34432), plus some silver-grey epoxy putty for repairs, but the next phase will be evaluating the feasibility of drilling out all those windows. They’re painted on this model and the positioning of some is a bit suspect. Do I have a fine enough drill bit, and could the plastic stand it? And lets not even think about taking the Stardrive section apart just yet!

Until next time!

Things NOT to do if you’re planning on dismantling the saucer of your Diamond Select Enterprise D:

• Don’t touch the Captain’s yacht from the outside – it’s screwed in place from the inside.
• Leave the two oval tabs on the upper side of the panel alone. Also, the small extra panel in the ‘17’ of the ‘NCC-1701-D’ on the underside contains no screw, so removing it serves no purpose.
  

The Rule of 4 or 5: Nintendo 64

Next up in this continuing series of four or five reasons not to put your old systems on eBay, we arrive at the frontier of proper 3D gaming in the home...

For a company now coy about advertising its system specs, Nintendo went balls-out with the N64. While SEGA imploded through infighting and bad decisions, Sony turned up and ate Nintendo’s lunch with the PlayStation. Previously, the ‘Super’ prefix had been sufficient to differentiate the successor to the still-popular NES. ‘Ultra’ seemed like a natural progression for the next console, but this naming convention was a dead-end, so Nintendo swerved onto Highway 64. SEGA had emblazoned the Mega Drive with an embossed and golden ’16-BIT’ so even if the exact meaning was vague, the public knew that ‘bits’ were a thing. 64 was double Sony’s 32 bits, too, and by putting it front-and-centre in the name, Joe Public’s going to think it’s twice as powerful as the competition. ‘Nintendo Ultra 64’ is an eight-syllable mouthful, so they ditched the ‘Ultra’ (and the Famicom branding in Japan) and went with a worldwide, unified name and number. It’s the most Blast-Processing move Nintendo ever pulled.

It didn’t quite work out. Of course, N64 wasn’t double the power of the PlayStation – a console is the sum of its parts. Each system had strengths, but Sony’s strong marketing, install-base and cheap CD-ROM medium struck a chord with developers and gamers, and Nintendo struggled in contrast to the crushing successes of their previous two home consoles. Sony saw the Nintendo kids of the late ‘80s growing up and attracted them by marketing to an 18-30 demographic; Nintendo’s massive multi-coloured controllers and chunky cartridges looked childish by comparison. The primary coloured, three-pronged pads drew derision and, despite hosting some of the most influential and impressive games of all time, N64 still carries the stigma of disappointment to this day.

Looking back now, that Nintendo managed to nail so many aspects of 3D on its first try is a pretty spectacular feat. Super Mario 64 and Ocarina were the poster children for proper 3D gaming in their respective genres, but most franchises with an entry bearing the -64 suffix made the jump to the third dimension extraordinarily intact. Sure, they’re looking a bit rough nowadays, but the core mechanics are solid and the N64’s innovations in control and feedback influenced many of the modern features we now take for granted.

Rumours of an N64 Mini – continuing the line of micro consoles emulating a curated library of NES and SNES games – are doing the rounds after Nintendo renewed some trademarks. Of course, it’s a no-brainer for fans, but there are diminishing returns to be had for the company. For one, N64’s reputation as a disappointment means fewer people are likely to pick one up. The added complexity (not to mention size) of the controllers will also increase production costs and, therefore, retail price. And who knows where they’d put the four ports on the console! A significant portion of the system’s finest games came from Rare – now owned by Microsoft – which would (presumably) be excluded. That’s not to say that a licence agreement couldn’t be reached (Microsoft games already appear on Nintendo platforms, after all) but it’s a hurdle that Nintendo may not be motivated to overcome.

Having said all that, the fact that the original console doesn’t play nicely with modern TVs means its library would arguably benefit more than any other from being released in an HDMI-friendly format. The chance to play these games looking sharp on a modern TV is tantalising and I’d put down 100 notes for the opportunity.

Arriving at four or five essentials ultimately boiled down to controls and availability. The N64 analogue stick sticks out further from the pad than the average stick does today, so smaller movements translate into finer control. Or so it feels – perhaps it’s all in my head, but the games on this list really benefit from being played with the original pad. Lack of availability on other platforms led to a couple of surprise entries, too. There are multiple ways to get hold of Ocarina of Time, for example – the 3DS remaster is arguably the best way to play in 2018. Mario 64 was a tough omission, but again, you can play it elsewhere.

GoldenEye 007 – Rare

Despite being phenomenally successful and fondly remembered, GoldenEye 007 (to give it its full and correct title) is still only officially available on a 21-year old cartridge thanks to tangled licencing issues. In truth, it’s somewhat appropriate – while hugely influential, some aspects haven’t aged well and it really was built for that single-stick controller and four people crowded around a CRT TV. The control scheme is elegant and precise in that context and there’s something clinical in bringing up that crosshair and pulling the Z-trigger on the underside of the middle prong (preferably accompanied by a little jolt from the Rumble Pak). Lone players can even use a second pad to enable some twin-stick action. With Microsoft seemingly open to collaborations, and Nintendo working better with third parties, I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns up with some online multiplayer at some point, though modern players might find it jarring after nigh-on two decades of dual stick controls. On original hardware, though, it’s still, *ahem*… dam good.

F-Zero X – Nintendo EAD

This is metal. Pure, simple, guitar-screeching, balls-out metal. EAD stripped back extraneous detail to achieve a buttery smooth 60fps before I even knew what that meant. It was just fast. The tiniest prod on the stick matters here and the original pad offers peak precision for those micro adjustments which make the difference between gracefully sweeping through a corner with nary a pixel to spare… or catching said corner and ricocheting between barriers before an explosive early retirement. The tracks are insane. How much more metal could this get? None. None more metal. Flaming skulls and motorcycles would actually reduce the metal content of this game.

Also available on: Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles, although the former is more-or-less closed for business (unless you’ve still got points on your account, in which case you’ve got until the end of January 2019 to spend them) and the latter is running on fumes.

1080° Snowboarding – Nintendo EAD

This game taught me the rewards of dedication and perseverance. It’s there in the title – that’s the goal. And I couldn’t do a ten-eighty for years. But I kept at it and – boom – finally, I nailed it. The speed and precision of F-Zero were joined here by some beautiful visuals, with sunlight glistening off the piste and snow spraying up behind your board. The framerate suffered accordingly, but again, the subtle controls enabled you to sharpen up shallow turns and gracefully arc across the course, conveying a sense of the feeling you get from the sport in real life. When you’re not falling arse-over-tit, that is.

This spot could easily have been taken by Excitebike 64 or Wave Race 64. I’ve written before about how these games need new iterations. I miss them.

Also available on: Virtual Consoles, same as F-Zero, Excitebike and Wave Race.

Snowboard Kids – Racdym

Another snowboarding game!? An Atlus-published sub-Mario Kart racer!? A reason to own the system!!?? Yes, yep and yarp. Mario Kart 64 has it detractors (it was my first and I loved it) and Diddy Kong Racing sorted most of them out, but the underappreciated Snowboard Kids (that’s right, not Kidz: +1 Respect Point) is the secret best multiplayer racer on the system. It’s essentially Mario Kart on snowboards – goofy characters collecting items and firing at each other while racing down a mountain to a ski-lift which takes them to the top for another lap. What Snowboard Kids added was extra tension and comedy. Obviously, snowboards have no accelerator and downed characters must hop to get back up to speed – easy on a slope but very tense on flatter areas as your opponents shoot down the piste behind you. The end of the run usually produces hilarious pile-ups as you scramble for the lift. It controls beautifully and it’s not available on anything else. It’s even-more-forgotten sequel is now one of the most expensive cartridges on the system.

Star Wars Episode 1: Racer – LucasArts

Racer number four, eh? That analogue stick was good from something! This was essentially a prettier F-Zero (thank you RAM Expansion Pak) that wasn’t quite as smooth but which added a progression system with purchasable pod enhancements. Plus, it was the only good Phantom Menace game, based on the best bit of film (apart from the Darth Maul bits and all the soundtrack). Similar to GoldenEye, a second pad could be used for some twin-stick precision that more-closely mirrored the controls of the actual onscreen pods. Watto’s banter and post-race rendition of the Cantina theme is also excellent.

Also available on: There were versions on PC, Mac and Dreamcast (plus a top-down GBC version). They all looked prettier but they didn’t have that sweet, sweet ’64 analogue stick.

The Ones That Got Away:

Paper Mario - Supposed to be a cracker. Never got round to it.

Honourable Mentions:

Lylat Wars – The Super FX chip made a primitive version possible on SNES, but Starfox 64 arguably fulfilled the cinematic promise of the original with a smooth framerate. Came in a massive box with the Rumble Pak. Top drawer. The 3DS version is very good, although it lacks the rumble.

Rogue Squadron – Bettered by its sequel on GameCube, but this still has some great moments.

Banjo-Kazooie – Had to be mentioned being The Greatest Game™ and all.

The Rule of 4 or 5: Mega Drive

Continuing my personal rundown of the four or five games that make each console worth keeping in the cupboard, we arrive at the very genesis of my video games affection...

The SEGA Mega Drive (as it was known outside North America) is an emblem of early ‘90s cool, and as everyone knows, there’s no cooler cool than early ‘90s cool. Indeed, it was rad. We’re talking shell suits, double denim and Hypercolor – ‘cool’ has never been so obvious or accessible. Of course, consoles that would follow the Mega Drive/Genesis would advertise their hip credentials, but sleek slabs of hardware like the PS2 were far too understated and classy. SEGA had one foot in the overblown ‘80s, so their machine had vents and buttons and curves like Gordon Gekko’s dashboard. The control pad was an enormous kidney with three chunky buttons; big, bold and black (and very comfortable). The typeface that stood out on the console wasn’t its name, but the embossed and golden ’16-BIT’ below the cartridge slot.

“16-BIT!” it shouts.

“What’s a bit, again?”

“Eat my shorts! It’s more than the last console, and more is more! More numbers! More bits! MORE!!!”

Beyond the Blast Processing™ and bits, the console looked glossy and technical, and sought to appeal to the technophile with knobs and sliders denoting power and decibels. It blended well with the hi-fi and its coherent design language carried over to the box art (in the EU at least). To begin with, every game carried a signature grey grid over a black background, mirroring the grey-over-white of the Master System boxes. On the shelf, those cases formed a stylish collection that obviously wasn’t for kids.

The first two Sonic games carried the classy grey grid over black design. The third had the balls-out blue box.
The game manuals were landscape format and usually featured eight language columns per double page.

I suppose none of these details matter – it’s the games which are important – but the advertising and image of the Mega Drive stick in the memory. The console and its library looked like they meant business - discreet, sophisticated business. It was entirely a result of marketing, as the games themselves were a kaleidoscope of genres, from gritty futuristic shooters to bouncy mascot platformers. But what marketing! For three or four years, SEGA played against Nintendo’s wholesome family-friendly image to race ahead in the minds of the self-conscious coolkids of the day. Even today, the character of Sonic the Hedgehog retains that ‘hog with 'tude persona, much to the dismay of many fans who grew out of all that nonsense two decades ago. Of course, now that we’ve hit peak ‘90s nostalgia, that earnest, try-hard cool can be appreciated anew with a safety blanket of irony.

Thing is, Sonic wasn’t actually my first platformer on the Mega Drive – it was a pack-in game starring the perennially popular (yet, cringingly uncool) Mickey Mouse.

Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse – SEGA AM7

It turns out that My First Video Game Ever™ stands up very well in 2018! Of course, it’s a rung down the ladder from Sonic in almost every respect, but it’s as perfect an introduction to the medium as one could hope for: a colourful, jaunty platformer from SEGA with tight controls, playroom music and cracking animation. Along with Quackshot, it quashed the idea early on that licenced games are unanimously crap. It’s storybook, it’s fairy tale, it’s Mickey-fuckin’-Mouse. World of Illusion took the ball and ran with it, but Castle turned me on to games. Even Mum and Dad remember it fondly.

Also available on: Oddly, not very much. It appeared on a Japan-only Sega Saturn compilation with Quackshot in 1998 and it was a pre-order bonus for PlayStation 3 owners who bought the 2013 reimagining, but wasn’t put on the PSN store itself. Disney’s licensing dept. has been working out issues with other games recently (see Capcom’s Disney Afternoons Collection) so perhaps it will make an appearance.

Might actually finish this one day...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – Sonic Team, Sega Technical Institute

Of all the games on the list, this is perhaps the hardest to justify. Not due to the quality of the game, you understand, rather there are very few consoles since the Mega Drive that you can’t play this on, so is it really essential to own it on original hardware? I’d argue there’s still something magical about that D-pad plus one-button gameplay that feels perfect with the Mega Drive’s chunky controller. STI tweaked every aspect of the original game just so. The character sprite seemed ever so slightly bigger and brighter. The levels felt more assuredly solid. And Masato Nakamura’s soundtrack… well, that pops just as funkily as the original. Sonic 2 showcases perfectly the refinements made in the best video game sequels. The first game is obviously seminal, but it’s the sequel that truly nails the formula, and this was the high watermark that last summer’s Sonic Mania managed to approach for the first time since 1994’s Sonic & Knuckles.

Also available on: everything. Seriously, it’s appeared on nearly every major console in some form or other since its release, barring the original PlayStation. They’re all serviceable but the pick of the ports is the M2-developed SEGA 3D Classics version on 3DS.

And this one. Never sorted out the spikes or the background.

Streets of Rage II - Ancient

Another fine example of taking the original and twisting the Refine-o-meter up to eleventy-stupid, this game makes pummelling repetitive enemies in repetitive ways feel fantastic. The controls seem restrictive by modern standards but there’s something in the balance that makes it work. And I think its not-so secret weapon is the way Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack integrates with and enhances those mechanics. Timing is everything and, with each stage featuring a tailormade track and each enemy requiring a specific strategy, the fights become dance routines – a repertoire of steps recalled and deployed in varying combinations along to the beat. It’s this attention to flow and encounters that makes SORII the best expression of the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre, and it plays just as well today as it did in 1992.

As an aside, this game’s sequel – imaginatively named Streets of Rage 3 – suffered in the West thanks to arriving late in the Mega Drive’s cycle and featuring several questionable alterations from its Japanese counterpart, including a massive hike in difficulty. However, I’d recommend sourcing a copy via whatever means available (now pretty easy via Steam; the Steam Workshop mod community can even furnish you with an English translation of the original Bare Knuckle III.) It’s a wonderful close to the trilogy which stretches the hardware and features a fantastic, though less immediately accessible soundtrack.

Also available on: various platforms. Again, the SEGA 3D Classics version on 3DS is a peach.

Ghostbusters – SEGA/Compile

Another licenced game? But aren’t licenced games universally shite?! Whoever claims so is an eejit, obviously. This platforming shooter featured chunky caricatures of the principle cast and threw them into a world of squelching sprites and cartoon sound effects. In doing so, it captures the accessible comedy spirit of the films without the need for dynamite dialogue. I was obsessed with Egon, Winston, Ray and Peter as a kid and, looking back, I was lucky to have them in such a great game (although Winston was notably and confusingly absent).

Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament – Supersonic Software/Codemasters

SO many hours spent burning around the bathtub. Micro Machines succeeded by turning its limitations into assets – its limited screen space, for example. As you pulled away from the pack your overhead view of the track ahead would shrink to almost nothing and you’d be relying on memory to time a blind 90° turn. This would be infuriating in any other game but here it signified that you were dominating the race and touching the edge of the frame would score you a point. After an opponent crashed and burned, you might gamble and race ahead into certain death, hoping you’d reach the edge of the screen and net your point before they could rematerialise on the track and accelerate. Your fortunes could change in an instant and this constant tug of war between risk and reward, winner and loser made each race a nail-biter. Plus, you had that fantastic J-cart with the two extra controller ports built in. Per-retty cool.

The One That Got Away:

Gunstar Heroes – Everyone loves it, I got the 3DS SEGA Classics remake… and never got around to playing it.