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2002 was a bad time to be a Star Wars fan. Three years earlier The Phantom Menace had delivered a crippling body-blow to the franchise's credibility, and despite assurances of a more coherent story and less Jar-Jar Binks, the upcoming Attack of the Clones was winding up for the knockout. Meanwhile, the interceding years had seen a slew of prequel-based games that proved to be even more mediocre than the films. Put it this way, the best Star Wars game released at the time was Galactic Battlegrounds - which was essentially Age of Empires 2 wearing a Jedi robe.Yet while George Lucas continued to devour his own child in cinemas worldwide, the games industry pulled itself together, and for a few years became the place to find quality Star Wars experiences, as it had in the mid-90s. BioWare began crafting what would become the best Star Wars adventure since Empire, and LucasArts announced a new Dark Forces game, which for me was even more exciting.
Dark Forces was my Doom. I was six years old when id's masterpiece came out, and an overprotective dad wouldn't let me near it. But he did let me play Dark Forces when it came out two years later, under the misguided assumption that a Star Wars game couldn't possibly be traumatic for children. The phase 1 Dark Trooper's metallic "NYYANG" noise haunted my dreams for weeks, but I was still enthralled by Kyle Katarn's first adventure, and Dark Forces 2 was even better, removing those hideous robot soldiers and adding that one green glowing ingredient missing from the original.
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