In October 2023, Dan the Man Classic was added to the (at the time limited) Halfbrick+ games library, offering the definitive Dan the Man experience complete with automatic premium and making all other in-app purchases obtainable by other means. Fright Zone is finally available with regular progression, unlocking alongside Frosty Plains after beating Normal Story. Adventure levels also now no longer have a timer, with levels simply unlocking when the previous one is completed on easy difficulty. Most importantly of all, story levels no longer have timers, which for the first time since the release of version 1.1.6 in July 2017 allows us to have a run of Dan the Man starting from a fresh save file with no need to watch minutes of ads just to play the game.

As of right now, the Dan the Man Classic leaderboards are live. There are 8 subcategories, with differing objectives but the same broad set of rules: they must be done from a fresh save file (the run must start on the initial character select screen), they are timed with LRT (real time without loads), and you are not allowed to go to the special events tab or unlock Barry by any means. The categories are (with time estimates from very rudimentary testing):

• Any%: beat 8-4-3 on normal difficulty (~45 minutes lrt, 50 rta)
• Any% Hard: beat 8-4-3 on hard difficulty (~1 hour 40 minutes lrt, 1:50 rta)
• Free Lincoln: beat Free Lincoln! in Adventure mode on easy difficulty, Shark Adventure optional (~35 minutes lrt, 50 rta)
• 38 Achievements: get every achievement except for Dude, Where's My Jetpack? (~2 hours lrt, 2:40 rta)
• All Campaigns: beat 8-4-3 on hard difficulty, as well as Frosty Plains 2-3 and Fright Zone 2-2 (2 hours 20 minutes lrt, 2:40 rta)
• All Trophies: get all 34 gold trophies in Adventure mode (~2 hours lrt, 2:45 rta)
• All Stars: get all 263 stars: 15 from Prologue, 96 from normal story, 96 from hard story, 30 from Frosty Plains, and 26 from Fright Zone (~5 hours 10 minutes lrt, 5:30 rta)
• 100% Minus Costumes: get all stars, get all trophies, upgrade every weapon and character other than Barry to maximum level, unlock survival hard, and get all achievements other than Dude, Where's My Jetpack? (~7 hours 45 minutes lrt, 9 hours rta)

As an aside, while it is technically possible to also get all the non-event costumes in one sitting to make a 100% run, this would require over 12 hours of in-game time just to grind enough coins to buy them all and tokens to unlock them all. Given that 100% Minus Costumes is already expected to be a just under 8 hour run, this would more than double the RTA time making the majority of the run the mind-numbing task of coin grinding, so we will not be including this as a leaderboard. If you for some reason do want to try that anyway (I seriously do not recommend that you do), then you will probably have to allow closing the game during vortex shops because otherwise the token grind for the Prize Machine costumes requires excessive amounts of time travel. Point being, 100% Minus Costumes is as close to a true 100% run as you are going to get from our leaderboards.

For people lacking a Halfbrick+ subscription, the game does offer a 1 hour (real time) free trial, which happens to be enough time to complete either Any% or Free Lincoln. You can restart your free trial at any point by just uninstalling and reinstalling the game, giving you a fresh save file again and an hour to do what you will with it. For android users, I have posted a link to an older version of Dan the Man Classic that doesn't require a subscription in the first place, which you can find in the resources section of our leaderboards.

Happy running everyone!