Between doing art for the NES Star Wars in 1991 and doing some work on the 2005 Revenge of the Sith game, Knoles worked on 24 Star Wars video games. Jon Knoles works on the Forza series with Microsoft today, but early in his video game career he worked on what many would consider to be the dream license. This article originally appeared abridged in the September 2018 issue of Game Informer. Despite all this, the game is one of the earliest examples of a 3D, third-person action game, and it holds a special place in the hearts of young-at-the-time Star Wars fans. Shadows of the Empire marked a direct collaboration between Star Wars and Nintendo, helped launch the N64, and suffered as a result of its undeniable hubris. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was LucasArts’ attempt to tell the story between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi across multiple types of media, and one of its pillars was a video game. In 1996, right before the special editions of the original Star Wars trilogy released in theaters, and three years before The Phantom Menace, one Star Wars story tried to make an impact without the aid of an accompanying film.
