[Watch] Die Hard 64 Was a Thing and it Was Recently Rediscovered

Ah, the 90s. A time where it wasn't guaranteed that a movie tie-in game would suck, and sometimes would even be good. It was recently revealed that Fox Interactive had a planned Die Hard game in the works, dubbed Die Hard 64.

Developed by Bits Studios, the game was originally planned for a 1999 release. RetroCollect reached out to one of their forum members, 10ahu, who had actually worked for Bits Studio during the development of Die Hard 64.

"The game is far from complete, and is split into three roms. Each rom has got about 8 levels and around 3 of them are playable in each rom (the rest are test levels, or unfinished levels with no enemies at all). The levels playable include the prison riot, the hospital, LA street, the police department. The maps are quite big, and fairly impressive for the Nintendo 64; for instance in the LA street level you have few streets and you can go inside some buildings, but you dont have any pedestrians or cars running in the street. It feels a bit empty, but this is a very early game. All cutscenes are missing and beside the "yippee ki yay!" and "that must hurt" voiced by Bruce Willis, there is no dialogue at all. Even in the most completed level you have a lot of funny glitches. It was really a work in progress – and you can tell."

The gameplay video below actually has quite a bit in it, despite the work-in-progress claim. Multiple guns, melee weapons, and even dual wielding.

The game was primarily canceled due to the release date being quite late into the life cycle of the Nintendo 64. Interestingly enough, however, the team had moved onto a Gamecube project. Ironically enough that game was Die Hard Vendetta which unfortunately had pretty bad reviews. After the cancellation of the N64 version, the team was split into two. One had joined a project named Thieves World (yet another canceled N64 game) and the other half is who made Die Hard Vendetta.

Apparently, the Die Hard 64 rom in the video isn't playable on typical emulators like Project64 and actually runs on Everdrive with actual Nintendo 64 hardware. The rom was not released to the public by 10ahu, and the only actual gameplay seen is the video included.