Opinion PC Gamer: "Jedi Knight and PC gaming saved Star Wars fans during a barren '90s"

[vonarth]

This is a fun read for fans of the Dark Forces / Jedi Knight series. SW games were so great during the 90s with multiple releases each year in a variety of genres.

Jedi Knight and PC gaming saved Star Wars fans during a barren '90s

PC gaming is still a vital part of what Star Wars means to people.

www.pcgamer.com

The novelty of Jedi Knight was taking Kyle Katarn from being the gun-wielding smuggler type of Dark Forces to a lightsaber-wielding warrior (or Sith lord, if you pushed the game in that direction). It was the first time Force powers had been well-realised in a 3D game: strangling enemies, taking their weapons, healing on the fly, using Force jump to reach higher locations. Lightsaber combat was a cornerstone of the game, but getting access to all of that felt like a real journey.

There was a sense that Star Wars was about to become massive again, following a fallow period from the late '80s to the mid '90s broken by Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, but it hadn't quite happened yet. I remember this as a time where I'd read any Star Wars Expanded Universe novel I could get my hands on, and where the Kenner toys were starting to creep into my local supermarket.

Jedi Knight was like a gift during this time without new Star Wars movies. Not only did it show me Star Wars worlds, ships and characters I'd never seen before, but it did so with live-action, now rather hammy cutscenes. It was as close to getting a new Star Wars film as you could get at the time—well, that and the Rebel Assault games.

The FMV cutscenes in JK were the best.


What were your favorite SW PC games in the 90s?

 

[lashman]

i remember playing A LOT of the first Dark Forces ... good memories ... and such a great game too!

 

[vonarth]

Dark Forces was fantastic. I still remember going to a friend's house to first play the game, and I couldn't get over the fact that it was like Doom, but with Star Wars.

 

[lashman]

yeah, exactly! it's SUCH a good game ... and plays very well to this day (it's on steam ... all Star Wars games are, in fact)

 

[PossiblyPudding]

Oh no, this is going to make me reinstall these again isn't it? Glad to hear that Dark Forces still holds up gameplay wise.

Sorry backlog, it looks like you'll have to wait a little longer as I go through the Star Wars games for the umpteenth time.

 

[Anne]

I was a bit young so I ended up getting into all this about when Jedi Outcast came out. I have a huge soft spot for id Tech 3 shooters so that point in the series stands out super hard for me. I have played through the whole series a couple times at this point. The first two games are always a treat to revisit thanks to the cheese factor.

 

[lashman]

Oh no, this is going to make me reinstall these again isn't it? Glad to hear that Dark Forces still holds up gameplay wise.

Sorry backlog, it looks like you'll have to wait a little longer as I go through the Star Wars games for the umpteenth time.

DO IT! you won't regret it, i promise!

 

[warp_]

Dark Forces was cool as hell, and I was never a massive Star Wars fan. The greatest 90s Star Wars game for me will always be Tie Fighter.

 

[low-G]

Oh, barren 90's in terms of Star Wars video games. Jeesh for a second I thought we'd gone to crazytown.

I mean we're in barren Star Wars lands now. It has been a really really long time since an excellent Star Wars game came along... Throughout the 90's I felt no lack of Star Wars, even if there were off years here and there.

I still think fondly about Dark Forces, the tone is impeccable. That's what Solo should have felt like. That's what all Star Wars should feel like... (But of course Tie Fighter is, and will probably always be (sadface) the best).

 

[Koz]

I loved Jedi Knight but X-Wing was a defining game for me and still probably my favorite "flight" sim game. The official strategy guide was also great and was basically a piece of fiction interspersed with tips on how to beat each mission.

 

[Katsyo]

This is why I was personally so disappointed with the EA exclusivity deal for the Star Wars license... They will never make another flight sim nor am I expecting a new strategy game from them. The fact that what ever they will produce need to sell billion copies to be profitable means quite a lot to what kind of games they will make and market them.

Frankly the best parts from Dark Forces titles were the fact that I got to shoot actual weapons in first person view in the star wars galaxy, though the technical implementation might not have been the greatest but they still were fun as heck.

 

[Alextended]

I've been trying to get into X-Wing and TIE Fighter but being unable to rebind the controls makes them such a chore, the functions are distributed all over the keyboard. I guess I could rebind them in DOSBox (since the DOS CD versions are the best) but then I'd have to also remember that this function, bound and referenced to this key, is actually on that other key instead, lol. X-Wing Alliance lets you bind the joystick/hotas/whatever buttons to any function you want but again the keyboard only has the defaults. Other than that the games still feel really cool, the flight model is fun and shooting without the target lead crosshair based on distance and speed modern flight/space combat games use is cool too. If only they could be remastered (officially or with stuff like XWVM, not even for the graphics though that would be welcome, just for the engine and controls limitations to be lifted like it's been done for the likes of Doom).

I also couldn't get the Steam version of Jedi Knight to work without graphical artifacts. I never played it so I wanted to try it. Dark Forces is fine (DOSBox again).

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I mean... the SNES and N64 star wars games were pretty good too... its not like it was completely barren.

That Sega Star Wars Trilogy arcade game was pretty sweet too, albeit the very tail end of the 90s

 

[gabbo]

This is the one series I wanted to see revived, well, before Rogue One made it obsolete anyway.
Kyle Katan's journey from Han Solo to Luke Skywalker/Anakin Skywalker and then Luke was really well crafted over the first 4 titles and he's a better character than easily half the new canon.

And come on, 1st person light saber battles and/or blasting storm trooper in the noggin is just great fun. Academy was kinda slim all told, but expansions stretched into full titles will do that.

 

[Swenhir]

I was too young to play Dark Forces I or II but X-Wing Alliance and then Jedi Knight II were the games that introduced me to proper SW games. I'll always remember the feeling of belonging to a family that X-Wing Alliance manages to elicit in the early game, it was all quite amazing for young me .

I wish all this was still cannon.

 

[vonarth]

Oh, barren 90's in terms of Star Wars video games. Jeesh for a second I thought we'd gone to crazytown.

I mean... the SNES and N64 star wars games were pretty good too... its not like it was completely barren.

That Sega Star Wars Trilogy arcade game was pretty sweet too, albeit the very tail end of the 90s

Just to clarify, the author isn't saying that PC gaming or SW games on PC were barren - he's talking about the SW franchise itself. SW was still quite popular during the late 80s and early to mid 90s, but without new movies released during that time the franchise sort of plateaued. Then the Zahn trilogy breathed fresh air into the franchise, while PC games like X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and Dark Forces gave fans new and exciting stories to experience and revitalized interest in SW (at least for the more 'hardcore' fans). There were certainly SW games on other platforms (e.g. Super SW/ESB/RotJ) but those were mainly retelling existing stories.

And let's not forget the king of Star Wars PC games...

 

[low-G]

Just to clarify, the author isn't saying that PC gaming or SW games on PC were barren - he's talking about the SW franchise itself. SW was still quite popular during the late 80s and early to mid 90s, but without new movies released during that time the franchise sort of plateaued.

I mean, nobody expected there to be more Star Wars movies. And that was fine. Franchises don't need to be milked for money forever. Great art doesn't need sequels. That's not barren, that's respect, that's quality. It was better that way.

Not saying that every snide capitalistic exploitation is completely bad, but I wouldn't use the word barren for that at all. And the end result of course were the games that did more than fulfill a hole, they exceeded the larger profile works that were to come after.

 

[vonarth]

I mean, nobody expected there to be more Star Wars movies. And that was fine. Franchises don't need to be milked for money forever. Great art doesn't need sequels. That's not barren, that's respect, that's quality. It was better that way.

Not saying that every snide capitalistic exploitation is completely bad, but I wouldn't use the word barren for that at all. And the end result of course were the games that did more than fulfill a hole, they exceeded the larger profile works that were to come after.

I agree that barren isn't the best word to use (plateaued seems more apt) but SW fans did expect there would be more movies some day. They just weren't sure when or how it'd happen. Great art may not need sequels, but when the fans are hungry somebody has to feed them. The output of SW games from the 90s through the mid 2000s was insanely good.

Also agreed on the bolded part.

 

[teezzy]

Great art doesn't need sequels.

Tell that to my current painting I'm composing: The Morning of the Streltsky Execution 2: Vatrushka Boogaloo