Short answers, pulled from the story.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was released for the Nintendo 64 on the 2nd of December 1996, three months after the console launched in North America. It was released in Japan on the 14th of June 1997, and a Windows 95 version followed on the 17th of September 1997.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire sold more than one million copies by 1997. It was the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game for that year and the third-best-selling game on any system for the 1996 Christmas shopping season.
Dash Rendar is the mercenary protagonist of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, voiced by John Cygan. He was built from a minor character in the tie-in novel and shares several traits with Han Solo, including a ship, the Outrider, designed to resemble Solo's Millennium Falcon. Cygan reprised the role in Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance.
Joel McNeely composed the full soundtrack for the Shadows of the Empire multimedia project, recorded with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. On the Nintendo 64 cartridge, storage limits required the music to be sampled down to 16-bit at 11 kHz in mono, with Nintendo agreeing to expand cartridge space from 8 MB to 12 MB to fit roughly 15 minutes of the score.
Because the Nintendo 64 hardware was not finalized when development began, LucasArts prototyped the game for approximately 18 months on an SGI Onyx supercomputer using the RealityEngine2 graphics subsystem. When actual Nintendo 64 hardware cards became available for SGI Indy workstations, the team ported the game to the console in three days.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire received mixed reviews. The opening Battle of Hoth level was widely praised as a high point for movie-to-game adaptations, but the third-person shooter stages drew strong criticism for poor controls and camera angles. Electronic Gaming Monthly named it a runner-up for Nintendo 64 Game of the Year, behind Super Mario 64.