Today, Star Wars is everywhere. You can't escape it. But in 1996, it was a very different story. 15 years after the Death Star exploded in Return of the Jedi, fans (myself included) were ravenous for anything Star Wars related. It was the Expanded Universe that kept us going. Timothy Zahn's Thrawn novels, classic games like Dark Forces, and compilations of short stories like Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina. These were the places where you could lose yourself in a galaxy far, far away in the mid 1990s.
There was no shortage of great stories, but it was another movie we wanted. Something official, direct from George Lucas himself. Alas, that wouldn't happen for another 4 years when The Phantom Menace finally hit cinemas. But in the meantime, Lucasfilm gave us the next best thing: Shadows of the Empire. This high profile multimedia project was essentially a new Star Wars sequel, set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but one that existed in just about every medium except film.
Looking at it cynically, the entire venture was a way for Lucasfilm to make money from Star Wars without having to wait for George to finish a new movie. There were two novels—one for adults and one for teens. There was a comic, action figures, model kits, trading cards, and just about every kind of merchandise you can imagine. But crass commercialism aside, the story and characters at the heart of Shadows of Empire were superb. To this day, it's still one of the greatest Star Wars tales ever told.
It's the story of Dash Rendar, a rugged, swashbuckling smuggler and ally of the Rebel Alliance who joins Luke and Leia on a mission to free Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt's palace. Meanwhile, scheming crime lord Prince Xizor plots to kill Darth Vader and replace him as the Emperor's right hand. Shadows of the Empire would have been a great Star Wars movie if it made it to the silver screen. But it was fine that it didn't, because Steve Perry's novel is vividly written and enormously entertaining.
Naturally, there was a video game. Developed in-house at LucasArts, it launched on PC and N64 in 1996, and went on to sell over a million copies—thanks in large part, I think, to the first level. In the thick of Empire's Battle of Hoth, Rendar temporarily joins Rogue Squadron, jumps in a snowspeeder, and takes on a squad of AT-ATs. This was, at the time, the most thrilling and authentic digital recreation of a Star Wars battle ever seen in a video game, and everyone wanted to play it.
I remember people breathlessly discussing this level at school, and the cartridge being passed around between the handful of us who had N64s. It felt like the future. It was also refreshing to play a Star Wars game where you inhabited the role of a rogue and a scoundrel, rather than a Jedi or another more typical kind of protagonist. Dash was still a hero, but more Han Solo than Luke Skywalker, which was incredibly exciting. It was a side of Star Wars we hadn't really seen in a video game before.
The game is primarily a third-person shooter, but there are several levels where vehicles come into play. These include a high-speed swoop bike chase and 360-degree space battles in Rendar's ship, the Outrider. The game was pretty clunky in '96, and even harder to play today, but back then we didn't care. We persevered and looked past its flaws, because it was such a great Star Wars experience. Also, as a fan of the source novel, getting to live out parts of that story as Rendar was a thrill.
LucasArts was an early adopter of the N64, and worked closely with Nintendo while developing Shadows of the Empire. Shigeru Miyamoto even had some creative input, suggesting Rendar's animations be given more character. Motion capture was handled by Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects team behind the Star Wars movies. Nintendo even allowed the cartridge size to be increased from 8 to 12MB to accommodate sampled orchestral music. It was a big, expensive project.
Shadows of the Empire isn't a great game, I'll be honest. It's a very pedestrian third-person shooter, and clearly a product of a time when people were still figuring out how to make 3D games work on consoles. But it was great because it captured the essence of Star Wars in a way very few games had before. In '96 I mostly just played the Battle of Hoth over and over again, because I found the later levels too challenging. But that was enough for me. I was in Star Wars, and it was magical.