Dark Forces Resurrected

Inspired by my memory of playing the Lucasarts FPS Dark Forces when I was at college while listening to Pulp’s His’n’Hers, I decided over the weekend to see if it was possible to play  it on a Linux machine. A quick google showed that it was, and in fact one website provided all the information I needed, along with a downloadable zip file of the whole game! Not sure how legal that is, but whatever.

I followed the instructions, installed DOSBox and the game files, and it worked straightaway! I was whisked back to those heady days of procrastination on my Gateway DX2-66. Sadly the sound didn’t work, and a quick google of that showed that it would take fiddling around, installing extra packages which may or may not break the rest of the OS. I left it. A shame, because the sound was a big part of the game, as it is with all Star Wars stuff.

The screen appeared in a window on my desktop, and frankly it was a little difficult to play at that size. Increasing the size of course made it all blocky, but there was a sweet spot.

I wasn’t about to play through the game from scratch, so I will admit to looking up the cheat codes:

  • LAIMLAME = invincibility (“LucasArts I aM LAME”, geddit?)
  • LAPOSTAL = all weapons and full ammo
  • LASKIP = complete level

There were many more, but for a quick blast through all the levels, that was all I really needed.

A fun little diversion for the weekend.