Die hard arcade

Die Hard Arcade is made in the genre of beating them all ^[1] . According to the plot, the main characters of the game, John McClain and Chris Thompson (Bruno Delinger and Cindy Holiday in the Japanese version), plan to save the president’s daughter Carolyn Powell from the terrorists ^[5] . The player goes through the levels alone or together , colliding with enemies along the way. Opponents can be attacked with both arms and legs, and with the help of weapons found and picked up after the battles, or first-aid kits for health ^[1] . However, all collected equipment (except for the pistol) at the beginning of each level disappears, and the player has to collect everything in a new way ^[6] . When the character moves around the rooms, a small screen saver is displayed on the screen that uses the interactive Quick Time Event system : for a certain period of time, the player must press the key combination shown on the screen to defeat the enemy or avoid injuries ^[4] . If QTE is not fulfilled, the hero’s health bar decreases.

At the end of each level, boss battles take place: it can be the biker Hog, the Mexican wrestler Joko, the twin brothers Axis and Tubbs, the Spiderbots robots, and the Hong White Wolf fang. Although there are several endings in the game, the final boss will always be Wolf Hongo, and it is with him that the player will fight on the roof of a skyscraper ^[5] .

The version of the game for Sega Saturn and PlayStation 2 includes an old arcade game , in which you need to destroy submarines and get extra lives for it ^{[5] [6]} . On other platforms, the player is given only three lives to pass, and in case of loss, the game starts anew.

Die Hard Arcade received positive reviews from critics. The average rating compiled by the Game Rankings website is 82% for Sega Saturn ^[8] . The version for arcade machines on the Allgame website was rated at four and a half stars out of five possible ^[1] . The project was primarily praised for the gameplay, although critics compared it with various games from Sega . For example, a browser from The Video Game Critic compared Die Hard Arcade in terms of battles with the Streets of Rage series, the presence of weapons with Virtua Cop . In addition to borrowing, long downloads and the absence of any system of passing marks were given as shortcomings. However, despite the flaws, the critic was satisfied with the game, and praised her for the wide variety of weapons and the developers' sense of humor ^[6] . GameSpot's Glenn Rubinstein in his review found similarities between the project and Virtua Fighter , Final Fight and Double Dragon , however, like his colleague from The Video Game Critic, he did not consider these borrowings to be the main drawback. According to him, “ Die Hard Arcade has no depth of fighting game, but it offers us a lot of action” ^[5] . Shaw Sakenheim from Allgame as a minus of the game led a short passage of levels ^[2] . According to a reviewer from The Video Game Critic, the Deep Scan mini-game “is probably the slowest arcade game ever made, but still it's fun” ^[6] .

Basically, the journalists responded positively about the graphics and the visual component of the game. Rubinstein praised the realistic animation of characters and musical accompaniment, but criticized the dubbing and sound effects ^[5] . A completely opposite opinion was left by a representative of the Shin Force website. He, unlike his colleague from GameSpot, praised the sound effects, but left a discreet response to the graphics, the quality of which, according to the observer, looks “above average” ^[4] . Sakenheim said that textures could be better, and yet they are not bad, but they can not be called innovative. He praised the developers for creating high-quality animation and character design, but spoke negatively about low-poly models ^[2] .

• Official site (Japanese)
• Die Hard Arcade on Sega Retro