Fitting more or less between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Shadows of the Empire follows the smuggler Dash Rendar as he attempts to rescue the carbonite-frozen Han Solo from the bounty hunter Boba Fett, and fights off the attempts of the Black Sun syndicate to kill Luke Skywalker.

The game is one part of a multimedia experiment performed by LucasArts back in the mid-90s (the other components being a book and a comic, covering different aspects of the same story). Besides the interesting project background, the gameplay itself is uncommon -- the game at times being an air/space combat sim, a third-person shooter, racing game, or a rail shooter.