Die Hard (1992) by Activision

Current Any% (Beginner) Leaderboard (speedrun.com)

I had never played NES Die Hard before I plunked down $100 USD to get my cart for the trials and play this challenge, which was honored (is that the right word?) by the AVGN in episode #28. I had no idea what to expect.

The last thing I expected was to get WR. Or to change the speedrun forever.

I came in with a general plan. I watched 9-VOLT’s run and emulated his strats and got within 10 seconds. I smelled blood. And then I had a plan: what if I used a different route to get the timer to run down quicker?  In Die Hard NES, the timer causes enemies to spawn in different areas of different floors.  I decided to try breaking glass and running over it intentionally, since having cut feet makes this timer go faster.  I named it the “stair timer trick manipulation glitch strat that I just named even though there’s no trick or manipulation or anything of the sort.” (1:23 in the vod lol)

I have no idea if that was a new concept to the game but the work paid off: I was able to WR in an hour of grinding! And this one felt special. Still does, even though the WR is now almost 35 seconds faster than my trials PB was (I’ve since gotten below the 2 minute mark, and may come back to it later on).

Die Hard is actually, in my opinion, a damned good game for what it was: an ambitious attempt to make a movie-based adult-oriented game that wasn’t a basic sidescroller. It plays more like Zelda with guns. You play in the building as John and you must kill all the terrorists and stop the building from blowing up… or something like that. LOL who does that? (I’m looking at you, Lucha!)

Nah, the speedrun uses a glitch to just end the game by blowing up the roof in a very specific manner. You first need to acquire a C4 brick and a detonator, and a key to the roof (modern strats use a gun to shoot the door down). Then you set up the trick and boom! Ez gm. This is a very addictive and fun speedrun, believe it or not. Enough RNG and strategy to make it fresh. A fast and easy run, you can do attempts of this in your freetime, and I highly recommend it! Underrated game, excellent speedrun!