Sunday, April 10, 2011

Dark Forces

Being a Star Wars fan, I actually played this more than I did Doom I think.  Awesome level design, combined with Star Wars setting made for an unforgettable game.  Add to that, the dynamic soundtrack which seemed to know what you were doing and you have a game that certainly kept me up to the wee hours of the morning on a couple of nights.

The best way to get this game working on a modern system is to download a copy of DOSBox.  You do need to mount the CD (or CD image) in the DOSBox conf file to get everything working properly.  Looks like you can still buy a copy of the game itself at Amazon.

Star Wars: Dark Forces is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1995 for DOS and Apple Macintosh, and in 1996 for the PlayStation. The storyline within the Dark Forces is set in the Star Wars fictional universe and follows the character Kyle Katarn. Katarn is a mercenary working on behalf of the Rebel Alliance. He discovers the Empire's "Dark Trooper Project", which involves the development of a series of powerful new battle droids and power-armored stormtroopers.

Dark Forces uses the Jedi game engine, which was developed specifically for the game. The engine adds gameplay features to the first-person shooter genre which were uncommon at the time of release. These features include level designs with multiple floors and being able to look up and down.

Critics gave very favorable reviews for the DOS and Macintosh versions of Dark Forces, but not for the PlayStation version. The DOS and Macintosh versions were praised for the level design and technological advances. The PlayStation version was criticized for having poor graphics and slow frame rates, reducing the playability of the game. A sequel to Dark Forces, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II followed in 1997.

20 comments:

  1. i personally enjoy video games with my morning coffee ;)

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  2. All the enemies are WALLHAX! :D
    Nice blog man! Following

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  3. I actually remember playing this as a kid..and getting headaches from 6 hour "marathons".
    love this post!

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  4. Oh how the Star Wars games have advanced

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  5. i've never been into starwars, but i love those games. especially the older ones.

    great blog, following.

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  6. Regardless, the playstation had incredibly fun games. Crash Bandicoot...enough said :)
    www.neverboringnews.blogspot.com

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  7. Looks like they used the same doom engine but changed it with star wars, looks awesome :D

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  8. I've never even heard of this game before, but it does look fun, sad I missed it

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  9. does anyone else thing this looks like doom with storm troopers? haha

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  10. Nice vid, thanks for posting,

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  11. I've never played this but only heard about it.

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  12. I remember that game, it was such fun! I might dosbox it :p
    I also think it's available on steam...

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  13. never played this before, i'll check it out, thanks. D

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  14. I'm a starwars fan too! Love this game!

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  15. wow i remember this game. i nostalgia'd hard.

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  16. +followed for such an awesome game! I miss it :)

    If you get some extra time you should come check out my fishes blog. :)

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  17. Awesome post man. Good read... is this DosBox you speak of free? Guess I'll just google it and find out, cause I definitely want to try and play this game!

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