By trendy requirements, 1995’s Dark Forces does not appear to be a lot, nevertheless it’s rightfully thought of one of many extra essential Star Wars video games ever launched. Not solely did it introduce essential technical improvements to the first-person shooter style, nevertheless it additionally went on to have an outsized impact on later Star Wars canon and spawned the Jedi Knight sequence. However, like lots of video games from the mid-’90s, revisiting Dark Forces may be difficult. Before right now, your finest wager was to purchase a digital copy of the sport from both Steam or GOG and use DOSBox to emulate it on a contemporary laptop. Dark Forces is likely one of the simpler video games to get working on DOSBox, however the software program may be intimidating if you happen to’ve by no means used it earlier than.
Enter The Force Engine. The mission is primarily the work of LuciusDXL, who spent three years reverse engineering LucasArts’ proprietary Jedi Engine to make the 2 video games that have been constructed with it — Dark Forces and 1997’s Outlaws — simpler to run on trendy methods. With model 1.0, TFE is suitable with each the GOG and Steam variations of Dark Forces. Once you have put in the software program, it should mechanically detect the sport’s executable, and you can begin enjoying with no need to do issues like adjusting cycles in DOSBox.
What’s extra, it provides a handful of options to make it simpler to understand Dark Forces in 2022. One huge addition is help for contemporary widescreen resolutions, so you do not have to play the sport at its authentic 320 by 200 decision. Other optionally available quality-of-life enhancements embody full mouselook help and a brand new save system that means that you can make quicksaves. If you are a fan of Outlaws, LuciusDXL says they’re engaged on including help for the cult basic shooter as a part of TFE’s model 2.0 launch. While there is not any launch date for that but, LuciusDXL estimates it will not take them almost as lengthy now that they’ve gone by the method of reverse-engineering Dark Forces.