Bruce Willis must have had a big influence on me in the 90s, as the Die Hard films have become a Christmas tradition, whilst the Die Hard Trilogy game kept me entertained throughout the holiday season of ’96. Another Bruce Willis tie-in I have fond memories of is Die Hard Arcadehttps://hellonew665.weebly.com/blog/pcsx-reloaded-mac-plugins-download. – one of the standout side-scrolling (or 3D even) beat ’em ups of the 32-bit era, essentially a Die Hard themed 3D Streets of Rage successor that Sega released in the arcades and on the Saturn.

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So with an eye towards the title of this article… Is Die Hard Arcade still as good as I remember today?

Die Hard Arcade is a 3D brawler developed by Sega, released in 1996 in arcades and later ported to the Saturn.The game was originally released as Dynamite Deka (literally 'Dynamite Detective') in Japan and was clearly 'inspired' by - but in no way officially connected to - the film Die Hard. Buy Die Hard Arcade by SEGA of America, Inc. For Sega Saturn at GameStop. Find release dates, customer reviews, previews, and more.

The odd thing about Die Hard Arcade, is just how little it has to do with Die Hard. The Japanese version didn’t even have the Die Hard license, going by the moniker of Dynamite Deka instead – however the game was originally developed with the intent of being a Die Hard game, so the Japanese version just had the Die Hard references stripped out for its release… which makes practically no odds, as the only obvious Die Hard connection is John McClane as the main character, and he looks the same in both versions. (Fun fact: the Dreamcast has a sequel to Die Hard Arcade called Dynamite Cop, which has nary a mention of John McClane.)

As far as I can tell, the plot involves a Bruce Willis lookalike presumably called John McClane, progressively losing his clothes as he beats up groups of oncoming thugs. There also appears to be a little girl hiding under an old man’s desk – a man who looks nothing like Gary Oldman, incidentally – and it seems to be your mission to save her. Doing so should take skill, bravery, approximately 30-40 minutes, and if you’re playing on an original arcade cabinet, possibly five to ten pounds.

1. The Dynamite Deka games are hilarious and pretty fun to play though. I personally enjoy the Model 2 sequel more, 'Die Hard' was a little jarring for me in that you can only attack side to side.
2. In 2006 Die Hard Arcade was ported to the PlayStation 2 as part of the Sega Ages line. This version is less a port and more of a complete overhaul with completely new graphics and most importantly extra modes and costumes to entice you to play the game multiple times.

The combat feels like it owes something to Virtua Fighter – it was co-developed by one of Sega’s AM teams, however AM1 rather than Virtua Fighter creators AM2. The other half of the development collaboration was the US Sega Technical Institute, founded by the now pretty famous PlayStation guy Mark Cerny and responsible for such games as Kid Chameleon, Comix Zone and a lot of work on the Mega Drive Sonic titles. At the time, Die Hard Arcade was quite the impressive arcade game and even more impressive on a home console. Today the visuals are clearly of their era, but feel quite solid, and the chunky, colourful characters have helped it age fairly gracefully.

Aside from the kicky/punchy aspect, the stages are littered with weapons to pick up and aid your quest. Pistols and machine guns make up the bulk of the useful weapons, but things like spraypaint cans, dustbins and grandfather clocks make for the more entertaining moments. When a second player joins in for some co-op fun, things can get a little manic – sometimes feeling like a bit of a massacre even. I don’t quite remember the Die Hard movie where Bruce Willis smacked street thugs with a broom whilst his blonde, female partner unleashed hell with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher, but the enemies do technically die hard, so the license isn’t entirely tenuous.

Thanks in large part to the game’s quick playthrough time, it doesn’t really get the chance to become tedious. After a few stages of beating up hapless henchmen, the game will throw in a quick time event requiring a correct button press to dodge a vehicle or punch a dude in the face. Then there are the boss battles – typical bigger, stronger enemies with double health bars and their own little gimmick – which try to eat your credits and prevent the whole thing being a complete pushover. When it’s all finished you’re left sweaty, satisfied, though still craving a little more.

Clearly it can be tricky getting hold of an original arcade cabinet to enjoy Die Hard Arcade today, but if you don’t want to dabble with MAME the Sega Saturn version is a pretty impressive arcade port. There’s probably a good reason for that, with the Sega ST-V arcade system and Saturn sharing almost identical hardware. My positive perception of Die Hard Arcade probably has something to do with the fact it was released at a time when Sega were bringing a bunch of near perfect arcade ports to home consoles…

The important question then – is Die Hard Arcade as good as you remember? Well, yes, basically. It’s short and doesn’t make the best use of Bruce Willis’ likeness, but it’s a really solid example of the punching things and moving forward genre, which died out a little after the ’90s. Go ahead and give Sega’s John McClane Impersonator Simulation an hour of your quality time.

Die Hard Trilogy is a video game based on the first three installments of the Die Hard series of action movies. Die Hard Trilogy features three games in one, each based on a movie installment and featuring a different genre and gameplay style. The game was well received and would eventually become a PlayStation Greatest Hits and PlayStation Platinum game. Die Hard Trilogy also inspired a sequel entitled Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas. The sequel retained the three different playing styles, but featured a spin-off storyline that was not connected to the movie series.

Gameplay[edit]

Die Hard[edit]

Die Hard is a third-person shooter. The player battles terrorists and rescues hostages in the Nakatomi Plaza, which is the setting of the first film in the series.^[2]

Die Hard 2: Die Harder[edit]

Die Hard 2: Die Harder is presented as an on rails-shooter, where the player must stop terrorists who have taken over Dulles Airport from the second film.

Players control the crosshair with a gamepad, light gun, or mouse. Die Hard Trilogy was one of the few light gun games available for the PlayStation that was not compatible with Namco's GunCon/G-Con 45 controller or GunCon 2.^{[citation needed]} However, it was compatible with Sega's Stunner light gun for the Saturn version.^[2]

Die Hard with a Vengeance[edit]

In Die Hard with a Vengeance, the player goes on a joyride driving a taxicab, sports car, and dump truck throughout all of New York City and is tasked with finding and defusing several explosives before they can go off.

Development[edit]

The game was developed by a UK-based development studio, Probe Entertainment. The Die Hard with a Vengeance segment was developed first and was intended to be a standalone release, but publisher Fox Interactive insisted that the game should be more closely linked to the films, leading Probe to develop the other two segments.^[3] Initially the Die Hard 2 segment of the game was developed with polygonal enemies,^[4] but they were later replaced with digitized sprites. For the Die Hard with a Vengeance segment, the team had wanted to use an authentic recreation of New York City, but found that when driving at 200 miles per hour, an accurate model of NYC felt too small and confining.^[5]

Mitsubishi adventure service manual download. The PlayStation was chosen as the lead platform because lead programmer Simon Pick strongly felt that it was the most powerful format of the time. In particular, he reasoned that the Saturn and PC versions would come out better if the programmers were trying to emulate impressive graphical effects on an extant PlayStation version than if they were designing the game around the hardware limitations of the Saturn.^[5] Pick elaborated on how the team intended to optimize the game for Saturn:

At the moment on PlayStation, we've got six or seven circular images which appear to make the lens flare effect, but maybe we'll just have two or three on Saturn version to keep the frame rate up. . Frame rate is the main thing. We've got one guy coming over to us from Sega who's very clever. He's written a program which basically takes a polygonal model, and as it's rendering it looks at the size of the polygons; if they're very small it says 'there's no point texturing this, let's do it flat in just one color,' and this way it saves processor time and helps keep the frame rate up. We're going to reduce the detail of the models quite a lot, and reduce the texturing so the roads on Saturn will probably be flat shaded - so it's like a gray road rather than having textures.^[5]

Reception[edit]

Die Hard Trilogy was a commercial hit, with sales above 2 million units by March 2000.^[13]

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The PlayStation version was positively reviewed. As of June 2017, it holds an 86% ranking at GameRankings.^[14] Most critics considered the high value-for-money of getting three games in one to be Die Hard Trilogy's strongest point.^{[6][7][10][11]} A few even stated that none of the three component games were good enough to stand on their own, but the variety offered by the collection as a whole makes it exceptionally entertaining.^[6][10] However, the majority commented that all three component games are outstanding even on their own terms.^{[6][7][9][11]}GamePro's Scary Larry presented a dissenting opinion; while he highly praised the game's addictive quality and sound effects, he argued that the three segments are ultimately just rehashes of (respectively) Resident Evil, Virtua Cop, and Twisted Metal.^[15] The most common criticism was that the Die Harder segment requires the Konami light gun to be enjoyable, since the cursor when using the standard controller is slow and difficult to move.^[6][15][10] The first segment of the game was particularly praised for its deep challenge, requiring players to out-think the enemy.^[7][10][9]

Die Hard Trilogy was a finalist for the Computer Game Developers Conference's 1996 'Best Adaptation of Linear Media' Spotlight Award,^[16] but lost the prize to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.^[17] However, Electronic Gaming Monthly editors named it Action Game of the Year.^[18]

The Saturn port also received mostly positive reviews, though it was often compared unfavorably to the PlayStation original. GamePro's The Rookie said the graphics are not as sharp as the PlayStation version's, especially in the Die Harder segment, but the gameplay is addictive enough to make this relatively unimportant.^[19] Josh Smith stated in GameSpot that the sluggish controls and poor graphics, especially as compared to the PlayStation version, make the first two segments of the game nearly unplayable, since lining up shots in time is awkward and frustrating. However, he said that in the third segment the animation is actually better than the PlayStation version's, and that the fast pace and black humor of this segment make it worth buying Die Hard Trilogy all by itself.^[8] Paul Glancey of Sega Saturn Magazine summarized, 'Often when you see compilations like this there's . one section that stands out as the one that the programmers thought of first and lavished the most attention on, but all three sections of Die Hard Trilogy have their fair share of thrills, great visuals and clever ideas.'^[12]

In Germany, the game was banned because of its extreme violence, especially being able to drive through harmless people with blood spilling all over the windshield.^{[citation needed]}

References[edit]

Die Hard Arcade Game Emulator

1. ^'Christmas Games Guide'. Computer Trade Weekly. No. 616. United Kingdom. 2 December 1996. p. 43.
2. ^ ^abFulljames, Stephen (February 1997). 'Yippeeeee-kai-ay, Muddy Funsters!'. Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 16. Emap International Limited. pp. 54–57.
3. ^'To Die For'. Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 7. Emap International Limited. May 1996. pp. 50–55.
4. ^'Die-Hard with a Saturn! Die Hard Trilogy'. Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 5. Emap International Limited. March 1996. p. 10.
5. ^ ^abc'Die Hard Trilogy'. Next Generation. No. 17. Imagine Media. May 1996. p. 84.
6. ^ ^abcde'Review Crew: Die Hard Trilogy'. Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 86. Ziff Davis. September 1996. p. 26.
7. ^ ^abcdSterbakov, Hugh (December 1, 1996). 'Die Hard Trilogy Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
8. ^ ^abSmith, Josh (January 14, 1997). 'Die Hard Trilogy Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
9. ^ ^abc'Die Hard Trilogy'. IGN. November 21, 1996. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
10. ^ ^abcde'Stayin' Alive'. Next Generation. No. 23. Imagine Media. November 1996. p. 268.
11. ^ ^abcPSM 10
12. ^ ^abGlancey, Paul (March 1997). 'Review: Die Hard Trilogy'. Sega Saturn Magazine. No. 17. Emap International Limited. pp. 68–69.
13. ^https://web.archive.org/web/20020302155411/http://www.gamespot-es.com/news/00_03/01/2/INDEX.ASP
14. ^Die Hard Trilogy for PlayStation - GameRankings
15. ^ ^ab'ProReview: Die Hard Trilogy'. GamePro. No. 93. IDG. June 1996. p. 54.
16. ^Staff (April 15, 1997). 'And the Nominees Are.'Next Generation. Archived from the original on June 5, 1997. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
17. ^'Spotlight Awards Winners Announced for Best Computer Games of 1996' (Press release). Santa Clara, California: Game Developers Conference. April 28, 1997. Archived from the original on July 3, 2011.
18. ^'The Best of '96'. Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 92. Ziff Davis. March 1997. p. 88.
19. ^'Saturn ProReview: Die Hard Trilogy'. GamePro. No. 103. IDG. April 1997. p. 87.

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External links[edit]

• Die Hard Trilogy at MobyGames