MIDI Week Singles: "Battle of Hoth" - Shadows of the Empire (N64)

"Battle of Hoth" from Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 (1996)

Composer: Joel McNeely with themes by John Williams

Album: No Official Soundtrack Release*

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: LucasArts

I do not remember exactly why I decided to use music from a Star Wars game, or what the nugget was that started this search.  I was looking through music on my computer, filtered it to Star Wars games, then decided to use music from Shadows of the Empire rather than Knights of the Old Republic since I had more experience and history with SotE.  I then did not want to use the opening screen crawl music because that seemed both too obvious, and oddly enough, not interesting enough for a MIDI Week Single.

I landed on "Battle of Hoth" probably because I played this level the most because it was in 1996, this is what I had always wanted from a Star Wars game.  Flying around a large swath of snowscape in a snowspeeder shooting at AT-ST and AT-ATs.  I later found out I could turn off the visual HUD and when in the cockpit view (which disappeared along with the HUD), it felt like the closest I would get to flying, albeit with blasters and a tow-cable.  But this music was a key part of that experience, especially around 00:38, which is really before all of the blasting and focusing on turning the snowspeeder not into the legs of the AT-AT.  It probably also helps that the music is from my Star Wars movie and from one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

God I love Star Wars.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I've Been Readin' 'n Writin'


*So, there was a soundtrack to Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire with music by Joel McNeely, but that was meant as a soundtrack to accompany the book that was released around the same time.  Lucasfilm made had a multi-platform release spanning a book, music cd, comic, action figures, and a video game.