Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was a big multimedia experiment in 1996, telling the story of what happens in between the films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi via “everything but a movie” — a novel, a comic series, a soundtrack, toys and a video game.

The player character in the game is Dash Rendar. He is often compared to Han Solo, and certainly the similarities are there. Both are mercenaries who fly Corellian ships with a sidekick (a droid in this case), and wear distinctive vests.

The first phase of the game is actually set during the Battle of Hoth as seen in TESB. Initially the player flies a snowspeeder, but I want to focus on the level bosses that Dash fights mano a mano. The first one of these is an Imperial AT-ST walker, inside the rebels’ Echo Base:

Dash is armed with a blaster, and potentially some Seeker missiles. The AT-ST has powerful cannons, and is of course very tall compared to the player. But it is relatively slow-moving and with a bit of patient running around, one can defeat it without great difficulty. Well-suited for the first stage in which the player controls the character directly.

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