real actors and sets and frequent branching dialogue response options. As soon as Klingon Academy was officially announced, developers ran into problems with the old source code from Starfleet Academy. Parts of the code were lost, garbled or incoherent, and delays began to mount. One of the biggest limitations of using the old code was a built-in constraint that restricted the game's on-screen resolution to 640 x 480 pixels, even though some similar games were capable at the time of being run at higher resolutions. This problem was not solved until just before release in June 2000. The goals of the developers were quite ambitious: 1) They wanted to add detailed damage modeling to the ships, dubbed "ginsuing" after the infamous late-night Ginsu knives commercials on American television; 2) they had to create and flesh out a large number of new ships with high polygon counts and superior graphics; 3) implement control and ship movement changes to make the game a more authentic Star Trek space combat experience. Originally slated to be released in the spring of 1999, development delays (not uncommon with many games) pushed the ultimate release date back until the summer of 2000. At several points during the game's halting progress it was nearly cancelled by Interplay, like a previous game entitled Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury, which had been cancelled some years prior. The game entered beta testing by the spring of 2000 and was hastily rushed to completion by Interplay in June 2000. Release and reception Klingon Academy was shipped on six CD-ROM discs. Once the game went gold in June 2000, Interplay terminated the entire development team, which did not bode well for the future prospects of the game. Game expansions and a promised mission builder were never released. Two minor technical patches were later released by a skeleton crew of staff kept on the project, but Interplay had effectively ended their support. The game received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. The game's graphics were considered to be adequate for its time, as the destruction of enemy vessels indicated a strong attention to detail. A player could blast holes through enemy vessels, blow off warp nacelles and cause other damage that would produce colorful particles "leaking" into space. Many players and reviewers characterized playing the game as like being in a Star Trek movie, praise that was a vast