After 3 years of work, modders have remastered the first Star Wars FPS

Star Wars: Dark Forces, the first Star Wars FPS and predecessor to the Jedi Knight series, has finally gotten the ZDoom (opens in new tab) treatment. Developers luciusDXL, winterheart, and gilorem560 have released the 1.0 build of the Force Engine (opens in new tab), an open source reverse engineering of Dark Forces (and soon, its lesser known cousin, Outlaws) that lets you play it with modern conveniences and at high resolution.

Released in 1995, Dark Forces is firmly of the “Doom Clone” era of first-person shooters. It has that slippery, speedy boomer shooter movement, a great weapon selection, and sprawling, mazelike levels, but it really innovates in its presentation. Dark Forces nails the music, sound effects, and look of Star Wars while also telling a pretty in-depth story about Han Solo-alike Kyle Katarn doing battle with the Imperial Remnant.