If we have to talk about truly "good" Star Wars games, we probably have more than enough fingers to count them... but if there is one that enters that short list, it's Dark Forces. The FPS developed by LucasArts originally debuted in 1995 for MS-DOS and Mac, and running it on current systems was always problematic. However, all the technical inconveniences surrounding Dark Forces are behind us thanks to The Force Engine, a modern port of its engine that adds 4K and widescreen support, mod loading, and "quality of life" improvements like mouselook.
The Disney empire absorbed the Star Wars universe in October 2012, and a large part of its content was labeled as Legends, confirming its official exit from the canon. Personally, I don't feel that the "loss" was too great (after all, most of the Expanded Universe doesn't deserve our time), but some things hit the mark, and one of them was Dark Forces.
Star Wars: Dark Forces not only served as the starting point for the entire Jedi Knight series, but also marked the debut of Kyle Katarn. The former imperial officer turned mercenary and rebel operative begins his adventure by stealing nothing less than the plans of the Death Star (Rogue One is the new canon in that regard), in all the glory that 320x200 pixels can provide, unless... we use a port.
Enjoy Dark Forces on modern PCs with The Force Engine
After three years of work, luciusDXL announced the stable version 1.0 of The Force Engine, an updated and extended port of the original Jedi engine. In addition to eliminating all the headaches of loading the game on Windows 10 and 11, the port includes widescreen and high resolution support, simplified mod loading (basically, copy the zips into the "Mods" subfolder), perspective correction, AI optimizations, a parallel save game system, and "quality of life" options like mouselook, which can be disabled for a more traditional experience.
Unlike what happens with the port of Prince of Persia, The Force Engine does not include the original files of Dark Forces, so you'll need a copy. Fortunately, Dark Forces is on sale at GOG, and at the time of writing these lines, its price is 81 cents. The 1.0 version of The Force Engine is a transcendental event for the project, but its story doesn't end here: Version 2.0 will extend its compatibility to Outlaws, one of the forgotten gems of LucasArts that uses the same Jedi engine.
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