Well well well, what do we have here? Die Hard for the Commodore 64. A game based on
one of the best Christmas movies of all time.
A movie based in a massive tower block with glass, guns, bullets and blood. It almost
doesn't sound like a Christmas movie at all. But lets see what the game's like, shall we?
Yes, it's been 31 years since this frightful night unfolded on Christmas eve 1988. But
thanks to heroes like Sgt. Al Powel and officer John McClane, justice and peace was brought
to us all to see in Christmas day.
Now, whether you think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie, or just a movie set around Christmas,
we can at least agree on the fact that as a movie, Die Hard features Christmas trees,
a Christmas party, Christmas hats... and messages, ice... well, glass, similar, a jolly bastard
in a shaft, a sack, or a van at least, that can conjour Ambulances out of thin air, and
dirty great explosions, just the way santa intended. So, all in all, it's a film, with
many festive elements.
What remains to be seen, is whether Die Hard, for the Commodore 64, developed and published
by Activation in 1990, has the same festive cheer. Given it was released in the summer
of 1990, I'm guessing they probably chucked the baby out with the bathwater on this one.
Look at that box art. There's nothing festive here. It doesn't even feature Bruce Willis.
This box art is based on the original Die Hard Poster. The one where they actually stripped
Bruce Willis out, because they were concerned no-one who know who he was at the time, or
in fact, even want to see a film, featuring a a small screen actor. Oh, how wrong they
were.
You can see that this is clearly the Commodore 64 version, not to be confused with the IBM
PC Compatible release, which although conceptually similar, is executed in a more fancy, three
dimensional implementation... and although for 1990, it's somewhat impressive, it's also
a pain to navigate. Probably why it didn't get the praise it arguably deserved.
The rear of the box shows us screen shots of both platforms, although the features proudly
sell the 3D environment of the "Nakatomi building", regardless of the platform.
Internally we get a 5.25" inch floppy, and a manual, again giving instructions for both
Commodore and PC formats. Look we even get a photo of the separate development teams.
Lovely stuff. There's also some copy protection across various pages, masquerading as a "Security
Panel Code", but we'll get to that as we play.
Now, I actually picked this game up on Christmas eve eve. I bought it on eBay, but astonishingly,
it turned out I knew the seller, and he was local. So I grabbed it, and here we are. Yes,
here we are with a floppy disk that doesn't work. But, I'm hardly surprised, the data
on floppies is falling to the data graveyard every day, and this one isn't exactly in tip
top condition. Luckily, I have a digital tape deck, so we can just download the cassette
ROM. THAT IS, if this game came out on cassette, which it didn't. BUT, even luckier, I can
borrow Stuart Ashen's fast loader and SD21EC and download the disk ROM. Now, this is probably
a good thing, because the load times of this game are notoriously bad, even on disk. You
can see why they didn't produce a cassette version.
Thankfully, the fast loader brings us to the title screen in no time at all, and we get
a splendid little intro, giving us a very cut down introduction to the film, before
blasting onto a title screen featuring, errrr, John McClain? I think? Looks more like Gary
Glitter to me.
Anyway, armed with a Konix Speedking. Let's get cracking.
Now, unlike the pseudo 3D PC release, the C64 version is a side scroller, and in many
ways, this works a lot better. We begin in a room on the 32nd floor of Nakatomi Plaza,
and our job is to navigate through the rooms, kill all the terrorists and get to the roof.
Now, if you *ahem*, happen to have a cheat that gives you infinite ammo and life, then
this is a pretty easy task. If you don't, then it's a little different. You have a gun,
but it only has 8 bullets. You can kick, punch and block, by pressing the trigger at the
same time as a joystick direction, but it's pretty difficult to come out of this without
losing at least a quarter of your health... and there's no shortage of these terrorists.
In fact, there's 8 to take down. Some you have to, in order to obtain items such as
a Key, Walkie Talkie, or even perhaps, cigarettes. Whilst others will get in your way, so you
can either deal with them or try and run.
In this sense, it conveys the feel of the movie pretty well. You're a bad ass cop, but
you're not indestructible, like perhaps, if Arnie or Stallone were playing the role.
As you roam corridors and rooms, you can check your location on the occasional wall maps,
and trust me, you'll need to, because it's easy to lose your bearings in this place.
Every time you go up a corridor, the camera rotates 90 degrees, at least in an overall
perspective sense, which can be a little off putting to begin with. Once you get used to
it, it's not too bad.
Now there are a couple of ways to get through this game. First, you can cheat, like me,
and take out this guy, get the key, go to the security room, disarm the computer, using
the corresponding code in the manual, exit the security door at the top, then firehose
down to the trashed hall, shoot this guy with an uzi repeatedly.... keep going. Keep shooting
him. And some more..... Then this guy, then blow Hanz Gruber out of the window, where
upon you get this sweep digitised animation, and comedy falling sound.
ORRRRRRRR. You can do it how they tell you to do it in the manual. Which is slightly
longer, and more faithful to the film.
Incidentally, you can access your inventory using the left and right arrows on the keyboard,
and choose what you need to choose. It's quite a useful and easy to navigate system.
Here, you need to collect the walkie talkie, cord, can of beans (for sustenance), extra
bullets, lighter and cigarettes from floor 32. Then go up to the roof as normal, but
rather than jumping down on the fire hose, instead, take a stroll around the corner.
Take out some more terrorists, grab an uzi, then go through this massive rotating fan,
run from some more terrorists. Although, they're not actually terrorists are they, I'm just
going to call them criminals from now on. Anyway, grab the nitro glycerine, get down
to level 33, and get the detonator, watch some more scenes of the film, patch yourself
up with a medikit.
Incidentally, whilst this is going on, there's a constant count-down in operation, and the
story evolves bit by bit. So you've gotta be quick.
Anyway, drop the bomb down the elevator. Blow up some of the building. Walk through some
glass. You know, there's a lot of detail here, you can see they enjoyed the film. It's also
nice how criminals without guns with just walk away from you rapidly, if you happen
to point an uzi at them.
Back through the vents John, see a helicopter, apparently, from the vents. Then Karl appears,
who takes your weapons, and knocks you about pretty badly. Take him out, and you can get
your uzis back. Go back to the roof, see the helicopter again, but this time, flying from
side to side like a Space Invader.
THEN. THEN we can jump down using the fire hose. It's clear this is a deadly distraction
for first time players, who without cheat, would jump down and then get uzied to death.
But now, with the roof bomb timer ticking, there's no hard ass uzi guy to face. Just
fireballs falling from the roof, and finally Hanz, with Mrs. McClaine.
Shoot him, and we get the same end scene.
Bloody hell. Personally I prefer the way I did it. But it's nice to have options.
And that's it. That's the end of Die Hard. Not even a Christmas tree in sight.
I imagine if there were, then Zzap magazine, issue 63, would have scored it higher than
70%.
But it's a decent game never the less. OK, it might not be up to the standards of Die
Hard arcade on the Playstation, but it's a bloomin' Commodore 64.
In fact, I prefer it to the NES version, which was published the same year by Activision,
but which is a very different beast, and pretty damn hard. Still, they both work better with
the cheats on.
Yippee KayAyy Mother f*ckr!
So. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas period/holiday, whatever you celebrate. I
hope to see you again after Christmas. Don't feel obliged, but it would be nice anyway.
In the mean time, thanks for watching and, have a great evening!