STAR WARS: Dark Forces under Virtual PC - Ben Armstrong - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

STAR WARS: Dark Forces under Virtual PC

Rate This

Benjamin Armstrong

27 Nov 2004 12:36 AM

Comments 5

Hi All! Yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the States (hence the lack of a post from me) which means that today is the 'big sale' day of the year for Americans (something I never knew until I moved here). I usually avoid big sales - but I did grab a coffee and head down to my local Software shop to see what was available. I was not disappointed - they had a rack full of old software for sale for 25 cents a piece (I bought 6 games :-)).

Amongst my purchases was the all time classic 'STAR WARS: Dark Forces' - the first 3D shooter game based in the Star Wars universe (and the predecessor of the now fantastic 'Jedi Knight' series of games). When I got home and dropped the CD into my computer - it helpfully tried to autorun the DOS based installer which crashed and burned immediately under XP.

Thankfully my DOS gaming virtual machine was ever present - and Dark Forces installed and ran perfectly. No, really, no tweaks, no tricks, just perfect old school 3D game play. Pretty good way to spend a day off if you ask me.

Enjoy:

Dark Forces under Virtual PC

Dark Forces under Virtual PC

Dark Forces under Virtual PC

Dark Forces under Virtual PC

Cheers,
Ben

Gaming under Virtual PC

Leave a Comment

Name
Comment
Please add 6 and 4 and type the answer here:
Post

Comments

Mattias Welander

27 Nov 2004 2:59 AM

The DF installer crashed in XP? Strange, I've never experienced that. The Flashing HUD Syndrome and the IMUSE Forever wait I know of, but neither are fatal.

The only crash related issue I know of is that the DOS extender used by DF can crash if the path set is too long - but it does so unrelated to if it runs under Windows XP and/or Virtual PC. Anyway, if that's the case, try doing a SET PATH= before running the command that crashes.

Still, Virtual PC is my favorite way of running Dark Forces whenever I need to create a screenshot or a movie of a level (with the help of Camtasia).
JediMole

28 Nov 2004 10:40 AM

Fancy finding this RSS feed! I think you just enlightened me to way to play Xwing vs Tiefighter again. I troed loading the windows versions under xp and could not get them to work properly, especially the 3dfx fixes. I may have to give VPc a crack at it.
Leo

13 Dec 2004 9:26 AM

I see all the screenshots have a window frame. Can VirtualPC 2004 be run full-screen?
Virtual PC Guy

13 Dec 2004 12:21 PM

Hi Leo,

Yes - VPC can be run in full-screen mode - I just prefer Windowed mode (plus it is easier for screen shots).

Cheers,
Ben
nate

28 Aug 2011 5:41 AM

my neighbor found some old pc star wars games and i would love to play them but know next to nothing about computers can i make them work with XP the games are x-wing star wars rebellion star war tie fighter and dark forces 1 and 2 looked online they say click on tab to make compatible with windows 95 but iu can't find it can u help?