Unreleased game Die Hard 64 by Bits Studios discovered

I really wasn’t expecting this to happen – a Die Hard 64 game for the Nintendo 64 that has never seen the public eye? That’s really out there. Most games that involve a popular license and have gone this far usually see a release one way or the other. The game by Fox Interactive was stuck in development purgatory for a long enough time to never see the light of day so it has been kept in obscurity up until now.

This isn’t a port of the 1996/7 game for the PS1 and Sega Saturn; that was a 3rd person shooter. This one for the Nintendo 64 is a 1stperson game and completely original. On the onset, you can see how incomplete the game looks. There’s barely enemies, the graphics are rather basic and the level is mostly empty. However, they seem to have nailed the engine in terms of responding to user input and just the game in general. It just needs some polish.

It does seem to take some inspiration from 007 Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, as the level shown in the footage is reminiscent of the second level ‘facility’. A picture is worth a thousand words, so have a look and see for yourself:

I for one would like to hear a bit more of the story behind this. Why was the game never completed? Even games like Superman 64 that were in development hell finally got a full cartridge release. The only other game that FA released for the N64 was Fox Sports College Hoops ’99, so this is their first game outside of that genre. The person who released the video on Assembler Games was an employee of the company at the time and released the 9 levels across three separate ROMs. I can’t find the thread but it would be great to be able to find out more about this incomplete game.