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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire started out a Western, was harshly criticized by Miyamoto later in development
Jon Knoles was the project lead on Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, a title many N64 fans remember quite fondly. Sure, it may have been a bit wonky in some parts, but it showed the promise of what the N64 was capable of. In an interview with Gamer Informer, Knoles reveals that Shadows of the Empire didn't even start out as a Star Wars game!
“We decided to take a break from Star Wars, so we started kicking around this idea of a western with this new machine we heard Nintendo was making.”
Soon after those experiments began, Nintendo reached out to LucasArts about securing a Star Wars game for the N64. As you can see, the rest is history!
With Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire launching for the N64 in Dec. 1996, it's no surprise to hear that LucasArts got hands-on with the N64 very early on. The device was extremely secretive at the time, so much so that the Shadows of the Empire dev team had to go to great lengths to keep it hidden from other employees at LucasArts.
“We even had to have the controller hidden in a box with both ends cut out of the side, so you couldn’t see it. You would just put your hands in the side of the box. The analog stick was top secret.”
With Nintendo specifically reaching out to LucasArts for a Star Wars game, communication between the companies was somewhat frequent during development. This paved the way for none other than Shigeru Miyamoto to check out the in-development Shadows of the Empire. In typical Miyamoto fashion, he wasn't exactly blown away.
“He was talking to us about the new Mario and how excited he was to see the stuff we were working on… and then he preceded to provide us with some critiques.
I am feeling pretty good about what we got, and the feedback was certainly legitimate. ...Part of our problem, being a shooter, was the farther away you get from your character with the camera, the more inaccurate your shooting, turning, and aiming feedback becomes. The other bit of feedback… I’d like to think something was lost in the translation, but I swear what I heard his translator say was, when we were talking about character animation, ‘Do you not to take pride in your animation?’ They were right, but it was harsh feedback at the time. That stung a little bit, but it was still pretty cool to meet Miyamoto.”