Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire (USA) ROM

When I though Shadows of the Empire on the N64, this is a game some people refer to as an Interequel. Not quite a sequel, but it follow the middle of the film story and can’t be called a prequel either. So lets call it play the guy standing for Han Solo, who tries to save Han Solo, but things change, so he tries to save Leia, from an Intergalactic crime lord, who wants to become Vader’s apprentice.

In Shadows of the Empire you could use some pretty sweet stuff, like take out AT-ATs on Hoth, fly on a jetpack and fight the Empire while you escape, but with the good comes the bad, and there are things you can’t do that would be cool. You can’t fight with a light saber, force push anybody, or even strafe from left to right! And I can think several times when strafe was really handy. I mean, we have all these buttons on the N64 controller and not one moves you from left to right, but three of them change your camera angles that you never use! But come on, this was the Nintendo 64, this was big deal. You actually have a camera now, so you have to sacrifice gameplay so you could avoid dropping from pits and things like that. While the camera may be a fail, one thing that was a total win was the music. When you fly around the galaxy on your ship, space sounds pretty cool.

Ok, so you heard the good and the bad, but on the grand scale, Shadows of the Empire is…Yes, pretty average. But really the only reason I looked into it in the first place is because it’s Star Wars. But, you want know something that is really going to make the internet fanboys freak out? Ok, according Wikipedia, which we all know, is never wrong, it turns out that Shadows of Empire, the game and the merchandising that came with it was a test to see if the public still want Star Wars! Yes, if it was unpopular, we never would see the new movies which would never lead to today’s Star Wars games. Yes, you paid 60$ bucks to be a part of a test, and that sucks.