Shadows of the Empire does not appear on best Star Wars video game lists. It is not fondly remembered (or is it?). Parts of it are quite bad, in truth. But it will always be my favourite Star Wars game.
I was tremendously excited, a teenager bouncing off the walls of our temporary Tooting home in South London. My dad had promised he'd buy me an N64 and a couple of games for my 16th birthday in June 1997. Nintendo's new console had only released on these shores a few months prior, and I had patiently waited. Well, not so patiently.
My mum and three siblings had already left the UK to live in Dublin, leaving my father and I in London so I could finish my GCSEs. He was sick, then, from a cancer that would eventually consume him a year later. It was an extremely difficult time, not that I showed it. My N64 and Star Wars Shadows of the Empire would help me through that summer until we joined the rest of my family in Ireland.