20 years ago, as a 11 year old middle schooler I begged my parents for a game for my birthday. I didn't expect I'd look back quite so frequently. Let's have a thread to reminisce, what are your first memories of Jedi Knight? Why the hell are you still posting on a message board dedicated to it?

It doesn't feel that long ago, but I guess it was. Although I'd had Star Wars games before: TIE Fighter and Rebel Assault but until Jedi Knight I'd never felt quite so immersed in a Star Wars game.

As a 12 year old I used to play FPS without a mouse, using the page-up and page-down keys to look up and down, a habit that I'm sure others who'd spent hours playing Doom had to break.

Needless to say, I sucked and it took me hours to complete each level. I had the pack which included MotS and actually progressed through MotS faster than JK. It appealed to me more because you got a lightsaber and could shoot stormtroopers right away.

I explored all the multiplayer levels before my family had an internet connection. Even walking around the Bespin levels in MotS without anything to do was awe inspiring, just being in the locations from the movies excited me as a child.

My first online game was with my friend who lived a 10 minute walk away. Using a modem to call my friend's phone number, directly connecting the PCs before either of us had the internet. It wasn't particularly easy, as this was before the days of mobile phones and we couldn't use the landline to check each other's problems as we needed it for the game.

I'd already tried my hand at modding the game Carmageddon. Even before the internet, gaming magazine demo disks sometimes included mods and modding tools for games but Jedi Knight took that to the next level.

By attempting to make mods for Jedi Knight I learnt more about computing concepts than I would until I got to university 10 years later. It even got me into web development, building my own sites and clan sites along the way.

Without Jedi Knight, I don't think I'd be where I am today. I still consider Jedi Knight a good game in its own right, but I learned so many real skills indirectly from it and grew up with it, that it will always be more than just a game to me.

Happy Birthday, Jedi Knight.

JK was my first FPS, the only real PC game I'd played before that was TIE. Never got into MP, because my parents wouldn't let me tie up the phone line, but the sprawling levels and ability to Force jump/speed your way into interesting places (or into a wall at break-neck speed) set my expectations for how you should be able to explore a game environment.

My very first JK experience was awful. I didn't know the difference between use item and use environment. I got to that first door on Nar and just ran around. The game was my first FPS.

Even though next year will be my 20th anniversary for JK and MotS, I did get JK and MotS working properly for the first time in years last month. Played through Magrucko 3 back then, and through Rebel Agent + Liberating Cloud City (also this yet-another-DF-E1M1-remake level for the first time ever) yesterday.

Still great stuff.

Obligatory Reverend-inspired part of the post here:

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Wait a second, Nikumubeki. You yourself didn't play through Magrucko Daines and the Vertical City until last month?

God damn it, man.

I remember playing the demo (I think it was level 6) again and again and again until I finally bought the game (or my mom did, because the game was rated for adults in Germany). I also remember how amazed I was at how fast I could switch weapons when I got my first 3D accelerator (a Voodoo 2 with a whoppin 8 MB RAM).

The demo I played was level 9, refueling base. That level was super cool to childhood me, and I kept thinking Darth Vader was going to do a jumpscare at some point.

My oldest memory of JK was going to a friend's house for a LAN party. At the time my family still ran Windows 3.1 without internet access, so my only option was to go to a friend's house. This same friend also told me about JKEdit, but I found JED later on through Massassi, which was much better.

Anyway, the LAN party was a disaster... we only had one copy of the game, but hoped to be able to take the disk out while the game was running. However, this led to BSOD. I would later go on to play JK at home, and had some fun on the zone, but alas much of my teenage years were spent arguing with my parents not to be cheap-asses and mooch off our neighbor's internet service, which he had offered to them for free, but blocked all ports that JK needed. (This would also prove detrimental to my middle school love life, because it also meant AIM was blocked.) Later on I would try to play CS:Source, and he would accuse me of trying to hack his computer just because the game was using lots of ports.

Also, JK and JED ruined my high school grades

Should've used the JK_.CD trick you noobs!

Believe me, if I had a portal gun I would go back and tell my 13 y.o. self this. We were all so disappointed.

God damn it, Jones, the portal gun doesn't work that way. You don't go back in time, you just go into one portal and come out of the other.

hmm

Well it should!

There must be something from Star Trek that can do this (what am I saying, they time travel practically every other episode).