Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire — A RetRose Tinted Review
Recall — A long, long, long time ago…
Growing up in the 90s, a lot of people I knew had an N64 before my brothers and I did. We came to expect a number of standard games when we would visit: Super Mario 64, the bane of the multiplayer experience; Mario Kart 64, in which the host would always get to be Yoshi and would always win; and more often than not, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. The stark cartridge art always stood out: a single, original trilogy Stormtrooper, blasting off a laser from its rifle, threatening to split out of the art itself. It was a great game for budding nerds, my brothers and I included, and a great dip into the Star Wars universe.
What boggles me the most about Shadows of the Empire (shortened to SotE) is that I remember playing that game, those stages, before I properly remembered seeing Star Wars as a movie. Star Wars was a familiar concept, thanks to my uncles. I knew of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, but fragments of SotE stand out before the thrilling rescue from the Death Star, or the cinematic Battle of Hoth that the first few levels are based around. This was, for all intents and purposes, my (and probably a lot of other kids’) proper introduction to Star Wars, and it sucked me in.
Though my middle brother picked up the mantle of Star Wars afficionado in later years, we all found something to enjoy in SotE: the thrill of piloting a speeder through the snowy Battle of Hoth, running and blasting our way through Echo Base, or taking up a turret cannon in the Imperial-saturated asteroid fields. It was fun, it was bombastic, it was challenging without being too unfair…but the true test was the hover rail stage on Ord Mantell. If the platforms and obstacles didn’t get you, the powerhouse droid at the end would sap your lives one by one. Of course, I knew there were other stages to play, but by the time we owned the game, the challenge was just getting past stage 4. It was some time before I properly revisited and beat the game, probably in the early-to-mid 2000s.
I mentioned earlier that SotE was a great dip into Star Wars. Narratively, it is, if (like I learned later) you pause to read the text and watch the scenes between missions. For me, in the earlier days, it was all about getting into the action, marveling at the ships and walkers, the troopers and weapons, the thrilling music and soundscape. But even without a plot, I remember still having an idea of what to do. Mostly, that was survive and shoot the things that threatened my survival. But it still worked; a true hallmark of endurance and accessibility in the ludological sense. Sometimes, in my early playing, I would take the difficult route (blasting the AT-AT walkers instead of using tow cables to trip them), but only because I didn’t know how. C-buttons: who needs ‘em?
I loved a great many things about the game growing up: the challenge, the variety, the design, all sorts of things. But ultimately, what stands out the most in my memory is the soundtrack. I didn’t know at the time that it was built up almost entirely of sections from the original Star Wars trilogy’s respective soundtracks. I recall, in my growing exploration of music and soundtracks, having a burst of realization when the soundtrack reminded me, not of scenes from the movies, but of stages in SotE. I firmly believe that SotE was the start of my love for soundtracks and their particular musical design.
Even young and with varying degrees of knowledge of Star Wars throughout, Shadows of the Empire was a thrilling jaunt into the surface of a deeper galaxy. A thrilling that that, even after getting so many Game Overs, I remained excited to revisit over and over again.
Revisit — “You’ll get your chance to show off, Ace.”
First off: recent flight sims have spoiled me. Thought I could buzz the top of a couple AT-STs after a firing run, but instead crashed into their big square heads. That’s two lives. Flew right into the side of an AT-AT for another life, and managed to get shot down the good old-fashioned way for my fourth and final life. I was anticipating Game Over screens, but not on the first level!
All the same, the sound design and soundtrack continue to stand head and shoulders above so much of the game. The N64 soundtrack translation of John Williams’s movie soundtrack and Joel McNeely’s original Shadows of the Empire soundtrack still goes just as hard as it did twenty-plus years ago. Even with the limitations of the hardware, I was immediately reminded of how impactful the music was back then. Now, I appreciate the blend of both cinematic and original soundtracks to create a lasting musical identity.
And the soundscape…the chittering of probe droids, the clanking and slamming of the walkers as they slowly move through the battlefield, the absolute ZING of laser fire as it whizzes past your speeder or, worse, collides with it. Even without a rumble pak, even playing this on the N64, that feeling, that visceral connection between gameplay, soundscape, and player experience is there.
The vibes In the asteroid field are similar: laws of science be damned, it’s cool having that Star Wars soundscape in the vacuum of space as you blast TIEs to smithereens. The joy of just spinning around and whaling on bad guys from a turret is as fantastic as it ever was, and it should be said that radar (now that I understand how radar works) is a game changer, both on Hoth and in the Asteroid Field levels. All of this said, I had an absolute blast revisiting the ship-based levels in the early game.
The on-foot missions, though, were notably less thrilling to come back to. Dash Rendar, smuggler extraordinaire and crackshot with a blaster, controls like a floating set of spring coils. Whether the age of my N64 controllers finally catching up to them or the design of these missions, Dash would always keep bounding just too far in the wrong direction, whether into blaster fire or off a ledge. Even being familiar with the sidestep mechanic wasn’t enough to save him from otherwise preventable death. Could be that playing on Normal (instead of my old Easy standby) is finally starting to challenge my old playstyles, but I’d rather think it the game than me.
On-foot boss battles were another matter entirely. Most of them felt like I had to cheese the fight to win. Likewise, I was only one bad position for one moment away from being riddled with lasers and losing a precious life in my quest, only to lose the rest of my lives in rapid succession after. Prince Xizor’s ugly mug telling me “Game Over” has never felt so personal.
For all of the variety that SotE puts into its missions early on, they seem to rely heavily on putting Dash boots-on-the-ground starting with Part 2, barring the swoop bike chase on Tatooine and the final Skyhook Battle. If the on-ground levels took less time, this might feel less egregious, but they are still as long as ever, especially when searching out Challenge Points to boost your life bonus at level’s end.
I believe there’s still a fondness for everything Shadows of the Empire does, both as a nostalgic game and the part of the larger story from that time. Some parts of it hold up surprisingly well (and have made me that much more excited to revisit the Rogue Squadron collection), while others have shown their age. But for what it was and what it tried to do, Shadows of the Empire can stand tall amongst the more recent Star Wars heavyweights for its variety, its soundscape, and how it cleared the way for future titles all the same.
If you’re interested, there is a PC version available on Steam and GOG!
