Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (N64)

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Platform: Nintendo 64 Year: 1996 Developer: LucasArts Buy: Amazon

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is a Star Wars game that is set in the timeframe between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with its storyline starting early in the former film, and wrapping up just as the latter film is about to get underway. It was produced as part of a larger "multimedia project" that would produce everything related to a Star Wars film except the film itself, which in retrospect was obviously a dry run for the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

The player controls Dash Rendar, an old friend of Han Solo's who signs on to do some work for the Rebel Alliance, and ends up taking Han's place in the ensemble after Han gets frozen in carbonite. Dash is then forced to go up against the evil Prince Xizor, a gangster working for the Empire. It's kind of obvious that LucasArts were still finding their feet when it came to working with true 3D, as the vehicular sections (apart from the notorious Speeder Bike segment) are generally very good, with the game's Battle of Hoth rendition being among the most fondly-remembered parts of any Star Wars game to date, but the on-foot sections are plodding and control awkwardly. Still, it's an overall decent and memorable game.

Screenshots

The title screen. It wouldn't be a Star Wars game without an intro scroll. The storyline is advanced in these cutscenes. The Battle of Hoth starts out with small fry such as probe droids... ...but then you come up against AT-ATs, who need to be brought down to size. Covering for the Millennium Falcon's escape during one of the on-foot segments.

Music

VGMPF Album Art

The soundtrack consists of a mix of John Williams's music from The Empire Strikes Back, and original music composed for the accompanying soundtrack CD by film and TV composer Joel McNeely. Williams' music needs no introduction of course, but McNeely's contributions do a very nice job of fitting in with the style of the existing music.

Where the game really stands out is in how the music is implemented. Instead of rearranging the compositions in the then-usual manner, Peter McConnell directly sampled Williams' and McNeely's orchestrated music and turned it into loops that the game plays back. While the quality does take a hit from the compression, and results in the music rip alone being bigger than most Super NES or Genesis games, it gives the music a fidelity that vastly outstrips most other console games from this era.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Listen	Download
01	Star Wars Theme	John Williams	Peter McConnell	0:49		Download
02	Shadows of the Empire	Joel McNeely	Peter McConnell	1:14		Download
03	Game Start	John Williams	Peter McConnell	0:05		Download
04	Battle of Hoth	John Williams	Peter McConnell	2:26		Download
05	Rebel Base	John Williams	Peter McConnell	1:40		Download
06	Boss Battle	John Williams	Peter McConnell	1:26		Download
07	Asteroid Field	John Williams	Peter McConnell	3:00		Download
08	Junkyard	John Williams	Peter McConnell	2:08		Download
09	Space Port	John Williams	Peter McConnell	1:27		Download
10	Beggar's Canyon Chase	Joel McNeely	Peter McConnell	1:54		Download
11	Into The Sewers	Joel McNeely	Peter McConnell	2:19		Download
12	Xizor's Palace	Joel McNeely	Peter McConnell	1:41		Download
13	Skyhook Battle	Joel McNeely	Peter McConnell	1:41		Download
14	Game Over	John Williams	Peter McConnell	0:06		Download

Credits

• Ripper: Josh W.
• Recorder: OlfinBedwere
• Game Credits:
  • Composer: John Williams
  • Composer: Joel McNeely
  • Music Editor/Sound Quality Control: Peter McConnell
  • Sound Designer: Larry Oppenheimer credited as Larry the O
  • Sound Designer: Clint Bajakian

(Source)

We have tried to use the original track names from soundtrack releases wherever possible. However, some of the tracks are used in different contexts to how they were originally intended, so for those instances their in-game location is used instead.

Game Rip

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

Ripping Nintendo 64 music is beyond the scope of this Wiki.

Releases

USA Title: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Platform: Nintendo 64 Released: 1996-12-03 Publisher: LucasArts

Links

• mobygames.com/game/n64/star-wars-shadows-of-the-empire - MobyGames.
• gamefaqs.com/n64/198789-star-wars-shadows-of-the-empire - GameFAQs.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Shadows_of_the_Empire_(video_game) - Wikipedia.