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17 years after release, Star Wars: Empire At War just got patched to support 64-bitMay the 64s be with you

May the 64s be with you

Star Wars: Empire At Warwasn’t a great game, but it did fulfill a simple fantasy: it was a real-time strategy game with original trilogy Star Wars units. If what you wanted was to fling swarms of AT-ATs against swarms of X-Wings then, yeah, you could do that. Darth Vader versus entire platoons of rebel soldiers? That too.

Why am I talking about a 2006 RTS? Because it just got a new official patch to make it run in 64-bit and fix a number of bugs.

“It’s been a while, but we have been working behind the scenes to update Star Wars: Empire at War andStar Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruptionto 64-Bit,” begins thepatch notes.

The bug fixes are long and numerous, and also includes exposing certain lua scripts in a way that suggests they might be editable now. That’s important because Empire At War had or has a fairly busy mod scene. We last checked in on itback in 2019and found several ambitious projects in various states of completion, including YodenMod, pictured above.

To Petroglyph’s (and Lucasfilm Games') great credit, they’ve continued to patch Empire At War pretty consistently. Its last similar update was around this time last year, with waves of fixes released in ‘21, ‘19, ‘18 and so on. The leap to 64-bit is a more significant change, however. To celebrate, the game is currentlyon sale on Steamtoo, making it less than the price a fancy sandwich from that deli I like.