After a good relationship with Nintendo for their SNES and Game Boy games, Bits studios put a ton of faith into the Nintendo 64, planning three massive games for the system: Riqa, Muzzle Velocity, and Thieves World, with the 64DD as a big focus. None of these games ended up releasing on the N64.

Riqa ended up being cancelled, but I’ll speak more on that in a later article. Thieves World was a stealth-focused game, with the plan of having no weapons. Bits couldn’t figure out the gameplay, so it was eventually rebooted as Rogue Ops, which came out on GameCube, PS2, and Xbox.

Muzzle Velocity was originally going to be a new IP, before getting a licence to use: Speed 2: Cruise Control. When that film was a flop, it then moved over to being a Die Hard game (although it’s interesting that Speed 2 was almost Die Hard 3). The plans of the game were originally colossal, with over 30 levels, before a new producer realised how large the task would be, and how long it would have taken.

The prototype offers a bunch of levels to roam around, but doesn’t really show much about what you would be doing within them. From the design of them, it looks to be a more objective-style game, with some free-roaming levels. There’s a really neat level inside a science museum, which features some moving displays, and the Nakatomi Plaza makes a return – although there’s no story in the prototype, these levels were adapted into the GameCube version (although the science museum is oddly less impressive in the final game).

There’s some test levels that let you play with more of the guns, which feel varied and fun to use. If you manage to get a headshot, you’ll also be treated to a slow-mo shot of the camera spinning around the bullet until it lands in the enemy’s head.

Die Hard 64 seems like it would have been a good FPS game, if they managed to make it in time on the N64. However, as time crept on, the N64 was the least attractive platform for publishers, so like Rogue Ops, it was rebooted into another game for the GameCube (and other platforms), Die Hard: Vendetta.

Fun

Should it be finished?

It sort of was, as Die Hard: Vendetta, but it would be interesting to see more of the original plans – especially when it was Muzzle Velocity, which involved a large world to patrol during a crisis.