Die Hard (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Activision's 1992 license-based action game for the NES, Die Hard.

0:00 The entire game played through on the advanced level with the best ending

24:00 Alternate endgame (if you go to the roof for the last time without the detonators)

27:24 Game over

Pack-in-Video's 8-bit adaptation of the 1988 Bruce Willis film is one of the more ambitious licensed tie-ins I've seen on the NES. As was the case with the company's prior movie-based games (like https://youtu.be/7B4w_MhfmnM), Die Hard represents an honest effort to faithfully represent the spirit of its IP.

You're John McClane, an off-duty, out-of-town cop who finds himself trapped at LA's Nakatomi Plaza tower amidst a terrorist lockdown on Christmas Eve. His wife and several other employees are being held hostage, and John has to foil the criminal plot and save the day.

John has to explore the tower, wiping out bad guys as he performs tasks that trigger major events from the movie. He needs to find a radio, get to the roof to call for help, smash the building's mainframe computer, and arm himself to the teeth as he works his way toward the 30th floor office where Hans is hiding.

The game plays out on a tight schedule - it's game over if the terrorists succeed in breaking into the vault and escaping with the loot - and you're kept apprised of the situation through a series of cutscenes that directly mirror the events of the film. Hans screams at his henchman for being idiots, Theo announces how many of the vault's locks he has managed to bore through, and Sgt. Powell chimes in to update you on enemy movements. The radio chatter between the terrorist grunts gives you a clear idea of what to focus on at any given point, but the game is fairly nonlinear, and it's up to you to decide how the story ultimately plays out. It'll take a fair number of tries to see all the possibilities.

I really liked it, but Die Hard is not an easy game to get into. The Pack-In-Video curse is in full effect here, and you really have to want to like it to get anything out of it. The game's structure is sound, but the execution is fairly rough. Encounters with enemies are tense, but the gunplay feels terrible, ammo is strictly limited, and the enemies' spray-and-pray tactics flood the screen with unavoidable shots. The foot health gauge is a creative touch that makes you carefully consider how to approach encounters, but it feels overly punitive: it depletes when you run or step on broken glass, and when it runs out, you slow waaaaay down. If that happens, you'll be left a sitting duck, and since you only get one life and no continues, you might as well just hit the reset button.

There is a rhythm to chaos, however, and the more you'll play, the better you'll understand how the game expects you to fight and juggle resources. The controls suck, yet they also help to sell the premise. It's not smart to take on three or four guys at once, but you can ambush goons as they exit elevators, stun them with flashbangs, lay C4 traps at chokepoints, and use the line-of-sight system to split up crowds. None of those things completely offset the game's inherently stiff and janky feel, nor can they excuse the ugly graphics, but they do come together to form something that's unexpectedly fresh and thoughtful. It all captures the feel of the film extraordinary well.

Die Hard is a frustrating and messy game, and it takes a while to get a sense of how the underlying systems work, but once the intended experience starts to shine through, it'll keep you coming back for more. The more I persevered, the more I enjoyed it.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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Дата на публикация: 26 декември, 2025
Категория: Игри
Ключови думи: die hard Playthrough nes