Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is an action-platformer game created by Lucasfilm Games and developed by Sculptured Software, and is based on the film of the same name.

Despite the successful destruction of the Death Star, the Imperial offensive still continued, and the rebels were driven back to a secret base on the galactic frontier. It was a dark time for the rebels. The Knights of Freedom, led by Luke Skywalker, escaped pursuit by the Imperial Army and built a new secret base on the planet Hoth. Meanwhile, the evil incarnate Darth Vader has unleashed thousands of unmanned scouting robots across the universe in hopes of discovering the young Jedi knight....

The game uses a new engine and as a result, new mechanics. Luke starts off in Hoth riding on his Tauntaun (which he can unmount by pressing Select). The game introduces force powers that can be unlocked and subsequently used by collecting force points. Luke also has a super jump which functions in an identical fashion to Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES) by holding down until Luke flashes, and then pressing A. There are no lives in the game; only a handful of continues, which, if all used, forces the player back to the beginning of the game.

The game was mostly negatively received by critics. The main criticism of the game is that it controls horribly; the jumping and moving is very stiff, and there are many platforming segments, such as the first level where Luke must jump onto small, moving glaciers whilst avoiding probes. Also, some criticize Luke and Darth Vader's graphics as their lightsaber colors are swapped, as well as Vader using a blaster. However, the game was noted for its clear digitized speech and ambient effects.

Sculptured Software created Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (SNES) with LucasArts shortly after, which was highly praised, but was also known for its brutal difficulty.

An interesting tidbit about this game is that during its development, developers from Active Enterprises visited Sculptured Software and used their development tools from Nintendo to produce the infamous unlicensed game Action 52 (NES).