The Last Boss: White Fang

Now, when you think of a game based around Die Hard, you would think the last boss would be Hans Gruber. Not so in Sega’s Die Hard Arcade though, this time you get to beat White Fang (better known as ‘The last guy from Die Hard Arcade’) into unconsciousness with the Presidential golf clubs. This Die Hard also features killer death robots that shoot laser beams, and giant Mexican Wrestlers called ‘Jocko’ so that kinda sets the tone for things to come, really.

Getting back to White Fang though, despite looking like a retired shopping mall Santa Claus, he’s apparently a martial arts master or something like that (I skimmed through the manual once). Basically he’s just some spanner who held the Nakatomi Plaza at ransom and kidnapped the President’s Daughter. There was also some safe-cracking and gold bullion stealing in there somewhere too. I’m pretty sure at one stage he talks into a VHS Cassette as well.

So by now you may have gathered that this title is more ‘Hudson Hawk’ in terms of Bruce Willis movies rather than ‘Die Hard’, despite the name. So at first this boss seems kind of mundane, he’s just some beardy baldy fellow who’s trying to do several generic terrorist things. When you actually start fighting him though, things get a little more like you would expect.

Thought I was joking about the VHS Tape didn’t you?

We’ve already mentioned the brilliant touch of being able to beat this guy up with the President’s golf clubs, but there’s more! While fighting you, White Fang will hit a remote control button that causes furniture in the room to violently and dangerously re-arrange, knocking you off your feet. I can think of absolutely no practical reason to have this feature in any room whatsoever, which leads me to believe that this room was constructed solely with the purpose of one day hosting an epic fist fight. And that’s very cool. I would love to have seen the discussion with the builders for that one;
“Can we put some steel rails along the ground here, here and over there?”
“…We can, but I’m not sure why we wou-“
“I’m gonna put a huge oak desk on the rails then power it with a pneumatic blast to fly across the room at a lethal speed when this button is pressed!”
“…Oh God, that is so cool. Hey! We should make the couches do that too!”

If you can endure this Fang’s furniture of death and defeat him, in true arcade last boss fashion, he doesn’t call it quits just yet. With a second wind, he grabs the First Daughter and bolts towards the roof, where his helicopter is waiting to extract him. In Hot Pursuit, you chase him up only seconds later to find that he’s now removed his shirt and picked up an absolute shitload of swords. How he did all this in the space of a few seconds is just another mystery of White Fang.

Oh it is ON now…

In any event, this is the real last fight of the game, and you can tell he’s not mucking about anymore when he starts throwing a truly disgusting amount of swords all over the screen. Like, I’m talking this guy must be four-dimensional, because those blades just do not run out. Ever.  One very cool note about this fight is that the swords actually stick out of your character as you get hit by them, and with the amount of swords being chucked about, they can look like pin-cushions by the end of it. But they just keep on fighting back. Why? Because it’s Die Hard, that’s why. Yippee Kai-ay Motherf*cker.

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