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I recently played Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past, and was greeted by the following image of a front-facing Picard on several screens:

Image of Picard facing the player.

I at first assumed that the image was hand-drawn pixel art, made from scratch for the game, but according to Memory Alpha's page on Future's Past, another release of the same game, many visual assets used were traced from TNG:

Images from Star Trek: Future's Past and their sources.

As someone researching this game, I would appreciate any leads on the source of this image.

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    That's not a picture of anyone's face. It might be generated from an image of Patrick Stewart, but it appears to be vertically symmetric (before colouring), so not an actual photo.
    – DavidW
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 11:06
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    Certainly not First Contact @jo1storm since the game in question was released in the same year as the Generations film :)
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 13:53
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    I'm curious why Worf's shirt changed colors in the game...
    – TylerH
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 15:58
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    @TylerH - Worf only wore red in season 1. After he moved to Security, he wore gold. The game is set later in the Enterprise-D's adventures (see release date of 1994). Players would have been far more familiar w/ Worf being in gold than red. Also note game Troi is apparently post-Jellico (ie - regulation uniform and hair)
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 16:23
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    all images sourced for you now feeb :) - now, the question as to "why" only season 1 episodes were used....
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 19:29

1 Answer 1

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A possibility:

Based on the opening shot of Picard from the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint"

It obviously isn't an exact shot just pixelized (the perspective is a little different and he is wearing a post-S2 uniform with a higher collar in the pixel image), but appears very much based on said opening.

enter image description here

It could be the same image, and they just used the left side, then did a mirror image for the right side. His face almost appears * too * wide and it is nearly exactly symmetrical

Here's a quick version I just made in Photoshop using the mirror image idea:

enter image description here The starfield / Picard image is from Season 1 episode "Lonely Among Us"

enter image description here

The Dr. Crusher scene is from S1: The Battle

enter image description here

And finally, the conference room scene is from Season 1: The Neutral Zone

enter image description here

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    The left half looks the exact same, then the right half is just mirrored in the pixel art. In all the other images there are slight differences as well, such as the yellow uniforms in the third set. With the shadow on the face this looks good, +1
    – hammythepig
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 14:00
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    @hammythepig - I was literally updating my answer with that exact comment and had clicked save and saw your comment below - just FYI :D
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 14:01
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    There was never doubt it was a mirrored image - but you've proven exactly the source of the image. Incidentally there was a TNG episode with a mirrored star field - but a search for it is proving more difficult than it is worth.
    – lucasbachmann
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 18:35
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    All of the pixel images are substantially wider than the video stills. My guess, it's a native 4:3 game stretchy-squashy mangled to 16:9, then a screenshot taken.
    – fluffysheap
    Commented Oct 30, 2020 at 22:15
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    @fluffysheap You are correct. This is a common error when playing old PC games that used non-square pixels on modern hardware.
    – eyeballfrog
    Commented Oct 31, 2020 at 15:27

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