Looking Back and Finishing Up My Jedi Academy Videos
December 15, 2025
In 2006 I began making stupid videos on YouTube like every other teenager at the time. My craze at the time (Which would continue on for many years) was Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. I was heavily inspired by EagleStriker’s “Jedi Knight Re-Edited” series which began a year prior. EagleStriker was a master of comedy and editing, that’s why his videos were so insanely popular in the community and even to non-players when his videos inevitably got uploaded to YouTube by his fans (Which he encouraged).
Figuring Things Out
I started off making “informational” or “clips” of things that happened in the game, to get some better experience with Windows Movie Maker.
Not exactly the most thrilling, but it gave me a basic understanding at least.
The First
From there I made my first “comedy” Jedi Academy video in 2007, starting with Dumb and Dumber sounds in Jedi Academy. This surprisingly did pretty well views wise back then, which nudged me to create more. Thankfully there were lots of people in the game clan I was in (JAWA) wanting to help out, which made this a breeze. This was the first of many short clips I’d go on to make.
The Podoplovik
Podoplovik is one of my closest friends of mine, even to this day. We’ve known each other around 20 years now, which is pretty crazy to think about. In Jedi Academy, he’d often lurk in the shadows, saying nothing, just staring. Creepy to most, fascinating to me. So we became good friends, and I asked him if I could make a video about his “lore” which I would just make up. He agreed, not giving the slightest shit. He had made a bunch of skins of his character, so making the “Pods” was a breeze.
The video is terrible, but it was a blast to put together and was (At least as far as I recall) my first “long” video with a script and structure.
The story is that the “Pods” infiltrate the Academy to confront Kyle. I … might have fucked the powerscaling a bit here because two Pod henchmen kill “Legends/EU” Luke Skywalker effortlessly. Maybe they were using something outside the force? I don’t think I can salvage this one unfortunately.
Looking back at it again, now, I notice this is also the first time I matched music to the actions of the actors, something I’m a big fan of now. Heavy use of Matrix music, I’m amazed it’s even still on YouTube honestly.
Tourettes Guy
At the time, everyone loved Tourettes Guy, he was one of the biggest “memes” at the time, so… I figured I’d replace Jaden’s voice in the game with Tourettes Guy. These did pretty well, they’re incredibly cringe as I’m writing this, but there’s definitely SOME funny bits here and there. As much as some of these things make me cringe, I’m glad I didn’t delete them. In fact, I recently made “Supercuts” of all my series so people didn’t have to go through 50 or so videos to see an entire short series.
Of course, especially at the time, the clips I had of Danny, the Tourettes Guy, were very limiting and made things very challenging creatively. I didn’t know how, or I didn’t realise that I could cut the cutscenes up so there were less pauses. This meant there were a lot of strange pauses between jokes while the character got into position. It was very fun to make and got quite a nice bit of attention. People at the time seemed to like it, which is neat.
I did end up making a “season 2” so to speak, only 1 episode though. It was all original content and was my first time using a voice actor. I believe it was Zid Zabre, a famous mapper in the community. I could be wrong. This allowed me to get a lot of unused jokes which I couldn’t share because I didn’t have the right cutscenes. After this, I had no more ideas for the character really. Well, actually, that’s a lie. Here’s the notes I have for Season 2 Episode 2, which are batshit crazy.
Intro:
Qui Gon “I’m Qui Gon Jinn”
Jaden “I DON’T GIVE A SHIT!”
Main:
Jaden and Master Wangbate are walking down a corridor with the alarm still ringing from episode 1.
Jaden “Shittt”
Master Wangbate “Yes, it is rather loud”
Jaden “TURN IT DOWN!!!!!!!!”
Master Wangbate “… I can’t”
Jaden “ASS!”
They walk into another area with a droid stood there
Jaden “Holy Piss!”
Master Wangbate “What’s going on 4Q?”
4Q “It seems there is an Intruder in the Academy Master Wangbate”
Master Wangbate “Where is it?”
4Q “The East entrance to the Academy, scans show it’s a Noghri”
Jaden “FUCKKKK TURN IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!”
Master Wangbate “We’ll check it out, turn off the alarm please 4Q”
4Q “Yes Master”
Alarm goes off
Wangbate and Jaden walk away
Jaden “GO COUNT YOUR DICK!”
4Q looks around confused and turns back to his console.
The Noghri is seem looking around
As you can see, the main joke was that there was a droid called 4Q (Fuck you). I believe I was going to make him fall apart and be rebuilt as “4Q2” (Fuck you too). I think the Noghri from the Noghri movie was going to be the main villain? Other than these bits, I had nothing, which means the series is closed.
JKA Shorts / Insanity
I found myself having a ton of ideas I couldn’t fit into my existing series, mostly because they were locked to the JKA campaign. Most of my ideas were also disocnnected from each other entirely, so I decided to make a bunch of random clips and put them into either single videos or compilations. These were a lot of fun, and I ended up making quite a few of them.
The Noghri Movie
Noghri’s were the weirdest NPCs in the game by a long way, in my opinion. They’d often moan for no reason and wear next to no pants. So, I knew I had to make something involving the Noghri character. My friend Wawel made a walking animation replacement which made the character’s arms and legs flap around as if he was flying (Although it looked terrible, it looked very funny). So, I made up a Noghri that could fly, and was of course, absolutely insane.
The trailer wasn’t intended to be a trailer, it was meant to be its own short. But it was so funny to me that I decided to just make another video out of it, my most “daring video” yet, that would become my longest as well. I scouted for a ton of assets on JK3Files, spent a month or two writing a script using Raven’s sound assets, and eventually came up with this monstrocity. I even got my old friend Bandeth to do some voice acting. Overall, it was a bunch of fun, and it was very well received. Of the very few fans I have, some of them consider this my best. I remember it taking FOREVER to film and get right.
This project highlighted something very important to me that was starting to take its toll, Windows Movie Maker wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Once I was done with the Noghri Movie, I began considering some alternatives.
Kyle Katarn’s Alternate Dimension
The Noghri Movie got me very hungry for original content outside of JKA’s campaign videos, so I quickly began scripting another video. I really, really, really wanted to make a space drama/comedy that would be continuous in some way. My main inspiration at the beginning was the UK television show Red Dwarf, but I was severely lacking in the assets department to make that happen (There is surprisingly a huge lack of ship interior maps in Jedi Academy unfortunately). In the end, I decided to go with some sort of “alternate dimension/universe” where Jan gets captured by a bad guy named Bahd Gai. It’s very unoriginal, and similar to the whole Desann storyline.
It only took me a month to piece together and release the first one, and it went on to become my most popular video on that channel by some margin. I voiced the “Go away we dont want any trouble” guy and got my old friend Bandeth to help me with some lines too. Part 1 was made entirely in Windows Movie Maker, which didn’t allow for widescreen at all. I had to ask my friend Kobra to take my wmv and chop the top/bottom off to make it a widescreen mp4.
Remember when I said I was considering other video editing software? Well, I released part 1 so quickly after the Noghri Movie that I didn’t have much time to throw Movie Maker in the bin. Thankfully I took a year off as Part 1 really took it out of me. This gave me the time I needed to invest into learning Vegas Pro (I still call it Sony Vegas). I also began using JA++, an enhanced version of JA+ made by Raz0r which had some nice camera controls and better control over animations. Part 2 had more voice lines by me (Bahd Gai’s sidekicks) but other than that it was mostly just the same assets as the first movie. This one wasn’t as popular… but… I promised a part 3, which would haunt me for 12-13 years.
Since unfinished projects bothered me a lot, I knew I’d eventually go back to finish the series with Part 3. I was just so busy with other things and Jedi Academy overall was becoming less and less appealing as time went on. Thankfully that returned around 2024/2025, and I began eyeing up the very basic script I wrote for Part 3 12-13 years prior. One night, I just thought “Fuck it.” and reached out to some of my friends who I know liked my old videos. They agreed to help and we filmed 90% of the video in one night. It was a blast, and we had a lot of fun. Kobra, Kangy and Jepa were great and understood my directions clearly, so it was effortless on my side. After another couple of days of filming, the video was finally done and uploaded to the joy of my old subscribers who had been prodding me for years for a part 2.
This is my personal favourite video series I’ve made, and I’m so happy I finished it.
Rosh Penin Volume 100%
Between Kyle Katarn’s Alternate Dimension Part 2 and 3, I found a goldmine of assets for Rosh’s voice actor Jason Marsden in Skyrim and Jurassic Park. I believe I found a way to convert them into wav/mp3s, and that made me realise there was a huge opportunity to use these sounds in the JKA main story. The videos took almost no effort, since by this point I had translated most of the existing Jedi Academy/Outcast main characters audio files into their lines:
Jason Marsden’s voice lines in Skyrim were in their thousands I believe, so I’d randomly pick files and take notes of the best ones for later. I actually really love this video series, it’s really wacky and the closest I got to feeling like I was getting even remotely close to EagleStriker in terms of quality (Although I think he’s far beyond my reach).
Making Jedi Academy videos has been a huge source of fun over the years, and I’m so glad there’s people out there that enjoy them and quote them.