Die Hard Trilogy is an action video game developed by Probe Entertainment and published by Fox Interactive in North America and distributed by Electronic Arts in Europe for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows.
The game is based on the first three installments of the Die Hard series of action movies, with each film entry being represented through a different gameplay genre.
[5] In Die Hard with a Vengeance, the player goes on a joyride driving a taxicab, sports car, and dump truck throughout all of New York City and is tasked with finding and defusing several explosives before they can go off.
[7] Fox Interactive exerted little creative control over the project, allowing the Probe team to be unrestrained and improvisational in their designs.
For the Die Hard with a Vengeance segment, the team had wanted to use an authentic recreation of New York City, but found that when driving at 200 miles per hour, an accurate model of NYC felt too small and confining.
[10][11][13][15] GamePro presented a dissenting opinion; while they highly praised the game's addictive quality and sound effects, they argued that the three segments are ultimately just rehashes of (respectively) Resident Evil, Virtua Cop, and Twisted Metal.
[23] The most common criticism was that the Die Harder segment requires the Konami light gun to be enjoyable, since the cursor when using the standard controller is slow and difficult to move.
[11][14][13] Die Hard Trilogy was a finalist for the Computer Game Developers Conference's 1996 "Best Adaptation of Linear Media" Spotlight Award,[24] but lost the prize to I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
[27] Josh Smith stated in GameSpot that the sluggish controls and poor graphics, especially as compared to the PlayStation version, make the first two segments of the game nearly unplayable, since lining up shots in time is awkward and frustrating.
[citation needed] On the Sega Saturn port of Die Hard Trilogy, the game will crash after displaying the copyright message if there is a cartridge inserted.