I used to work in an indie game store back when Doom had just arrived and I was playing that when a really tall, bald American dude came in with another guy for a look around. He saw me playing Doom and sidled up and said 'if you like that you're going to love it when you're shooting Stormtroopers". Turned out he was Randy Komisar, the then President of Lucas Arts, and he'd just told me about Dark Forces before they'd even announced it. He was right too...I did love it when I was shooting Stormtroopers.
Like Doom and Duke Nukem, this game used the PS1's GPU to rasterise the screen as axis aligned line segments made of pixel-wide triangles (horizontal lines for floors/ceilings and vertical lines for walls). Instead of projecting a 2D textured triangle into screen space as a normal 3D engine would, leading to affine sampling errors on PS1. Texturing is handled by projecting those lines on screen back into texture space, thus the scaling is calculated on a per-line basis leading to correct perspective.
What's interesting about this game compared to DOOM is that rather than store the wall textures as one would normally expect a texture map to look like in the PlayStation's VRAM they store them as 1 pixel high horizontal strips laid end-to-end.
Fuck yeah! Im 37 and still playing everything from my 85 Nes and all the consoles (17+) in between to my PC. Now i have a ten year old son whos been brought up on mario, sonic, doom etc... Good times! not in a hurry to grow out of games.
I'm 47 now, still playing video games obviously otherwise I wouldn't be watching this. The only downside is that my eyes get tired more easily lately and I can't play as long as before, I have to quit before I really want to 😑
The Jedi engine, which powered this game and Outlaws, is a really underrated piece of tech. The mod scene for Dark Forces did some really incredible things with it despite not having a source port to expand it's abilities like Doom did. If you guys ever want to take a look at some of that, I still have a bunch of those levels backed up!
I always remember how well the developer tied the gameworld to the Star Wars movies. Given the technical limitations of the day, it still holds up in that regard.
I don't think it's 10 FPS, more like 15. But what I love about PS1 games is how, when they try to do their best frame rate, they have a "folding" look - as if you can almost see it drawing, top-down. This wobbly but consistent buttery thing.
I don't think mentioning that this game has a sewer level needs a spoiler warning... in the 90s that would've been like saying it had keycards or sliding block puzzles.
We got so many Star Wars games growing up in the late 90's, early 2000's, some amazing and some not so amazing but it was a good time to be a gamer. One of my favorites and my first ever MMORPG was Star Wars Galaxies a true sandbox MMO.
it was a golden time for SIFI games, a time when i wished there where trek games as good as the star wars ones. all the space sim x wing/tie fighter games where legendary, kotor 1/2 amazing, jedi academy & even the console games where rock solid. sad how in recent years it just stooped.
@@liaminwales Once Disney took over and EA bought the rights to the development of Star Wars games it was over. Lucas Arts existence was to primarily make Star Wars games where as EA's is to make surprise mechanics. What Disney should've done was to not hand exclusivity rights to EA for 10 years but allow different studios and publishers to make different types of games. At least we got Jedi Fallen Order which is better than nothing.
@@TerraWare yep did not relay want to point the finger but it's the mouse that's to blame. Disney just makes me sad now eating up all the IP and kicking out ****, kind of a sad end to Lucas Arts legendary game studio. i cant blame EA they did what EA dose... nothing, the blame stands with the mouse for handing it to them. EA will have been vary clear when setting up the contract laying out what they where going to do with the IP, goals, timelines etc & the mouse will have given it all the stamp of approval. assume it was something like "we will make battlefield with Jedi and shake the $$$ out of kids pockets for the next 10 years" & the mouse was like "excellent" (have Mr burns in my head clasping his hands) not played Fallen Order yet & not in a rush to. as a plus a lot of the old games are up on GOG and have mod's to fix any problems.
That's what I like about late 90s to mid 2000s companies were producing games every 1 year this led to bundle of games. Now ever company just milks out a game and releases in 5 years saying they emphasis on quality lol
Galaxies was my first MMO as well, it was heavily flawed but amazing at the same time. I got it when the Jump to Lightspeed expansion had been released, that first venture into space... Wow!
Speaking of first-person shooters on PS1, I always think about Alien Resurrection. The quality of lighting, textures and the amount of polygons on screen was jaw-dropping at that time, and still looks impressive today.
You're not crazy. They somehow manage to make the volume super low in many of their videos. Here it's at an extreme low. Seems that they don't care about it which is a shame
I remember my stepdad at the time and I going out. I bought Dark Forces, he bought Full Throttle and over the next several years we shared the games with each other. Somewhere along the line I don't remember what I did with my copy of Dark Forces, but when Limited Run Games offered a pre-order for a re-release of the game, I bought it. While waiting for it to actually be produced, I went out and picked up a mint on card Dark Trooper phase 3 figure to go along with it.
IDK if anyone mentioned it here already but IIRC, you can hold the run button to rotate/turn the camera faster. The control scheme is pretty tricky overall. I remember one point in the game where you're expected to crouch and it required some kind of weird button combination to do it, but the game doesn't outright tell you to crouch so you may get stuck until you figure it out.
Fun fact: Dark forces was the first game where I tried a "VR headset" back in the 90's on a technology fair. It was heavy headset with small screens in front of my eyes, but it had head tracking!
I bought Dark Forces for my Macintosh Performa back in the day. It played fine until I went out to the first outdoor area, then it would crash to the desktop. Drove me crazy for weeks! Then I finally figured out that I needed more RAM. Upgraded from 4 megs to 8 megs of RAM. That upgrade cost almost $200! It's crazy how far technology has come. My first hard drive was only 250 megs!
Man this is great. Feels like the old days, sitting with my buddy playing this game, taking turns each level and talking about it while we played. A really pleasant nostalgia trip. I can't believe I'm just now discovering this channel.
As a young budding PC gamer my parents got me the Star Wars collection, which had the special edition of Tie Fighter, Rebel Assault 1 and 2, a demo of Dark Forces, and preview CDs of what was then the upcoming prequel trilogy.
The good thing about Dark Forces is that it happened when the prequels and sequels haven't happened yet. And it shows: agile and interesting setting, interesting characters, without the inflated jedi mumbo-jumbo.
I used to play Jedi Knight multiplayer over a modem. Since it was always 1 v 1, my good friend and I always dueled on the Cloud City Gantry. Miss those days.
Games of this era on console were best when they implemented “Jevon’s control,” where the face buttons were used for movement, and the analog stick was used for looking. This was mostly implemented on the Saturn 3D controller and Dreamcast, and it worked amazingly well.
I first played Dark Forces at my buddy's house in the 90's and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Unfortunately, we didn't have a PC when I was growing up, but I did have a Playstation, so I was overjoyed when they finally released Dark Forces on Sony's machine and I got to experience it in all its pixelated glory. It's an absolute classic.
If dialogue is consistent then Kyle Katarn was an imperial officer. "Katarn was once an impressive Imperial officer, but he was weak and gave up on the struggle for our New Order." ―General Rom Mohc
DF is a great game and will always be special. DF2JK took it to another level with the live action cutscenes. DF2JK and it’s companion Mysteries of the Sith are possibly my favorite FPS ever.
Tests modern day games: The game sometimes dips under 60 fps and it's not as smooth as we'd like it to be. DF Retro 15 fps FPS games: Yeah, it's perfectly playable!
As always, Mac version got forgotten but it had the smootness of the PC version (If you had a Power PC machine) and the high quality music of the PSX as well as higher res assets making the sprites less pixelated.
I wouldn't really call that "high quality music", it's more of less like an Amiga or a really old sampler, in my opinion the FM music is a better treat if it's your first time playing, very atmospheric and moody, IMO it blends perfectly with the visual presentation, more than the GM and MT-32 variants. You're right about the smoothness, but no, it does not use "high quality assets" except for the loading screen, the rest of the graphics were interpolated using LucasArts' own (back then) internal smoothing algorithm, which you might now know as Scale2x (yes, they were actually the ones that came up with it). The rest of the graphics are straight from the PC version, and this wouldn't be a problem, if they bothered to fix the projection in order to account for actual 4:3 and not the stretched 13H version of it from VGA. You know how the game, even in high-res has some massive letterboxing? Because internally it's still running at a multiple of 320x200, which is 640x400, except that's not the way the game is supposed to look, because on actual DOS that weird resolution is supposed to be calibrated as a 4:3 view port, like 320x240, so the graphics' aspect ratio only look correct when played like that, something that sadly is not supported on the Mac version. Duke3D addressed this problem, probably because BUILD was always meant to support high-res SVGA graphics, while I don't think Dark Forces' devs put much thought when developing the Jedi Engine. If the Mac port was released after the engine updates they made for Outlaws, things might have been different.
@@zummone Too bad we never got a Windows version that ran at VGA/SVGA. The rendering resolution of the polygons is definitely higher on the Mac than DOS/PSX. Also the framerate feels really smooth on a PPC machine. Maybe scale2x is just used on some of the 2D assets. It also became an option for SCUMM games on classic Mac OS.
The PC version looks great on a TFT LCD btw. No stutters, very smooth. I'm playing on an old 4:3 Samtron. Edit: The real version running in DOS, not emulated in DOSbox...
jedi knight 2 jedi outcast is one of my fav game of all time it was so fun, jedi academy was pretty cool also the next 1 .. didn't play any star wars games before that though, fun that kyle katarn is already in dark force!
Iv been playing this series this year. Great upload DF. And I also thought the same that Finn mustve been inspired by Kyle Katarn he was also a Stormtrooper who defected.
Imuse was used in both Tie Fighter and Xwing games in their original engines. When they remade them with the Xwing vs. Tie Fighter engine they replaced Imuse with pre recorded tracks which was cool at the time but has not aged very well.
14:00 I find this discussion fascinating. Makes we wonder what about Insomniacs excellent "Disruptor" from 1996? I think that game targets 60fps and I don't recall much warping in that game either, runs very smooth, looks really damn good and one of my definitive Top PS1 games. Would love to see to video on it.
These have been so excellent for my weekends. Very chill, please keep doing them. Though you may want to consider the audio levels in the edit, ads are so much louder than the video itself, you've got to boost it, baby
There is no problem with the sound levels on this video, yall are just used to getting screamed at by ads and other obnoxious youtubers, doesnt meant they have to follow suit.
@@Beaut_Beau We're annoyed because we do NOT like being screamed at by ads. If we have to turn up a video because we can't hear it that means ads are that much louder when they come on. We have a more direct line to Digital Foundry than we do to youtoube and all of its ad partners and so we ask Digital Foundry to please turn up the mix in the edit.
I still have my Dark Forces PC disk, though I've forgotten my memories from that time. I did replay the game in the last few years from GOG and enjoyed my time.
18:45, that take just couldn’t be any more wrong. This version of the game absolutely wrecks the vibe. It pains me to know that there are people who played this for the first and in many cases only time on the PS1. 37:00: It was not.
Agree 100%. They really missed the mark on this one. I'm sure it was playable enough back in 1995 when it came out on PS1, but nowadays it's hard to stomach playing it for more than 20 mins at these 15 fps . I know I tried it. Doom on PS1 on the other hand is perfectly playable, because it runs mostly at 25-30 fps
Alex Star, as somebody who had the PC and PlayStation versions at the time of their release, I can tell you that it was just as awful and just as much of a bastardization of the game back then as it seems now. I ended up giving it to my PC-less friend and even he couldn’t get through it. Hell, Disruptor came out for the PS1 the very next year!
@@gamingblowsofficial I trust you but what I mean is that the tolerance for low framerates was much higher back in the 90's when games like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark were considered masterpieces while running at 10-15 fps on N64
Actually it was. Not everyone had the money for a PC and I don't remember giving framerate a second thought, even when playing perfect dark split screen with the bots, which would often see single digit gameplay. His point was just that this was one of the few decent options for people that didn't have PC.
I thought this was an exciting time for SW, a lot of potential story and characters gave fans hope for the future. Of course, that’s been evaporated now, but Dark Forces contained all the elements for a great film spin off. A missed opportunity.
This might not be the right place to suggest this but I think the Sega Rally series would be fascinating to see for a proper DF Retro! I’ve recently discovered the games through emulation and they’re truly amazing, and I also never realised how much music from the Model 3 games you used in DF Retro! Some main obstacles would probably be finding the files to run Sega Rally 3 or an arcade cabinet of it, plus the fact that Sega Rally 2 does not emulate very well, but I’m sure you could do it nonetheless and I’d love to see your take on the different ports and games.
One of my all time favorites. DF, JK, and MOTS were just on another level from the trash that came after it (and yes that includes games like JK Academy).
@@djchristian82 After Jedi Knight I found Jedi Outcast quite disappointing. The only thing that made Jedi Outcast superior was the lightsaber combat. Amazing stuff.
26:11 "These controls are not the most intuitive in the world .... I guess it's better than N64 style games like perfect dark and goldeneye, really." *spits up drink* Excuse me? How dare you, sir. I believe PD and GE has the first instance of what became standard for FPS controls. Set either game to 1.2 control scheme, and instead of using the C-buttons to walk, change your grip on the N64 pad to the left side, and use D-pad instead. This puts Forward/backward/strafing on your left thumb, and looking on your right thumb. This puts "aiming" on your left trigger, and "shooting" on your right trigger (Z button). For A and B simply reach you're right thumb over from the stick. It works very well, and personally I found all of my Halo muscle memory felt right at home, albeit with a different stick sensitivity.
1:09 While as you rightly say Dark Forces doesn't use any Doom code, Lucasarts *did* (legally speaking) "reverse engineer" John Carmack's Doom code to see how it ticked, and the implication was that elements of it got replicated somewhat in their game engine. So, while Dark Forces isn't a Doom engine game per se, it does fork from it. In layman's terms it's hard to quantify that except to say it "feels" the most like Doom out of all the so-called Doom clones, because somewhere deep down it has actually got some Doom DNA.
Being on patreon means you have access to download their videos at full, uncompressed quality. I think that's worth it, not that I'm a patron myself...
The first PC shooter my parents would let me have. I think I played it all the way through a dozen times. I was 10 years old and in heaven with this game and X Wing and Tie Fighter
This game blew my mind as a child and the sequels got even better. Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast is still the most impressive Star Wars game ever made and the lightsaber combat has still to this day never been matched. The fact that it was done on Quake 3 engine will forever be impressive to me, LucasArts had magic and EA will never even come close sadly.
@11:40 SHOUTOUT TO MEDIA-PLAY!!! I stood at a Dreamcast Kiosk for 2 hours (retroactive apology to all the people I ignored behind me) playing Sonic Adventure at one in 2000.
20:11 I love the original PlayStation controller and I ALWAYS use it if DualShock or even DualAnalog doesn't offer anything too special for the gameplay or just flat-out require it. I like the lightweight and smallness of the original. It's like an NES controller or something but more ergonomic.
This video's audio is strangely quiet, i can barely hear John and the other host voices, and i Tried other vídeos and the sound on my headphones are Fine
9:09: That sounds almost sexy. Anyway, great video. Dark forces is still amazing, but Tie Fighter is my number one of all time, the collection cd version with midi music.
I literally just bought a PlayStation 1 for the first time just for this game. When I was a kid I used to play it on the PC all the time. I didn't feel like buying an expensive PC to play it again so I went the PS1 route and I picked up MechWarrior 2 cuz I also played that on the PC. Can't wait to play some nostalgia.
@syed jawad JKA isn't though. While it has more moves, it lacks the dynamic combat gained from being able to control your blocks with skill that JO has (as well as being able to control which angle your saber swings from based on your relation to your opponent and your cursor and movement), and you can't play it in first person when using a lightsaber, which automatically makes it less immersive and less realistic.
I got fond memories of this game I don't like Star Wars never did never seen one movie but oddly enough this was the very first PS1 game I bought when I got my playstation bacc in 1997 and I loved it! Solely cuz it was a FPS game I didn't have a pc so there was no Doom for me and I bought it on the cheap so I wasn't complaining after playing Sega Genesis for the past 6-7 years this was a whole new world for me pun intended
Good old times. I turned into a true gamer after gaining a PS1 from my uncle that was a gamer too. My favourite game was Crash team racing. I miss the time when games were more about fun and less about how much the developer spent or how big something of the game is (you get the point).
@@charoleawood I wish I had a Dreamcast, but my next console was a PS2, then a Xbox 360 and now I play on PC. I had a brief contact with a Dreamcast in the arcades of my neighbourhood. I played a beat em up game that I don't recall the name. Well, on Steam I played Sonic adventures, Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5. I had loads of fun with the direct gameplay as well as Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on the DC emulator. To have experienced such games later in my life is a prove that my preference is not nostalgia but that they were better. Final Fantasy IX had a start full of action while XV had me bored with a increasing lists of generic things to do such as kill a random monster. The Marvel Vs Capcom of the DC had far more variety than that one available on GamePass. Well, the current gen has its gems as well, such as The Witcher 3, but I am always cautious to pay a full price in games that offer dozens of hours of pure boredom such as Watch Dogs 1.
@@matheuswerly5320 I remember gaming on PS1, I cherish those days, and then how special it was to have a Dreamcast when it was new. The experience of playing the original Resident Evils in their time was really something else, and then to see Code Veronica on the Dreamcast was mindblowing, I don't think people can understand how amazing it was. I remember how beautiful Soul Calibur was, how bad I was at playing it, and then Dead or Alive 2 came around and changed my life, it was the best game I had ever played at the time --- all of the sudden 3D fighters clicked for me. Because of DoA2 I was able to play Soul Calibur. I still maintain that Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate on the original Xbox is the best game ever, tied with Ninja Gaiden 2 on 360
@@charoleawood I had the same mind-blowing situation when my uncle brought me without any warn the PS2. GTA San Andreas was so realistic and so big and Crash tag team racing visuals and gameplay seemed as a huge step up for at that time. Almost every of my friends had a PS2, I played Naruto and Dragon Ball Z games with them, a friend of mine had Dead or Alive for PS2 and Mortal Kombat. Those were great times. Need for Speed underground had visuals that for me was almost real life. I think the game that impressed me the most was Valkyrie Profile 2. My uncle hated that but I was so impressed with the visuals that I played it to the end, even though my English wasn't very good when I was 10. I think for the PS2 era my favourite game was Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3.
@@matheuswerly5320 You know, I've not played any Valkyrie Profile game, but I just looked up a video of VP2 and it looks really excellent, too bad your uncle couldn't dig it. My mom got my brother a PS2 but he had left the house at that point so it became mine. I played SSX on October 30th, 2000 and it was GLORIOUS, the game still holds up artistically. My favorite PS2 game is Final Fantasy Twelve, one of the best games ever in my opinion, I played it WAY after it had already come out. I think the most graphically impressive PS2 game is MotorStorm Arctic Edge which came out way late in 2009
Yeah I played the dark forces games and mysteries of the Sith on PC. Great times! I can't imagine attempting to play this on PlayStation though, especially with the original PSX controller without analog sticks. That's a rough experience!
I used to work in an indie game store back when Doom had just arrived and I was playing that when a really tall, bald American dude came in with another guy for a look around. He saw me playing Doom and sidled up and said 'if you like that you're going to love it when you're shooting Stormtroopers". Turned out he was Randy Komisar, the then President of Lucas Arts, and he'd just told me about Dark Forces before they'd even announced it. He was right too...I did love it when I was shooting Stormtroopers.
I love this story
neat!
@Sandman Slim dude it’s a big world, cool stuff does happen.
Awesome 👏 and cool 😎 too
Back when people involved could talk highly of their material before it came out
Like Doom and Duke Nukem, this game used the PS1's GPU to rasterise the screen as axis aligned line segments made of pixel-wide triangles (horizontal lines for floors/ceilings and vertical lines for walls). Instead of projecting a 2D textured triangle into screen space as a normal 3D engine would, leading to affine sampling errors on PS1. Texturing is handled by projecting those lines on screen back into texture space, thus the scaling is calculated on a per-line basis leading to correct perspective.
I require a powerpoint presentation to understand what you just typed..
Well, obviously.
Now please talk in English
What's interesting about this game compared to DOOM is that rather than store the wall textures as one would normally expect a texture map to look like in the PlayStation's VRAM they store them as 1 pixel high horizontal strips laid end-to-end.
yeah, my mother said that to me back when it came out. I thought it was gibberish at the time. Should have paid more attention to her.
Dark Forces box cover was one of the coolest ones ever.
I love seeing it next to the other games on my Steam Library
Your profile picture is one of the coolest ones ever.
It's great.
Mad to this day I didn't keep it. Was the first game I ever used weekly allowance to get from Walmart layaway.
Sweet memories as a kid playing this in the 90s.. Now I’m 37, wife & two daughters and I’m still playing video games 💪🏻👌🏻
That’s what’s up!🔥🔥🔥,hope you guys the best!
Fuck yeah! Im 37 and still playing everything from my 85 Nes and all the consoles (17+) in between to my PC. Now i have a ten year old son whos been brought up on mario, sonic, doom etc... Good times! not in a hurry to grow out of games.
I'm 47 now, still playing video games obviously otherwise I wouldn't be watching this. The only downside is that my eyes get tired more easily lately and I can't play as long as before, I have to quit before I really want to 😑
@@atreyu2538 I'm 37 have no wife and kids and still love this game.
Basically do what ya like and play video games too you can't do it no more
The Jedi engine, which powered this game and Outlaws, is a really underrated piece of tech. The mod scene for Dark Forces did some really incredible things with it despite not having a source port to expand it's abilities like Doom did. If you guys ever want to take a look at some of that, I still have a bunch of those levels backed up!
They're posted in a collection on GOG's Dark Forces forum.
No shit thats really cool man. I love stuff like that.
I always remember how well the developer tied the gameworld to the Star Wars movies. Given the technical limitations of the day, it still holds up in that regard.
* makes sexual reference uncharacteristic of the channel *
"That might get cut out."
* doesn't get cut out *
Good, good. Let the dark side flow through you.
@@livingcorpse5664 🤣
Love it! I came to make the same comments. I sure hope leaving that in was intentional because I am having a good chuckle over this ;)
@@livingcorpse5664 Where do I vote for this comment to win lol
Silky smooth 10fps..... I love it
Nah
I don't think it's 10 FPS, more like 15. But what I love about PS1 games is how, when they try to do their best frame rate, they have a "folding" look - as if you can almost see it drawing, top-down. This wobbly but consistent buttery thing.
It's running really slowly.
I don't think mentioning that this game has a sewer level needs a spoiler warning... in the 90s that would've been like saying it had keycards or sliding block puzzles.
Training at luke's temple in jedi outcast was awesome.
We got so many Star Wars games growing up in the late 90's, early 2000's, some amazing and some not so amazing but it was a good time to be a gamer. One of my favorites and my first ever MMORPG was Star Wars Galaxies a true sandbox MMO.
it was a golden time for SIFI games, a time when i wished there where trek games as good as the star wars ones.
all the space sim x wing/tie fighter games where legendary, kotor 1/2 amazing, jedi academy & even the console games where rock solid.
sad how in recent years it just stooped.
@@liaminwales Once Disney took over and EA bought the rights to the development of Star Wars games it was over. Lucas Arts existence was to primarily make Star Wars games where as EA's is to make surprise mechanics.
What Disney should've done was to not hand exclusivity rights to EA for 10 years but allow different studios and publishers to make different types of games. At least we got Jedi Fallen Order which is better than nothing.
@@TerraWare yep did not relay want to point the finger but it's the mouse that's to blame.
Disney just makes me sad now eating up all the IP and kicking out ****, kind of a sad end to Lucas Arts legendary game studio.
i cant blame EA they did what EA dose... nothing, the blame stands with the mouse for handing it to them.
EA will have been vary clear when setting up the contract laying out what they where going to do with the IP, goals, timelines etc & the mouse will have given it all the stamp of approval.
assume it was something like "we will make battlefield with Jedi and shake the $$$ out of kids pockets for the next 10 years" & the mouse was like "excellent" (have Mr burns in my head clasping his hands)
not played Fallen Order yet & not in a rush to.
as a plus a lot of the old games are up on GOG and have mod's to fix any problems.
That's what I like about late 90s to mid 2000s companies were producing games every 1 year this led to bundle of games. Now ever company just milks out a game and releases in 5 years saying they emphasis on quality lol
Galaxies was my first MMO as well, it was heavily flawed but amazing at the same time. I got it when the Jump to Lightspeed expansion had been released, that first venture into space... Wow!
Speaking of first-person shooters on PS1, I always think about Alien Resurrection. The quality of lighting, textures and the amount of polygons on screen was jaw-dropping at that time, and still looks impressive today.
Dark Forces I & Dark Forces II are still the best Star Wars FPS. They should make a Kyle Katarn TV series like The Mandalorian.
I would play a Mandalorian rpg by Obsidian in a heartbeat. Make it like KOTOR2 :)
First they need to make everything Disney have done with Star Wars non-canon.
Do Alien Resurrection on the PS1, next.
That and Alien Trilogy are the 2 best Alien FPS games ever made, unless you count Aliens TC for Doom.
@@skraegorn7317 unless you count Aliens vs Predator 2
@@ElioCossu AvP2 is a masterpiece you can still find matches today!
A friend of mine worked on that. He told me about they came up with dual stick controls before Halo. Sound design on it is amazing.
@@skraegorn7317 I guess Isolation doesn't count as FPS?
am i crazy or are they whispering? i got my volume maxed and i can barely hear them but as soon as an ad pops up my ears are bleeding
Same problem here
Same
I have this problem with all DFs videos
You're not crazy. They somehow manage to make the volume super low in many of their videos. Here it's at an extreme low. Seems that they don't care about it which is a shame
Seems fine to me?
I remember my stepdad at the time and I going out. I bought Dark Forces, he bought Full Throttle and over the next several years we shared the games with each other. Somewhere along the line I don't remember what I did with my copy of Dark Forces, but when Limited Run Games offered a pre-order for a re-release of the game, I bought it. While waiting for it to actually be produced, I went out and picked up a mint on card Dark Trooper phase 3 figure to go along with it.
John: That might get cut out
Editing John: :)
Editing John: (ᵕ≀ ̠ᵕ )
Don't talk about our sleepovers.
You could say that it... Made it in 😏
@@palody_en-ja
To the proper "expansion port"
This got out of hand. I want out.
IDK if anyone mentioned it here already but IIRC, you can hold the run button to rotate/turn the camera faster.
The control scheme is pretty tricky overall. I remember one point in the game where you're expected to crouch and it required some kind of weird button combination to do it, but the game doesn't outright tell you to crouch so you may get stuck until you figure it out.
Fun fact: Dark forces was the first game where I tried a "VR headset" back in the 90's on a technology fair. It was heavy headset with small screens in front of my eyes, but it had head tracking!
I bought Dark Forces for my Macintosh Performa back in the day. It played fine until I went out to the first outdoor area, then it would crash to the desktop. Drove me crazy for weeks!
Then I finally figured out that I needed more RAM. Upgraded from 4 megs to 8 megs of RAM. That upgrade cost almost $200!
It's crazy how far technology has come. My first hard drive was only 250 megs!
Man this is great. Feels like the old days, sitting with my buddy playing this game, taking turns each level and talking about it while we played. A really pleasant nostalgia trip. I can't believe I'm just now discovering this channel.
This might have been the first FPS I ever owned on the PC. I used to play using a joystick.... remember those?!
Yes. And I remember the glorious fuck up Captain Murphy and his stupid Happy Cake Easy-Bake. He was the best pirate DJ. EVER.
Perfect relaxing viewing for a Sunday afternoon, thanks lads :)
As a young budding PC gamer my parents got me the Star Wars collection, which had the special edition of Tie Fighter, Rebel Assault 1 and 2, a demo of Dark Forces, and preview CDs of what was then the upcoming prequel trilogy.
Great video! Dark Forces was one of the first FPS demos I played, it was amazing. Even though I wasn’t even interested in Star Wars.
I remember buying a Lucas Arts collection for PC. Lol kept me busy that whole year. Came with Dark Forces, Rebel Assault 1 and 2 and tie fighter.
1:35 I was a life-long Star Wars fan too until very recently. Well, I still am, of the old stuff.
Speaking of, you should do a video on Disruptor.
I loved the imuse effect in the old point and clicks. They worked so well for those games.
Played this on my very first pc back in the day. Brings back fond memories.
My first PC upgrade. I had 4MB of RAM, and it required 8MB.
@@WesMordine 8 mb. Unreal.
shreder75 sounds amazing
The good thing about Dark Forces is that it happened when the prequels and sequels haven't happened yet. And it shows: agile and interesting setting, interesting characters, without the inflated jedi mumbo-jumbo.
Then Disney ruined it all.
I used to play Jedi Knight multiplayer over a modem. Since it was always 1 v 1, my good friend and I always dueled on the Cloud City Gantry. Miss those days.
I feel like Jedi Knight never gets the love it deserves... it's always Dark Forces or Jedi Knight 2, with a little left for Jedi Academy.
Jedi Knight was PC only.
Dark Forces, Jedi Outcast, and Jedi Academy were all ported to Mac and console.
Really? Jedi Knight was always praised more than Jedi Outcast.
Games of this era on console were best when they implemented “Jevon’s control,” where the face buttons were used for movement, and the analog stick was used for looking. This was mostly implemented on the Saturn 3D controller and Dreamcast, and it worked amazingly well.
This made me reinstall the PC version. Thanks John.
Well it sure wouldn't make you run the PS1 version...
I first played Dark Forces at my buddy's house in the 90's and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Unfortunately, we didn't have a PC when I was growing up, but I did have a Playstation, so I was overjoyed when they finally released Dark Forces on Sony's machine and I got to experience it in all its pixelated glory. It's an absolute classic.
If dialogue is consistent then Kyle Katarn was an imperial officer.
"Katarn was once an impressive Imperial officer, but he was weak and gave up on the struggle for our New Order."
―General Rom Mohc
So many good memories.. Love this game back in the game. I play SW Battlefront 2 campaign as first person just to give this feeling again.
This was the first FPS i ever played in my life. I totally fell in love with the genre.
Pd: fuck that sewers level.
Heh. I remember that level very well! Damn near quit the game at that point.
DF is a great game and will always be special. DF2JK took it to another level with the live action cutscenes. DF2JK and it’s companion Mysteries of the Sith are possibly my favorite FPS ever.
Tests modern day games: The game sometimes dips under 60 fps and it's not as smooth as we'd like it to be.
DF Retro 15 fps FPS games: Yeah, it's perfectly playable!
😁
This letsplay was painful to watch.
As always, Mac version got forgotten but it had the smootness of the PC version (If you had a Power PC machine) and the high quality music of the PSX as well as higher res assets making the sprites less pixelated.
I wouldn't really call that "high quality music", it's more of less like an Amiga or a really old sampler, in my opinion the FM music is a better treat if it's your first time playing, very atmospheric and moody, IMO it blends perfectly with the visual presentation, more than the GM and MT-32 variants. You're right about the smoothness, but no, it does not use "high quality assets" except for the loading screen, the rest of the graphics were interpolated using LucasArts' own (back then) internal smoothing algorithm, which you might now know as Scale2x (yes, they were actually the ones that came up with it). The rest of the graphics are straight from the PC version, and this wouldn't be a problem, if they bothered to fix the projection in order to account for actual 4:3 and not the stretched 13H version of it from VGA. You know how the game, even in high-res has some massive letterboxing? Because internally it's still running at a multiple of 320x200, which is 640x400, except that's not the way the game is supposed to look, because on actual DOS that weird resolution is supposed to be calibrated as a 4:3 view port, like 320x240, so the graphics' aspect ratio only look correct when played like that, something that sadly is not supported on the Mac version. Duke3D addressed this problem, probably because BUILD was always meant to support high-res SVGA graphics, while I don't think Dark Forces' devs put much thought when developing the Jedi Engine. If the Mac port was released after the engine updates they made for Outlaws, things might have been different.
@@zummone Too bad we never got a Windows version that ran at VGA/SVGA. The rendering resolution of the polygons is definitely higher on the Mac than DOS/PSX. Also the framerate feels really smooth on a PPC machine. Maybe scale2x is just used on some of the 2D assets. It also became an option for SCUMM games on classic Mac OS.
The PC version looks great on a TFT LCD btw. No stutters, very smooth. I'm playing on an old 4:3 Samtron. Edit: The real version running in DOS, not emulated in DOSbox...
jedi knight 2 jedi outcast is one of my fav game of all time it was so fun, jedi academy was pretty cool also the next 1 .. didn't play any star wars games before that though, fun that kyle katarn is already in dark force!
Iv been playing this series this year. Great upload DF. And I also thought the same that Finn mustve been inspired by Kyle Katarn he was also a Stormtrooper who defected.
You always manage to pick the most interesting games and tell me something new about them.
The AWE64 you're showcasing sounds like an OPL2, did you use the correct sound device?
This was the first Star Wars game I ever played. Great throwback video, cheers.
7:20 I have such a nostalgia for the FM synth version of the soundtrack that it's hard for me to play the game with anything else
Imuse was used in both Tie Fighter and Xwing games in their original engines. When they remade them with the Xwing vs. Tie Fighter engine they replaced Imuse with pre recorded tracks which was cool at the time but has not aged very well.
I will always say it on every DF retro video. Thank God this channel exist. DF Retro for eternity!
You could also take a look at Dark Forces: Jedi Knight. Really interested what tech made those huge levels possible in 1997
Yeah those levels were massive!!
@@CMONCMON007 They weren't THAT big.
@@pferreira1983 for the time they were
@@CMONCMON007 They're fairly comparable to Dark Forces.
You guys should play this with the "The Force Engine" ... it's insane how much you can get out of these old games!
Thank God for THE FORCE ENGINE that makes this game look A LOT BETTER!!!
14:00 I find this discussion fascinating. Makes we wonder what about Insomniacs excellent "Disruptor" from 1996? I think that game targets 60fps and I don't recall much warping in that game either, runs very smooth, looks really damn good and one of my definitive Top PS1 games. Would love to see to video on it.
This was my first Star Wars game. I remember playing this quite a bit on the PS1 growing up.
These have been so excellent for my weekends. Very chill, please keep doing them. Though you may want to consider the audio levels in the edit, ads are so much louder than the video itself, you've got to boost it, baby
There is no problem with the sound levels on this video, yall are just used to getting screamed at by ads and other obnoxious youtubers, doesnt meant they have to follow suit.
@@Beaut_Beau
We're annoyed because we do NOT like being screamed at by ads. If we have to turn up a video because we can't hear it that means ads are that much louder when they come on. We have a more direct line to Digital Foundry than we do to youtoube and all of its ad partners and so we ask Digital Foundry to please turn up the mix in the edit.
Droids on the floor can be shot and you can repurpose their batteries. God I loved their attention to details...
I still have my Dark Forces PC disk, though I've forgotten my memories from that time. I did replay the game in the last few years from GOG and enjoyed my time.
18:45, that take just couldn’t be any more wrong. This version of the game absolutely wrecks the vibe. It pains me to know that there are people who played this for the first and in many cases only time on the PS1.
37:00: It was not.
Agree 100%. They really missed the mark on this one. I'm sure it was playable enough back in 1995 when it came out on PS1, but nowadays it's hard to stomach playing it for more than 20 mins at these 15 fps . I know I tried it. Doom on PS1 on the other hand is perfectly playable, because it runs mostly at 25-30 fps
Alex Star, as somebody who had the PC and PlayStation versions at the time of their release, I can tell you that it was just as awful and just as much of a bastardization of the game back then as it seems now. I ended up giving it to my PC-less friend and even he couldn’t get through it. Hell, Disruptor came out for the PS1 the very next year!
@@gamingblowsofficial I trust you but what I mean is that the tolerance for low framerates was much higher back in the 90's when games like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark were considered masterpieces while running at 10-15 fps on N64
Actually it was. Not everyone had the money for a PC and I don't remember giving framerate a second thought, even when playing perfect dark split screen with the bots, which would often see single digit gameplay. His point was just that this was one of the few decent options for people that didn't have PC.
@@alex.starostin Exactly. I like that we both thought back to Perfect Dark as a reference point haha.
I thought this was an exciting time for SW, a lot of potential story and characters gave fans hope for the future. Of course, that’s been evaporated now, but Dark Forces contained all the elements for a great film spin off. A missed opportunity.
This might not be the right place to suggest this but I think the Sega Rally series would be fascinating to see for a proper DF Retro! I’ve recently discovered the games through emulation and they’re truly amazing, and I also never realised how much music from the Model 3 games you used in DF Retro! Some main obstacles would probably be finding the files to run Sega Rally 3 or an arcade cabinet of it, plus the fact that Sega Rally 2 does not emulate very well, but I’m sure you could do it nonetheless and I’d love to see your take on the different ports and games.
Please guys, turn up the master volume up on your videos! It's just too damn quiet
Sound level is fine though.
One of my all time favorites. DF, JK, and MOTS were just on another level from the trash that came after it (and yes that includes games like JK Academy).
That's when Raven took over from LucasArts and made them console games.
@@djchristian82 Raven did good FPS games. Jedi Outcast wasn't one of them.
@@djchristian82 After Jedi Knight I found Jedi Outcast quite disappointing. The only thing that made Jedi Outcast superior was the lightsaber combat. Amazing stuff.
The sense of place in this game was astounding. It felt like a real location in the universe. Fantastic art direction and level design.
26:11 "These controls are not the most intuitive in the world .... I guess it's better than N64 style games like perfect dark and goldeneye, really."
*spits up drink* Excuse me? How dare you, sir. I believe PD and GE has the first instance of what became standard for FPS controls. Set either game to 1.2 control scheme, and instead of using the C-buttons to walk, change your grip on the N64 pad to the left side, and use D-pad instead. This puts Forward/backward/strafing on your left thumb, and looking on your right thumb. This puts "aiming" on your left trigger, and "shooting" on your right trigger (Z button). For A and B simply reach you're right thumb over from the stick. It works very well, and personally I found all of my Halo muscle memory felt right at home, albeit with a different stick sensitivity.
Dark Forces 2 was my first game on PC, together with Quake 2! If my memory serves me right. We played Dark Forces 2 100s of times with my brother.
1:09 While as you rightly say Dark Forces doesn't use any Doom code, Lucasarts *did* (legally speaking) "reverse engineer" John Carmack's Doom code to see how it ticked, and the implication was that elements of it got replicated somewhat in their game engine. So, while Dark Forces isn't a Doom engine game per se, it does fork from it. In layman's terms it's hard to quantify that except to say it "feels" the most like Doom out of all the so-called Doom clones, because somewhere deep down it has actually got some Doom DNA.
i really like the deserted atmosphere of these old fps levels up to half life.
OMG!!! I played this game when it came out. Had a lot fun with it. Please give us more of it.
I've only played the ps1 version, now I go back to it once and awhile on my Vita.
Watched my dad play this on his PC in the 90s. I have this game from Steam and its still a joy to play.
Yayy....one of my favorite fps sagas of all time.
Can't believe its been 25 years.
Good Times! :')
Before Disney, before Kathleen Kennedy, before the dark times.
Before the prequels too.
@@nifftbatuff676 The prequels for the most part didn't ruin Star Wars. It was Disney and Kennedy.
This was brain candy for me. I anticipated this on release so so much. Great stuff
I remember the sewage level been really hard. It felt like I was going around for hours.
You just need to raise the sewage level.
Just joined the patreon, is there a reason why there hasn't been an upload to it since 2019?
There is.... They don't care
Being on patreon means you have access to download their videos at full, uncompressed quality. I think that's worth it, not that I'm a patron myself...
@@charoleawood there haven't been any videos uploaded to it since 2019
@@Oxaxau aye realised that and cancelled my patreon to them
The first PC shooter my parents would let me have. I think I played it all the way through a dozen times. I was 10 years old and in heaven with this game and X Wing and Tie Fighter
This game blew my mind as a child and the sequels got even better. Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast is still the most impressive Star Wars game ever made and the lightsaber combat has still to this day never been matched. The fact that it was done on Quake 3 engine will forever be impressive to me, LucasArts had magic and EA will never even come close sadly.
@11:40
SHOUTOUT TO MEDIA-PLAY!!!
I stood at a Dreamcast Kiosk for 2 hours (retroactive apology to all the people I ignored behind me) playing Sonic Adventure at one in 2000.
I still love this game
20:11 I love the original PlayStation controller and I ALWAYS use it if DualShock or even DualAnalog doesn't offer anything too special for the gameplay or just flat-out require it. I like the lightweight and smallness of the original. It's like an NES controller or something but more ergonomic.
So lucky to have been a kid during the 90s Star Wars Renaissance. Will never be anything like it again
Reminds me, I should finish this game sometime. Damn. Time flies.~
This video's audio is strangely quiet, i can barely hear John and the other host voices, and i Tried other vídeos and the sound on my headphones are Fine
6:27 perfect imitation!
I really hope that someday John gets to make that Star Wars focused DF retro episode he wants to do.
9:09: That sounds almost sexy. Anyway, great video. Dark forces is still amazing, but Tie Fighter is my number one of all time, the collection cd version with midi music.
Why would people dislike this? What do people hate? DF you rule!!
Would be great if nightdive gave this a remaster. Doubt it will every happen though but they would do it justice
I keep checking in to see if they’ve hit the million subs yet 👍
IT DOES use iMuse. Music changed accordingly to the action on screen. Amazing feat at the time.
My very first game! Played this on the Mac with my dad
I literally just bought a PlayStation 1 for the first time just for this game. When I was a kid I used to play it on the PC all the time. I didn't feel like buying an expensive PC to play it again so I went the PS1 route and I picked up MechWarrior 2 cuz I also played that on the PC. Can't wait to play some nostalgia.
First FPS I ever played and also my introduction to the Star Wars universe. Still have my copy.
Ah man, please follow up with Jedi Outcast. That game was incredible for its time.
Best lightsaber combat of the series (blocking by aiming at the enemy lightsaber). Turn on instant saber death and spawn Sith to combat realistically.
Best lightsaber combat of any Star Wars game.
@@TechnoMinarchist I remember as a kid watching the first video released of the combat and thinking it was like watching a film. Good times.
@syed jawad JKA isn't though. While it has more moves, it lacks the dynamic combat gained from being able to control your blocks with skill that JO has (as well as being able to control which angle your saber swings from based on your relation to your opponent and your cursor and movement), and you can't play it in first person when using a lightsaber, which automatically makes it less immersive and less realistic.
I played the entire game of Jedi Knight with no sound due to my computer not having a sound card. I love all the Dark Forces games :)
I got fond memories of this game I don't like Star Wars never did never seen one movie but oddly enough this was the very first PS1 game I bought when I got my playstation bacc in 1997 and I loved it! Solely cuz it was a FPS game I didn't have a pc so there was no Doom for me and I bought it on the cheap so I wasn't complaining after playing Sega Genesis for the past 6-7 years this was a whole new world for me pun intended
Good old times. I turned into a true gamer after gaining a PS1 from my uncle that was a gamer too. My favourite game was Crash team racing. I miss the time when games were more about fun and less about how much the developer spent or how big something of the game is (you get the point).
Was your next console a Dreamcast?
@@charoleawood I wish I had a Dreamcast, but my next console was a PS2, then a Xbox 360 and now I play on PC. I had a brief contact with a Dreamcast in the arcades of my neighbourhood. I played a beat em up game that I don't recall the name. Well, on Steam I played Sonic adventures, Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5. I had loads of fun with the direct gameplay as well as Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on the DC emulator. To have experienced such games later in my life is a prove that my preference is not nostalgia but that they were better. Final Fantasy IX had a start full of action while XV had me bored with a increasing lists of generic things to do such as kill a random monster. The Marvel Vs Capcom of the DC had far more variety than that one available on GamePass. Well, the current gen has its gems as well, such as The Witcher 3, but I am always cautious to pay a full price in games that offer dozens of hours of pure boredom such as Watch Dogs 1.
@@matheuswerly5320
I remember gaming on PS1, I cherish those days, and then how special it was to have a Dreamcast when it was new. The experience of playing the original Resident Evils in their time was really something else, and then to see Code Veronica on the Dreamcast was mindblowing, I don't think people can understand how amazing it was. I remember how beautiful Soul Calibur was, how bad I was at playing it, and then Dead or Alive 2 came around and changed my life, it was the best game I had ever played at the time --- all of the sudden 3D fighters clicked for me. Because of DoA2 I was able to play Soul Calibur. I still maintain that Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate on the original Xbox is the best game ever, tied with Ninja Gaiden 2 on 360
@@charoleawood I had the same mind-blowing situation when my uncle brought me without any warn the PS2. GTA San Andreas was so realistic and so big and Crash tag team racing visuals and gameplay seemed as a huge step up for at that time. Almost every of my friends had a PS2, I played Naruto and Dragon Ball Z games with them, a friend of mine had Dead or Alive for PS2 and Mortal Kombat. Those were great times. Need for Speed underground had visuals that for me was almost real life. I think the game that impressed me the most was Valkyrie Profile 2. My uncle hated that but I was so impressed with the visuals that I played it to the end, even though my English wasn't very good when I was 10. I think for the PS2 era my favourite game was Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3.
@@matheuswerly5320
You know, I've not played any Valkyrie Profile game, but I just looked up a video of VP2 and it looks really excellent, too bad your uncle couldn't dig it. My mom got my brother a PS2 but he had left the house at that point so it became mine. I played SSX on October 30th, 2000 and it was GLORIOUS, the game still holds up artistically. My favorite PS2 game is Final Fantasy Twelve, one of the best games ever in my opinion, I played it WAY after it had already come out. I think the most graphically impressive PS2 game is MotorStorm Arctic Edge which came out way late in 2009
Yeah I played the dark forces games and mysteries of the Sith on PC. Great times! I can't imagine attempting to play this on PlayStation though, especially with the original PSX controller without analog sticks. That's a rough experience!