The Star Wars Shadows of the Empire video game received its release on the 2nd of December 1996 for the Nintendo 64. This launch date marked the end of a development process that began in late 1994.
Players control Dash Rendar as he navigates a third-person shooter environment filled with varied combat scenarios. Jon Knoles proposed placing this new narrative between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to gain creative freedom using Dash Rendar instead of main movie characters.
Developers used Silicon Graphics Onyx supercomputers with RealityEngine2 graphics subsystems and Performer 3D API to approximate performance during prototyping. Two team members possessed extensive experience with the SGI platform allowing them to prototype the game for approximately 18 months until final hardware cards were released for SGI Indy workstations.
Nintendo Power reported that the original plan included 19 levels before it was reduced to 12 and finally settled on 10 for release. This reduction occurred after the development team utilized the level editor from the Jedi engine which had previously powered Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws.
Shadows of the Empire became unique among Nintendo 64 titles for using digitized orchestral recordings because Nintendo agreed to increase cartridge capacity from 32 megabits to 64 megabits. This increased storage allowed developers to sample roughly 15 minutes of music recorded with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra onto the physical media.