Lmk if you enjoyed the long video! It took a full month but I had fun making it :) Hope everyone’s having a good Star Wars Day!! Feel free to share with your Star Wars friends 👉👈

Jackson's grin when George tells him he might get purple will never get old

From what I’ve heard purple is the most powerful but more expensive which would explain why not many armies use them but purple looks awesome as a blaster bolt color

27:42 - "Geonosians have always wanted to keep to themselves" - Host Separatist meeting - Have Death Star plans "Never took the fight to their enemy" - Make droid factories allied with CIS, the droids are the army they take to their enemy

A 45 minute video about the color purple that is not boring, legendary!

This just makes me want a Ghost Recon-esque Star Wars game where you play as some ragtag mercenary group (or special forces group) and in addition to customizing your main character with clothes, outfits, species and more, modding your blaster is like a separate menu, where you choose what kind of blaster, then you start modding it out, like choosing the focal lens/crystal (blaster color), gas type (affects accuracy, damage, non-lethal options, affects droids or humanoids more, etc.), optics (for scopes and whatnot), heatsinks (efficiency of gas use), power cells (how many shots before it needs to be "reloaded"), metal color/paintjob, foregrips and stocks (for steadying while aiming), the option to add the half squeeze to aim with a laser before firing, Long nozzle mods to dim the blaster light and suppress the noise for stealth, just go absolutely HAM on customization for every blaster you can acquire in that game, and make it super detailed and one of the main features of the game. I think there'd be a subset of fans who would love this.

Not sure if you want to have a deep dive into a Lego game. But in the Lego Star Wars saga the power orbs make your lightsaber purple and your blaster shots purple. Meaning they are straight up more powerful

2:06 that scene shown if you watch the furthest tie fighters... you can see some litterally appear out of nowhere instead of emerge as a small point that get larger as they come into view.. they are not there... then there... i wish they'd fix that dang error. I cant unsee it ever now

Imo, I think the reason the empire uses more good guy colours is they used to be the republic and thus had the good guy colours used all around and the rebels needed a way to distinguish between their shots and chose red.

Tbh blue,green ,yellow,purple blaster bolts are my favorite basically i like them all except for the red blaster bolts for some reason its just so tacky for me

From all of the information I’ve got is that the difference between them is a variety of strength of each blaster bolt along with how much it costs per shot. The cost of each from cheapest to most expensive is red, blue, green, Mandalorian yellow, and then an exception being the weakest but probably expensive are the yellow/training bolts used by the clones on Tipoca City. The CIS/Rebels used red because they’re effective against living targets, while the Republic used blue because they’re more effective against droids, and the Empire used Green because they’re effective against everything and a bit stronger than red but to save resources for the Empires greater war machine.

my headcanon is, that most of the colos differences come fom diffrent gases on the planets, and bigger armies just used gases, that where found all over the galaxy

The blue and white TIE bolts in the the THX remaster I think were initially caused by failing to add the final green rotoscoping on top of the white core of the bolts, leaving just the white. The blue bolts could be an overdone color correction, you can see in the comparison shots that the star destroyers have noticably cooler hue to them the others. On top of the white bolts left by forgetting the green pass, the color correction could give that odd blue tint. Anyways, not an expert or anything, if anyone else has more or better detail on the specifics, Id be interested.

I've only ever heard that the color is determined by the refinement process, and how refined it is. So those other points were fairly interesting. And I've been playing the og battlefront II for a couple decades now, and I've never seen a purple blaster from something that has never had it. (Clones)

head canon: purple bolts are to green bolts what blue bolts are to red bolts. ion charged shots, just from a different or more refined gas

Man your channel is criminally underrated

"Wanted purple to stand out." Maybe that was part of the reason, but Jackson actually tries to sneak something purple into literally everything he appears in. IRL it's his favorite color.

just a little something you may not have noticed on the flechete shotgun in the origional BF2 is the rounds are yellow on the flechete

Headcanon is that everything depends on everything. It just makes the most sense that every little detail could have an effect on blaster color. For example, the TIE says the blasts are green because of the frequency of the crystal, but maybe other green blasters are green just because of the power output, and others still are green because of gases used. This especially makes sense because all 3 could lead to changes in the efficiency of the blaster. So maybe the gas blaster takes less power per shot, or the power blaster takes less gas.

20:15 The purple flack explosions may be from B2 arm rockets, if they existed in that battle they also look very similar to the eyplosions of the purple laserbolts from the geonosien starfighters

Repeatedly using the clip of Jar Jar's face getting electrocuted. A man of culture, I see.

It's also used by Hapes Consortium too!

dude you could've made this like 8 different videos like I am so impressed that you covered like EVERYTHING lmao

I always thought that green was the cheapest kind of gas and that the empire used it because they just had soo many ships that it was the best gas to get in bulk

I think red must be the cheapest to produce because the CIS used red when they were the faction with the most guns there for spending the most and the republic with its near unlimited budget used the slightly more expensive blue stuff. same goes for the empire we see in bad batch that when starting the army the empire did use red and then when they began gaining more power and moving more money to the army they bought the expensive green stuff and obviously the broke rebels used the cheap red stuff. i cant think of anything sound for the last three films idk maybe the resistance was using the expensive stuff left over from the new republic idk.

A note about the Flechette Shotgun from the Battlefront game. Unless the name is a misnomer, the term "flechette" means "little arrow/dart", so does this mean that they have been swapped out for something like the Wookie Bowcaster that actually fires solid projectiles *sheathed* in blaster energy?

Windu wasn’t the only Jedi with a purple lightsaber, there was a second purple lightsaber in the first battle of Geonosis.

This is an insane deep dive in to blaster and blaster adjacent tech. You should consider adding something to the title to indicate that there is a lot more covered besides purple blasters.

Am I the only one that sees green instead of blue and white on the tie fighters?

Tiny point of interest on the magna tri droid, in real life, lasers can be used to cause atmosphere to ionize, and therefore carry electrical charge. Perhaps the beam is just there to direct the electrical blast that actually does the damage.

I only do minimal work on video, but I do a lot of work with photos. If you look at the scenes where the Ties are shooting blue and compare the other objects colors, it looks as if they tried to make the stars and star destroiers look more white by reducing how much yellow there was. That's all well and good, but it seems like they hue shifted the footage, then simply forgot to recolor the bolts green in that shot. Remember, green minus yellow = blue.

I think you might have forgot one more purple blaster bolt source... In the 1996 Nintendo 64 game Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire, you can collect different munition type for your blaster and one of them is called Pulse cannon wich as purple projectiles. There where many more interesting weapons in the game including one called distruptor wich was pretty much a pocket death star/BFG9000. Fun fact, I think this game is still technically cannon too since your main character's ship is seen leaving Mos Eisley in Episode 4 in every version of the movie made after the game release. Thanks for the video, it was fun to watch. :)

Bread Circus shout out is fantastic. Goated YTer

I love how Star Wars explains its lasers and stuff with such declination and detail that it seems like it can be in the real world, and how you explained it was awesome. Subscribing for sure

blue used to mean ion cannon in the games. 1995 was right around collector's edition games remaster too not just THX. they might have been trying to telegraph disabling shots since it really doesn't make sense to shoot the hostages with fatal ship to ship fire since you want to capture them. I like your explanation of white blasters. side note there were pink/purple missiles that were EMP in the TIE fighter game.

I grew up on the THX version and always thought I was imagining things when they were blue/white. Now I realize I wasn't hallucinating. Which is always a good thing.

17:56 i wonder if the green blaster bolts appear blue due to the fact that the blaster bolts are pass so close to the screen view that they may have put a screen flash effect over it originaly then had to remove it later bleaching the green effect to blue?

I found your channel today via shorts, and this video has starting a very long binge watch 😂 love the detail in these videos

My thought with the yellow is that it usually indicates some sort of suppressor modification-either to reduce intensity, or to narrow the beam and increase accuracy and range for a sniper shot. This is separate from the mandalorian weapons, which are probably using a local gas.

im surprised you didnt mention it but the geonotion starfighters purple blasts exploded like a flak gun

Want to know something that is funny. During the Clone Wars, all of the Clone Troopers, Standard Issue weapon, was the DC-15 Blaster Rifle, later the DC-15A. Which was in a sense modular, but always shot blaster bolts. Which makes no sense, since their main enemy would be Droids, and Mechanical enemies, thus an Ion Blaster would have been better. Also a fun note: Ion shots, usually is a cyan blue, but have been seen with yellow, white and pink bolts. Also Yellow bolts, has been seen used by Sandpeople from Tattooine, which is a fun little thing. So here is a little bit that most people forget. Slugthrowers, illegal by Republic and Galactic Empire law. Mostly seen on the fringe worlds and rimworlds of the Star Wars universe. The Sandpeople use the Cycler Rifle, which is seen to shoot Yellow Bolts, but in fact is a Solid mass of metal: I.o.w the Yellow bolt was also a sign of someone using a slugthrower. The reason why these weapons were or are illegal in the universe. They penetrate Armour like it was made out of cardboard. But they came with that they usually were unaccurate since most SW tech companies have forgotten the science of Rifling your Barrel. The very thing they don't need to do with the crystal and gas setup of a normal blaster rifle. Also historical fun fact: Any gun that was called a Rifle, was only called so because the Barrel had been Rifled. Meaning it had those grooves that twists and spin around the whole length of the barrel, for better accuracy. Which later became the standard name for any and all guns which was of a certain size and weight.

42:51 something that got me confused here is that at no point was it said that the spin-sealed Tobana gas was specifically red. So, if we keep going by the color spectrum theory, that the higher the frequency, the more powerful the bolt would be, you could still say that the green bolts were a more refined version of the red ones (and the purple, the most refined). What would make sense to say the empire had more resources, and thus, more powerful weapons.

19:29 That's like being shot with a bullet and a taser at the same time... I would definitely consider that effective.

if i remember correctly, the old tie fighter game had blue ion cannons as an option alongside standard green lasers and one can switch between both

"What? Mesa no have a blueball!" I lost it.

In a lot of legends lore (and maybe even in cannon?) disruptor projectiles are colored purple, a weapon so dangerous it was outlawed by many governments.

i love the yoda reaction gifs you threw in there

I love how much time and energy the Star Wars fandom puts into trying to theorycraft Star Wars into the well crafted and coherent universe they deserve, rather than the hot steaming mess it was turned into by corporate greed. At the same time, this is also the reason why Hamilton's or Sanderson's stuff isn't turned into movies: the author crafted the world they created very very carefully and would never let any studio or director just ride roughshod over it to for coolness, cutness, and other marketability factors.

i think the expulsion after the purple blaster bolt makes contact is more spalling from what ever it hits not being about to absorb the energy imparted by the purple bolt.

in Star Wars Trilogy - Apprentice of the Force, you play as Luke and start with a blaster pistol that shoots red lasers but you can find power ups to make it stronger lasers like blue, green & purple. Weakest to strongest red, blue, green & purple.

Imagine forgetting to turn the color of your machine blaster and the entirety of your enemy platoon start screaming Friendly Fire!

Attack of the Clones and those tie fighters color errors in 1995 are not the first time blue blaster bolts are seen in a live action Star Wars movie. The first intentional instance of blue bolts in Star Wars was in 1983 in the Ewoks Battle for Endor movie. Mace has a sporting blaster that shoots Blue in the first scenes and later Noa's starship cannons shoot blue during the fight against the Mauraders. These were consistent, intentional colors, not color errors

One reason why the purple blast of the magna tri droids is explosive could be that they have such hich power that they vaporize whatever thy hit and the resulting pressure causes the explosion, that would be within the explanation that purple blast simply have a higher energy desity

There is a reason I love SWG and how it handles colors. Basically just has to do with the type of elemental damage.

been putting off watching this for a while, but glad i finally did

Around 16:53 you talked about blue lasers as a difference for that version of the movie. As an effects editor, I would say that is actually the prototype laser. It probably wasn't colored for the final cut. That would make that version of the movie pretty rare.

As far as I know how the OG canon goes, not the Disney Canon, Purple blasters use more expensive gases as fuel, while slightly more powerful than the most powerful common blaster color, green. It's rare because economically unviable, of course hand blasters are meant for the rich and the Geonosian fighters use it because they have an abundant amount of this type of gas. And you might think, then why the battledroids don't use it? The answer is simple, the E-5 is THE cheapest blaster, made by a different company that meant to be easily replacable and discardable, unlike the Clone Army's. Thus, they used the cheapest, least powerful fuelsource for it

Speaking of the yellow mandolorian blasters being armor penetrating against beskar, in Jedi survivor you can hear a storm trooper talking about how “if you have your blaster tuned just right it will go right through mandolorian beskar”

Heck yeah!! Purple fans rise up!

Wow, amazing video! 45 minutes of full enjoyment! I love your content, hope to see more :))

This sounds like what color blasters output is a science in its own right.

14:10 They actually made a space ATF? Now I don't want to visit the Star Wars galaxy.

If the THX release has blue blasters, that is not "the next" time after the stun bolt in ANH. Watch the Ewoks movies. There are many blue blaster bolts in The Battle For Endor.

I never thought I would ever be invested in this…but I am. I now want to see more purple blasters in Star Wars. This was definitely an amazing video and I can’t wait to see what you do next. Also Happy ‘belated’ Star Wars Day and May The 4th Be With You.

12 minutes in, Star Wars lore explains how gun control leads to tyranny. Beautiful and accurate. 😆

Fun fact from the Star Wars: X-Wing game and its sequels. Ion Blasts are blue as well and operate on machines the same as blue blaster stun bolts....

When I was younger, I liked to imagine that "purple"-hued blaster shots are significantly more powerful, whatever the energy source happens to be; inherently more expensive to produce in the Star Wars galaxy. Even turbolasers that are only meant to be anti-air guns (but not full-on cruiser cannons) hit harder than they would otherwise. Granted, dubbed anime from the _Mobile Suit Gundam_ franchise were also a big part of my childhood in the early 2000's, a franchise which [arguably] puts more effort into explaining the science behind it's fictional weaponry. Let's just say that pinkish/violet hued "beam" weapons (whether fired or contained as a "saber" blade) _really_ grew on me back then. ^ ...Dude, imagine if the Minovsky "miracle" particle was also a thing in Star Wars. Imagine the horrific/incredible damage that "mega-particle" guns would inflict. Anyway, back strictly into Star Wars, I've also seen [from the KotOR video games] that certain magenta/purple-hued crystals like "lorrdian" or "hurrikaine" gems ...heck, even "corusca gems".... used for focusing/enhancing lightsaber blades. At least one of these has *disruptor* properties when focused as an energy source, and another makes it much easier to _deflect_ opposing blaster-fire. They sound fuckin' _awesome_ to me, especially the "hurrikaine" crystals that [in Legends] Mace Windu once used.

I don't know why, but Blaster's purple color is my favorite.

The plasma bow things (I don't care what their official name is) feel pretty impractical. Like, why use a bow that requires you to draw back the arrow bolt, when blasters exist that can fire just a deadly projectiles with less of the effort? Meh, at least they look cool.

Blue/Cyan/Emerald blaster - you're old/new republic infantry. Red/Orange blaster - you're empire/rebel infantry/mercenary. Green blaster - you're planetar guardmen. Yellow blaster - you're tusken rider. Purple blaster - you're rich and can allow yourself to be cool.

21:32 my headcannon is that yellow is probably more accurate, and purple is extremely unstable and prone to explode mid-flight. This would explain why storm troopers are inaccurate(although “stormtrooper aim” is a retcon being directly due to fans getting the wrong message from a New hope and the Falcon escaping, seriously, why would the empire want to destroy the ship if they could use the planted tracker to find the rebel base?)because they were trained on and are used to a much more forgiving blaster and accurate blaster. It would also explain why purple is rare because it was so hard to properly control, and why it acts like a Flak round in AotC. It also lines up with the Electromagnetic Spectrum and how ultraviolet/purple light is the most energetic.

Yellow Blaster bolts: 1st a thought that might explain it. Mandalorians also are known for fighting Jedi, and in the past even used slug throwing weapons to fight them. If they're keeping that tradition forward (and they seem to in The Manalorian), Mando weapons may have a more "physical" impact than standard blaster bolts. It also stands to reason that if Beskar can deflect standard blaster bolts, a blaster bolt that also hits similar to slug throwers to do physical impact as well wouldn't be out of pocket for them. Thus yellow (and possibly orange with even cheaper gas) training bolts may give impact but not damage similar to rubber/paint bullets from modern firearms. I can't find anything that specifically backs that up, so it's pure theory-craft. However, what I can back up is that it's also noted that the WESTAR-35 and GALAAR-15 have the "Accurate" qualifier in the Star Wars RPG, which feeds into the idea of sniper rifles having yellow shots in Clone Wars/Bad Batch. Many other non-yellow blasters also have this quality in the game as well, so big grain of salt there. Just some tangential thoughts, that yellow blaster bolts, similar to purple "electrical" weapons and then purple blasters, may have multiple reasons. So perhaps both of these are also reasons.

27:35 Well AT-TEs had a really bad set of weaknesses that were heavily exploited by the CIS. For starters, the ball turret design was weaker compared to other turret designs and a direct shot would ignite the tibanna gas lines and not to mention that the pilot was sitting right on top of the AT-TEs mass driver ammo storage system, that missile that hit at the timeframe penetrated the hull right into the ammo and caused the whole thing to blow. The accordion design that separated the front from the back was a massive weakness that was often exploited and would lead to troop casualties sitting in that compartment which also housed the generators that ran the whole thing. The fuel reserves were on the underbelly and quite a few exploded due to AT-TE legs being blown off and the whole unit falling forward. Hail-fire droids were a direct counter to AT-TEs.

This a classic fr i love content like this

I believe that the yellow blaster bolts are actually the easiest to change the intensity, also pretty sure that the yellow bolts are more exclusively on planets compared to other gasses

My guess is, it's harder and more expensive to refine. Color would just reflect how well it's refined. The more refined, the more efficient and in that way, you'd get more bang for your buck. That might be why its used in smaller blasters and missiles.

(small error at 23:05: thats Jedi General Eeth Koth not "Sanon")

In my headcanon they are different kinds of "ammo" Red for organics Blue for Droids (Ion) Yellow (Neutral) Green (yellow + blue) best against ships.

so basicly blasters color is mainly determined by a coloring system in the blasters but gass, focusing crystal, and manufacturer can also influence this. maybe the coloring system is initally set by the manufacturer to being off while these systems take more power to change the color of certain gasses.

The different color tie fighter blaster colors in empire, hypothetically could be that the tie is running low on gas and the effectiveness is lessened and thus the discoloration could be then a visual indication to the pilot of how close to running out they are

I theorize that we have the technology to create those stun blaster bolts. We have those toy vortex cannons. They have made extreme hydraulic vortex cannons that shoot rings of gas at extreme speeds. Something like this could be modified to ionize a special gas, and then use some kind of rail or coil gun type mechanism to speed it up before leaving the barrel. Depending on the size of the ring, you could have stunning level bolts, or condense them into a small bolt with more power concentration, and the ability to go faster. Though I doubt it could be put into a blaster or rifle size weapon. Could be mounted on a large aircraft or a naval ship though.

I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure there was a purple blaster all the way back on the N64 in Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. I think you could find upgrades as you progressed and got a purple blaster at some point. Edit: I just looked up some gameplay and was skipping through. Saw at one point an IG series droid using a rapid fire purple blaster as well as the Icon for the “seeker” ammunition type as purple, though the actual shots are little orange explosives. Got further in and they used the Pule Cannon shot type and that was a purple shot.

In other sci fi settings like Stellaris and Eve and a few other more grounded ones, it tends to be the case that less energetic lasers are easier to manufacture and develop and more and more energetic wavelengths are increasingly superior in damage. Ending in high UV and eventually gamma rays, though of course even as it goes outside of the visible spectrum. It's interesting despite it very quicky goes beyond reality in most settings. There's a couple of settings that use hardcore realism in the design of spaceborne weapons using NASA documents. So armor uses ablative shielding to disperse heat to radiators from IR lasers, drones and missiles are the "true" long range over horizon orbital weapon systems, ships are very easy to detect at range and close quarters are a mix of lasers and magnetic accelerator guns. Though i believe most large ship actions would be pretty much over instantly by use of tactical nuclear weapons - as is the case in "Children of a Dead Earth".

"power output" determines the color. that's why the color of the bolts can change for a group of people within the same episode

Wookies used slug throwers or at least a version of slug thrower. The wookie bolt caster uses heavy amunition hence why when Chewy or Han use it, stormtrooper's armor explode

So cool a Star Wars actor answered yiour call! 🤯 .

hehehe purple blaster bolt go brrrrr

Loved the MatPat ❤

I mean it probably looks so cool in the first place *because* of how rare it is. Not in total number of users but in number of user in each shot.

Theory: The color is dependant on how much energy a bolt radiats in flight. This means that red bolts can be high power that is more efficent and not radiating or low power. Purpole on the other hand is very high power and radiats a lot. This woukd mean that purpole beats high power red in cqc but but its damage drops of quicker than red.

Interstellar gas sounds like a Star Wars themed weed strain 😭😭

The first game we see purple blaster bolts is actualy in "Star Wars Trilogy: Aprentice Of The Force" wich was only on gameboy advance and was released in 2004. You could have these kind of power ups in certain levels wich where different types of blaster bolts with limmited amount of shots wich all had specific effects. If I remember correctly, blue woud be auto fire with higher capacity (20 shots or something like that) but did the same amount of dammage of the standard red basic bolts (wich you could fire indefinitely), green would one shot pretry much every enemy you'd face but had a very limmited amount of ammo (10 if I remember correctly), then there's purple, wich you can only find once or twice in the entire game, it was a one shot like the green bolts but you could charge your shots and it would put down up to 4 enemies with a single bolt. It also had more ammo than the green one

Red vs blue/green is explained with red using synthetic khyber crystals to form the bolt, and green and blue are natural. Whichever faction is more powerful, has readier access to crystal mining, and ends up using natural instead of synthetic. Purple is an outlyer with no obvious explanation.

I actually knew about the blue and white bolts on TIEs, as the THX version is the only copies I own physically. I didn't know that it was fixed in the other versions.

Daamn I did not realize this was gonna be so long. I'm honestly really impressed. The *research*!

The lightsaber Blaster V2: Temporarily creates a 100m long lightsaber, so you can cut whole armys in half in mere seconds

quick thing, the "focusing lens" is the crystal. yes. its a lens made of crystal. but also, the blue lasers in the THX re-release is due to improper colour grading during the digital transfer, there are multiple other scenes that are either washed out, or have "grey black" its just due to a bad conversion of the film. in the footage you show, you can actually still see the blasters as green a little bit around the edges. its because conversion from film stock to digital was still in its infancy at the time, it was a new technology and nobody really had an "ideal" or industry standard way to do it yet

If I remember correctly the Mandos in clone wars didn’t have full beskar armor and a mix of a composite armor in more areas

I loved this video! Always asked myself that too!

It’d be cool if they did it by a guns color was based off its designed range; red or even invisable for snipers to purple for pistols and pdw’s and green for assault rifle types.