Another unreleased game for the Nintendo 64 has been discovered.
Die Hard 64 was an unreleased title that was quietly canceled in 1999. The game, based on the Die Hard franchise starring Bruce Willis, would have been an FPS title with an emphasis on hand-to-hand combat and large-scale, sprawling levels.
The game was uncovered by a former worker at the development studio, Bits Studios. Bits Studios was an English game developer who worked on several projects up to 2008.
According to RetroCollect, the game is playable but in an early form, with several levels and cutscenes incomplete. Some levels, such as the streets of L.A, a Prison, and a hospital, were completed fully. It seems that the levels were rather large for the time - the L.A streets, for example, had several blocks and buildings players can go through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fhfShY0qpI
The gameplay is standard FPS fare, with trademark Die Hard style such as dual-wielding guns, movie-quotes (based on recordings of Bruce Willis) and hand to hand combat. Multiple weapons include your fists, pistols, an automatic shotgun, baseball bats and other melee and firearms.
Die Hard 64 is also complicated in terms of its controls, allowing the player to jump, crouch, strafe, and lean over cover when fighting enemies. There was also an unfinished "bullet time" effect that had the camera rotate around a speeding bullet in slow motion.
There is only speculation as to why the game was canceled, but what is known is that the game was fully re-made for the Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2 and the Xbox as Die Hard: Vendetta.
Die Hard 64 is not the only title to be uncovered. 10Ahu, the forum member on assembler games, has also uncovered several other canceled Nintendo 64 titles from Bits Studios, including Riqa, a Tomb Raider style third-person adventure game, and Thieves World, another canceled title for the system. According to 10Ahu, the team at Bits Studios split in half once Riqa was canceled, and joined either the team on Die Hard 64 or the team on Thieves World. The work on Thieves World eventually became the game Rogue Ops.
Die Hard 64 cannot be played with emulated software, it requires an Everdrive and a genuine Nintendo 64 to run at this time.
What are your thoughts on this? Leave your comments below.
