Speed Demos Archive - Rayman 2: The Great Escape

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Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank everyone who has posted Rayman 2 timesavers and glitches over the years. Without their help, this run wouldn't be anywhere near as fast.

Thanks to the SDA staff for keeping this great site going.

Introduction

It's been a long road to sub-2. I started running Rayman 2 in 2007 and finished an any% single-segment run the next year in 2:17:25. The run was pretty clean and I didn't see a whole lot of room for improvement. Even the nearby 2:15 mark seemed impossible to reach; the thought of breaking two hours never crossed my mind. After speed running other games for a while, I returned to Rayman 2 in 2013 to run 100% single-segment. Around this time, I and many other players found all kinds of glitches and strategies to shave off seconds and, in some cases, minutes from the length of the game. Though I was focused on 100%, I did a few casual any% runs just to see what kind of times were possible with the new discoveries. I completed a 2:11:42 in November 2013 and a 2:06:32 in August 2014. With my old 2:17:25 run beaten by a large margin, we wondered how low the time could go, and we even dared to speak of sub-2. But it still seemed like a distant dream that might never become reality.

After a two-year hiatus, I resumed work on my 100% run in March 2017. I had a new goal: to achieve the ultimate duofecta of sub-2:30 100% and sub-2 any%. I didn't know how to do it; I just knew I had to do it. After a few months of intense work on breaking 2:30 100%, I had found the right strategies to get the job done, which I did in December 2017. Completing my 2:29:47 took a huge weight off my shoulders, and I celebrated by taking a break for a while and playing other games. But my task was only half complete. In mid-2018, I started working on any%.

To get past the final lum checkpoint, you need 550 out of 856 available lums (the remainder of the 1000 total lums are after the final checkpoint). 100 lums are in the two optional levels, which are far too slow for any%, so that leaves 756 to choose from. When I did my any% run in 2008, my approach to selecting which 550 lums to collect wasn't very scientific. "These lums seem fast; I'll get them. Those lums seem slow; I won't get them." As a result, I made some suboptimal choices. This time around, I was more careful. While there are quite a few lums that are obviously fast enough to pick up (because there's only one path through an area and the lums are on it) or obviously slow enough to ignore (because they're too far off the path), the choice for many other lums isn't so clear. To create a lum route, I looked at every one of the 756 available lums. If the choice of whether to include it in my route wasn't obvious, I attempted to time how long it would take to pick it up. Timing the lums this way isn't as simple as it might sound. In a room with multiple lums, picking up one lum affects how long it takes to get the others, since some lums are close to each other and some are far apart. As a result, I can't consider the lums individually; I have to take into account the different possible combinations of lums. For example, if a room has five lums, A through E, I might get A, B, and C, or I might get just C, or I might get B, D, and E, and so on. It was a long and often tedious process, but it paid off; by knowing which lums were the fastest, I was able to create a much more refined lum route than the one I used in 2008.

Improving my lum choices would only get me partway to sub-2, though. The many glitches and strategies found since 2013 accounted for the majority of the time saved. For each trick that I considered adding to the run, I had to weigh the amount of time it saved versus its difficulty and the cost of getting it wrong. A player who naively tries to include every trick known to man in a single run will quickly find the task futile; there are simply too many difficult tricks for a runner to get them all right in one run. On the other hand, nobody wants to leave big timesavers on the table when they could be used to bring the time down further. For the most part, this run uses the same glitches as my 100% run, but there are a few that are exclusive to each run. Any% ended up being more glitch-heavy, with a few any%-only glitches that can easily kill the run:

Cave of Bad Dreams boss skip: If done correctly, this trick saves about a minute. However, each failed attempt costs a whopping 30 seconds, so if I don't get it on my first try, the run suffers quite a bit.
Sanctuary of Stone and Fire miniboss skip: Failed attempts at this trick don't cost much, but it's the type of trick you can try over and over again without making any progress. This trick was also in my 2:17:25 run from 2008 and was probably the hardest trick in that run.
Sanctuary of Stone and Fire orb skip: Another trick where it's easy to spin your wheels. Since this trick involves a damage boost, you can only try a certain number of times before running out of health and dying, at which point the run would be irredeemable.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the decisions I made about which tricks to include. Getting them all right in a single run was frustrating, but not infeasible.

Level-by-Level Comments

Below are some level-by-level comments. I won't describe all the little tricks I use, so for the most complete documentation, see the SDA Strategy Wiki. I decided not to do audio commentary this time around since it takes a long time to make and it would probably end up very similar to the commentary for my 100% run.

I copied and pasted a few things from my 100% comments where the same description applies to both runs.

Main Menu

Before starting the game, I change the graphics settings to low resolution, maximum sharpness. This makes the game less laggy, which makes both gameplay and cutscenes quite a bit faster; I'd estimate that it saves roughly five minutes over the course of the run. This is a very easy timesaver that I simply never thought to try when I did my any% run in 2008. I also change the language to Italian, which makes the cutscenes faster. I always had it in the back of my mind that a language other than English might be faster, but in order to see which one was best, I had to go through the painstaking process of timing every cutscene in every language. In the end, Italian turned out to be 3.3 seconds faster than English. It's not much, but every little bit helps.

Escape

You can go faster in sliding sections like this by jumping, which I do here.

The Woods of Light

At the beginning of this level, you can skip the Murfy text if you jump just as you land in the trigger zone for the text. This trick, called trigger hopping, can be tough to do, and I didn't get it this time. It only saves a few seconds, though. A bigger timesaver is later in the level, where I jump past the Globox babies to skip a cutscene. Whereas I used a trigger hop to skip this cutscene in my 2008 run, this time around I opted to land outside the trigger zone, then jump over it. The new method is slightly slower, but it's more consistent, which is important when there are so many tough tricks in the run.

The Fairy Glade

In the first room, I use a large timesaver that involves a trick called airswimming. By holding L as you fall on certain corners, you can walk underwater. Then, if you jump up and helicopter right at the surface of the water, you will start swimming in midair, allowing you to skip some of the rooms in this area. It can be tricky to start walking underwater, but I got it very quickly here.

Later on, in the area with a few pirates, I skipped a Murfy text by trigger hopping. I don't manage to skip this text very often, so it was nice to save a few seconds here. In the machine room (where you save Ly), you need to throw the barrels vertically to prevent them from being destroyed by the enemies, but because vertical throws take a while, you want to do as few as possible. I did three vertical throws, which I think is the minimum. The rest of the level went well.

The Marshes of Awakening

Crouching during the waterskiing sections speeds you up, so I crouch most of the time. I stand back up when I need to turn.

The level went smoothly for the most part, but one mistake is worth pointing out. Near the end of the level, there's a big rock with three lums behind it. I think you're supposed to jump on the rock and bounce into the lums, but I've never been consistent with that method, so for 100%, I invented a different technique that I call the rock jump. I move left to right, barely avoiding the rock, then jump. Unfortunately, my timing was off and I missed one of the lums. But the nice thing about any% is that missing a lum is okay; you just have to get another lum later on to make up for it, which costs about 2 seconds. In 100%, missing a lum here would cost about 25 seconds, since I would need to death warp to the start of the room and play through it again.

The Bayou

Everything went well in this fairly easy level. The trickiest part is the last room. After breaking the Teensy's cage with a well-aimed shot, you have a certain amount of time to make it to the top of the room before the Teensy does; take too long and he'll be standing around waiting for you, which costs time. I messed this part up in my 100% run, but I found a better strategy and got it right this time.

The Sanctuary of Water and Ice

After collecting some lums, I use another airswim to get past the large door, which saves lots of time. This airswim is much harder than the one in the Fairy Glade and killed quite a few 100% run attempts. But by the time I started working on any%, I had it down pretty well, so I didn't lose many any% runs here. There's another way to get past the door that involves clipping through a wall and floating past the door, but I've never been able to do that method consistently enough to include it in a run.

The rest of the level went well. In the sliding section, I land sideways after jumping because it seems to preserve your speed better.

The Menhir Hills (part 1)

Another easy level with no notable mistakes.

The Cave of Bad Dreams

One of my favorite tricks is in the Hall of Doors right before the Cave of Bad Dreams. By moving the selection lum back and forth, you can make Rayman run across the bridge, delaying him. This allows you to get the selection lum far enough ahead that you can skip jumping on the lilypads.

The Cave of Bad Dreams is by far the hardest level in the run. Most of the difficulty comes from a glitch I use to skip the boss battle, but before I get there, there are plenty of other tough sections. In the miniboss fight, the positions of the enemies are random. If you're lucky, they'll spawn in such a way that you can fight two at once by shooting at them alternately. In this run, I had no such luck and was only able to fight one at a time. Also, one of them retreated underground for a few seconds, slowing the fight down some more.

On my way to the orange orb, I use another cool timesaver. After entering the trigger zone for the first of two moving platforms, I stand still for a few seconds. At this time, the first platform is moving, but the second platform isn't. When I get to the first platform, it's ready to leave, so I don't have to wait for it. If I hadn't stood still earlier, I would've had to stand still waiting for the first platform to move anyway, but I would have been inside the trigger zone for the second platform while I did, causing me to miss the second platform's first cycle. Thus, by standing still before activating the second platform, I can get to it on its first cycle.

The orbs are pretty annoying. If you're not careful about where you walk, the camera can get into very inconvenient positions, making it easy to throw the orbs the wrong way. With the orange orb, I take a moment to go into first-person mode and aim my next throw carefully in order to avoid a run-ending glitch where the orb falls and respawns endlessly. Throwing the orbs onto the pedestals is also a pain; the orange orb likes to auto-aim at the blue pedestal, which wastes time. Fortunately, my orb handling was textbook in this run.

I use a glitch to skip the boss battle. I need to die for the glitch to work, so I fall into the thorns deliberately. Then, I need to lure one of the skulls to a position close enough to the end of the level. Finally, I grab the edge of the skull at the same time the skull is disappearing. This warps me directly above the skull. From there, I can float to the end of the level. The timing for grabbing the skull is quite precise. To grab it at the right time, I wait until the skull starts shaking (indicating that it will disappear soon), then do two short hops and one full jump. This method is the most consistent one I've found after a lot of experimentation, but it still only works a fraction of the time. If I get it wrong, I lose 30 seconds, which deals a serious blow to the run. I've lost many good runs to this trick, but since it saves a minute, it's definitely worth doing.

After getting the Life Potion, I use a strange glitch to get back to the portal a little faster. If you hold up on the control stick throughout the entire cutscene, you'll fall through the floor afterward.

The Menhir Hills (part 2)

This level went fine until the last room. I let a walking shell see me, then got some lums in a cage. While I was getting the lums in the cage, the walking shell was running toward me, tiring itself out. I intended to drop down near the shell, but I landed on the shell instead, which destroyed it. So, I had to wait for another shell.

The Canopy

Another tough level. I use quite a few time-saving tricks here. First, after freeing Globox, I fire shots at the pole and knock it down from the wrong side. Sometimes the pole doesn't fall down even if it looks like your shots are going the right way, but I knocked it down quickly this time.

After I get the shot upgrade, I use a damage boost to get over the laser fence and skip fighting the pirate. It's possible to use a damage boost from the ship's cannonballs, but it's pretty tough and I didn't get it right this time. So, I used a damage boost from the pirate instead. Fortunately, I got it right on my first try.

If you skip destroying the laser fence, Globox does not follow you to the next room, so you are forced to skip hiding in the bush. I do so by taking advantage of the way the door works. Once it starts opening, it won't start closing until it is all the way open. So, once the door is closed, I back up to make it start opening, then immediately run forward to get through it before it closes again. This trick may not look hard, but the timing is pretty tight. It took me a few tries, but that's not terrible. After getting through the door and breaking the cage, I leave the room momentarily to unload the Teensy. This causes the portal to appear immediately, so I don't have to wait for the Teensy to open it. However, I have to be careful when I'm leaving the room because the door can close behind me. To avoid getting locked out, I manipulate the opening and closing of the door the same way I did to get through it in the first place.

Whale Bay

Although this level is pretty easy, I do use several tricks. At the beginning, I fire a well-placed shot at a switch to skip swimming through the first underwater area. It's easy to get zapped by the pirate and lose a few seconds while doing this trick, but I avoided his attack. Shortly thereafter, another well-placed shot allows me to skip some jumping and climbing. Then, after the first screen fade, I clip through a tree to get out of bounds. I had a little trouble getting through the tree. Once I'm out of bounds, I shoot a switch to disable the lasers, then walk underwater to the end of the area.

The Sanctuary of Stone and Fire

A hard level with a few tough tricks in it. I skip the miniboss by using a trick called wall jumping, which lets you jump a little higher than usual. Before the jump, I pause and change the graphics to high resolution, which causes more lag and makes the trick easier. The trick can be a big time-waster; sometimes I just keep jumping at the wall over and over again without getting up. This time, I was fortunate enough to get up almost immediately. After the trick, I switch back to low resolution to reduce lag.

After the orange orb room, I knocked the plum toward me and tried to fall onto it. Sadly, Rayman didn't want to land on the plum, preferring to take a swim in the lava at the cost of 15 seconds. This is one of those things that goes right 999 times of out 1000, and the 1000th time just happened to be during this run. Even simple parts of the game are never 100% consistent.

In the Umber room, I use a damage boost from the shadow fuzzballs to reach the upper level. The timing can be tricky and the fuzzballs sometimes don't cooperate, but I pulled the trick off perfectly here, which was a relief after I messed up landing on the plum a moment before. Once I'm on the upper level, I stand on top of one of the tallest platforms to activate an invisible checkpoint, then throw the blue orb onto the pedestal. Because you typically can't access the blue orb without placing the orange orb, the game only requires the blue orb. So, as soon as the blue orb is in place, Umber starts moving (though the cutscene doesn't play properly). Since I activated the invisible checkpoint, I can death warp to the upper level, then float over to Umber.

Although the death in the plum hallway was ugly, I largely compensated for it with near-perfect execution of the glitches, so the level was actually pretty decent overall.

The Echoing Caves

At the beginning of the level, I switch to high resolution to increase lag, then clip through the door to skip the entire first area and save a few minutes. I was fortunate to get through the door so quickly; this trick can take a while and it even cost me sub-2 once.

I had a little trouble with one of the cages, but other than that, the rest of the level was fine. In the last room, I death warp after freeing the Teensy to make the portal appear immediately. This trick is similar to the one I use in the Canopy.

The Precipice

In the comments for my 2008 run, I said this was the hardest level in the game. But the level has gotten much easier for me with practice and the many tricks found in the other levels have made them harder, so this is now one of the easier levels. I stumbled a bit while climbing up the tower, but the level as a whole went fine. At the top of the tower, I went a little out of my way to grab a lum. I grabbed this lum to make up for the one I missed in the Marshes of Awakening.

The Top of the World

Another easy level. Every time you kill one of the barrel pirates, there's a text that takes a couple seconds, so I don't kill any of them. After freeing the Teensy, I use the same handy trick I used in the Echoing Caves: death warp to make the portal appear immediately.

The Sanctuary of Rock and Lava

There are a few nice timesavers in this level. By carefully bouncing shots off of walls, I break the first two cages faster than usual. Afterward, in the moving platform section, I make the platform start moving, then collect the lums while it's moving. The platform moves slowly enough that you have to wait for it no matter what, so it makes sense to use some of that time to collect lums rather than going out of your way to collect them before activating the platform.

I pause partway through the level, since I can only fit two hours of footage on a DVD at standard recording quality. Although I use a DVD recorder with a hard drive and can thus record the whole run as one video, I have to split the video up to transfer it to my computer, so I pause rather than having a split during gameplay.

Beneath the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava

In the first part of the level, I'm careful to keep my golden fists so that I can break the floor in one hit. The level as a whole is pretty easy and went well. During the mask cutscene, I briefly paused to check my lum count. I had 524, which is what I expected. If I'm missing a lum, I need to know so I can get an extra one in Tomb of the Ancients, which is the last level before the final lum checkpoint.

Tomb of the Ancients

In the part near the beginning where the spider is chasing me, I run forward for a while, then turn around and run back. Running forward to a certain point registers the switch in the room as a target for your fist, which allows you to shoot it without dropping into the pit. Later, in the room with three sunken platforms, I use a damage boost to cross a gap, which lets me skip raising the middle platform. It's possible to clear the gap without a damage boost, but it's quite a bit harder. This harder technique was known when I did my 2008 run, but I decided not to use it. Since then, it was discovered that shooting after taking a hit in midair lets you regain control of Rayman immediately, which lets you get across this gap pretty easily. You can use the same technique to get over the third gap in the room without raising the platform, but since it's much harder there and saves less time, I don't do it.

In the Clark battle, if you miss a shot or take a hit from Clark, it can throw off the timing of the switches and cost quite a bit of time. But the battle went very well in this run.

The Iron Mountains

This is one of the hardest levels in the run and is probably the most frustrating, since it's near the end of the game and you can lose a lot of time from factors that are difficult to control.

In the laser room near the beginning, I shoot a switch to disable one of the electric fences, then fall through a gap in the remaining fence. This trick might look tough, but it's actually pretty easy. The pirates in the next few rooms are dangerous because some of them can give you a game over in one hit with their drill attacks. Also, I want to avoid taking too many hits so that I can preserve my golden fists for the Prison Ship. I only took one hit, which is good.

The biggest mistake of the run came at the end of the walking shell section. You have to jump to a metal platform, then jump from there to the exit. The problem is that when you're on the metal platform, sometimes the walking shell will explode and kill you for no apparent reason. I've spent many hours practicing this jump and have yet to find a consistent way to avoid dying. This unpredictable explosion cost me sub-2:30 once or twice when I was working on 100%, and now it cost me 27 seconds in any%. Rayman 2 is a cruel mistress.

The rest of the level is easy and went well. Saving the babies is boring, but you still have to pay attention; if you bump against the wall too much, the ship will explode. I don't think I've ever done that in a run, though.

The Prison Ship

In 100%, the sliding section is very dangerous because it's so easy to miss a lum. But in any%, I've already passed the final lum checkpoint, so I can just ignore all the lums and go straight to the end. You can save a little time by jumping to speed up, but it makes Rayman more difficult to control. I would rather not take the risk of dying so late in the run, so I don't jump much.

Keeping the golden fist until the pirate battle helps me kill him faster. I lost some time because the pirate decided to jump to inconvenient positions, but the battle wasn't bad. After killing him, I take damage from his flame attack, which lets me skip the "Yeah" text that normally plays. Overall, the level was pretty clean.

The Crow's Nest

At the beginning of Razorbeard's first form, I hold right so that I can land the first hit quickly. The rest of the first form was a little bit slow; sometimes he shoots the bombs at you faster, but I'm not sure why. In the second form, I take advantage of an easter egg: hold A and B while flying into the circle at the top of the arena and you'll enter a secret tunnel. Once you're through the tunnel, you'll have infinite ammo, which saves time. It's possible to finish the second form in one fewer cycle by dealing extra damage to Razorbeard while he's in the lava, but I haven't found a consistent way to do it.

Final time: 1:59:37

I'm very satisfied with how the run turned out. There were mistakes, of course, but for every part that went wrong, there were many tough parts that went right. Overall, the run is somewhat less optimized than my 2:29:47 100% run; the 2-hour mark in any% has a little more room for error than the 2:30 mark in 100%. Sub-1:59 is well within the realm of possibility and I haven't ruled out trying for it some day, but for now, there are plenty of other games I'd like to play.

Thanks for watching the run. Let me know what you think of it. To learn more about Rayman 2 glitches and strategies, check out the SDA Strategy Wiki.

This run has audio commentary. Switch to audio track 2 in your media player to listen to it. In the commentary, I discuss the strategies and glitches I use as well as some of the pitfalls that must be avoided.

I'd like to thank everyone who has posted Rayman 2 timesavers and glitches over the years. Without their help, this run wouldn't be anywhere near as fast.

Thanks to the SDA staff for keeping this great site going.

I started running Rayman 2 all the way back in 2007. At the time, I was working on a single-segment any% run. When I finished in 2008 (with a time of 2:17:25), I felt pretty burned out on the game and didn't expect to run it again. I moved on to speed runs, glitch hunting, and "superplays" of other games, including Donkey Kong 64, Gotcha Force, and GoldenEye. Over time, though, I felt increasingly drawn to Rayman 2 again. When it came time to find another gaming project, I decided I wanted to take on a harder run than I had done before, and Rayman 2 100% single-segment felt like the natural choice. I began working on it in 2013.

In the comments for my 2008 run, I cautioned future players to do a 100% run in segments, since it is so easy to miss a lum. When I wrote that warning, I had a few key parts of the game in mind:

The Iron Mountains walking shell section
The Prison Ship sliding section
To a lesser extent, the jump over the rock in the Marshes of Awakening

These parts of the game all involve difficult lums, and the former two are near the end of the game. I knew that if I couldn't find reasonably consistent strategies for all three of these critical areas, the project would be dead in the water. So, early on, I focused heavily on these areas, trying many different strategies and practicing over and over again. Even though all three remained among the trickiest parts of the run and I never stopped practicing them, I was able to get them down to a reasonable level of difficulty, and I'm glad I focused on them early in the process of running the game. The Prison Ship sliding section, which I feared would make the category nearly unrunnable, turned out to be quite manageable, and I didn't lose many good runs there. I was less consistent with the rock jump, as I call it, in the Marshes of Awakening, but because it's not too far into the game, messing up there isn't a huge loss. The walking shell section in the Iron Mountains was the toughest of the three and remained my nemesis from the day I started running the category to the day I finished. It killed multiple great run attempts, including a few that were on track for sub-2:30, so conquering it in this run was immensely satisfying. I'll discuss all three of these sections in more detail in the level-by-level comments below.

As I worked on the run, I set goal times for myself by saying, "If I get sub-2:xx, I'll submit the run." But xx kept getting lower, either because new timesavers were found or because I just wanted to go faster. I and a few others were actively making discoveries, so I didn't want to spend too much time optimizing my execution when my strategies would soon become obsolete. For this reason, I didn't do many run attempts for the first year or so after I started the project. However, by 2015, I was doing attempts fairly often. In February, I had a goal of sub-2:33 in mind.

Unfortunately, around that time, real-life obligations prevented me from playing the game for a few months. Inertia set in, and the idea of picking up the run again seemed daunting. I had done all my previous speed runs during the summer while I was out of school, and speed running wasn't so easy now that I was working full time. Add to that the fact that this run was much harder than my previous runs, and I wondered how I would ever be able to do it. It wasn't just the total amount of time needed to complete the run that bothered me; it was also the percentage of my time that would be required. Many parts of the game are demanding in 100%, and in order to do them well, I needed to practice regularly. Run attempts also take a lot of time. Considering those two factors, spending a few hours a week on the game just wasn't going to cut it. I felt guilty for not working on the run, but I couldn't see a way to make progress. Finally, in March 2017, I got my priorities straight. I started playing again, putting aside as many other things as possible. In order to accomplish my goal of finishing this run, less important goals had to be sacrificed. A man who chases two rabbits will catch neither.

When I came back to the game, I learned that many new tricks had been discovered while I was away. Although I wasn't sure how feasible it was, I decided to set an ambitious goal of breaking two and a half hours. After a few months of intense running, I was certain that sub-2:30 was possible. But it would be another six months before I finally pulled it off.

100%, as defined using the in-game percentage counter, means getting all the yellow lums (which I usually refer to simply as lums). 100% doesn't include the cages, though I do get almost all the cages in this run since they almost all contain either lums or Teensies. Note that the percentage counter is only shown when you save or load, and since I play without a Controller Pak in order to skip the save prompts, the counter isn't visible in this run.

Below are some level-by-level comments. I won't describe all the little tricks I use, but the audio commentary has some additional information. For the most complete documentation, see the SDA Strategy Wiki.

Main Menu

Before starting the game, I change the graphics settings to low resolution, maximum sharpness. This makes the game run quite a bit faster; I'd estimate that it saves roughly five minutes over the course of the run. This is a very easy timesaver that I simply never thought to try when I did my any% run in 2008. I also change the language to Italian, which makes the cutscenes faster. I always had it in the back of my mind that a language other than English might be faster, but in order to see which one was best, I had to go through the painstaking process of timing every cutscene in every language. In the end, Italian turned out to be 3.3 seconds faster than English. It's not much, but every little bit helps.

Escape

You can go faster in sliding sections like this by jumping, which I do here.

The Woods of Light

At the beginning of this level, you can skip the Murfy text if you jump right when you land in the trigger zone for the text. This trick, called trigger hopping, can be tough to do, and I didn't get it this time. It only saves a few seconds, though. A bigger timesaver is later in the level, where I jump past the Globox babies to skip a cutscene. Whereas I used a trigger hop to skip this cutscene in my any% run, this time around I opted to land outside the trigger zone, then jump over it. The new method is slightly slower, but it's more consistent, which is important in this difficult category. There are many places throughout the game where I make similar tradeoffs between consistency and speed; if I used the fastest strategy everywhere, the run would simply be impossible to finish.

The Fairy Glade

In the first room, I use a large timesaver called airswimming. By holding L as you fall on certain corners, you can walk underwater. Then, if you jump up and helicopter right at the surface of the water, you will start swimming in midair, allowing you to collect the lums quickly and skip some of the rooms in this area. It can be tricky to start walking underwater, but I got it very quickly here.

Later on, there's another Murfy text that you can skip with a trigger hop, but I didn't manage to skip it. In the machine room (where you save Ly), you need to throw the barrels vertically to prevent them from being destroyed by the enemies, but because vertical throws take a while, you want to do as few as possible. I did three vertical throws, which I think is the minimum, so that's good.

The wind tunnel room at the end didn't go very well. You want to leave each wind tunnel as soon as possible so you don't waste time going higher than necessary, but I jumped the gun and left one of the tunnels too soon, costing me some time. As a result, even though the rest of the level was fast, the level as a whole was a little slower than average.

I finish the level with only 48 out of 50 lums, since the last couple lums are inaccessible the first time you come to this level. Skipping the second trip to the level by getting all the lums on the first trip would be a big timesaver, but I haven't found a way to do it.

The Marshes of Awakening

Crouching during the waterskiing sections speeds you up, so I crouch most of the time. I stand back up when I need to turn.

One of the harder parts of the run is getting the three lums behind the big rock in the second part of the level. I call the maneuver I use for this section the rock jump. I move right next to the rock, then jump and grab the lums. This part is dangerous because if you move toward the rock too soon, you'll bounce off of it and miss the lums, but if you move too late, you won't get the first lum. You can also miss the first or last lum if you jump with bad timing or the wrong velocity. I've lost quite a few runs here, but I eventually figured out a strategy that allowed me to get through it the vast majority of the time. An alternative to the strategy I use here is to jump and bounce off the top of the rock, but I find that method to be less consistent.

The level went well overall. I leave with 49 out of 50 lums. Once again, I'll have to come back later to finish getting all 50.

The Walk of Life

This level is pretty easy and went well here. My time was 1:38.86, which is a little faster than what I usually get.

The Bayou

Another fairly easy level. The trickiest part is the last room. After breaking the Teensy's cage with a well-aimed shot, you have a certain amount of time to make it to the top of the room before the Teensy does; take too long and he'll be standing around waiting for you, which costs time. A bad camera angle slowed me down a little, but I only lost about a second.

The Sanctuary of Water and Ice

This level also has a big timesaver. After collecting some lums, I use another airswim to get past the large door. This airswim is much harder than the one in the Fairy Glade and has killed many run attempts, but I did it pretty quickly here. There's another way to get past the door that involves clipping through a wall and floating past the door, but I've never been able to do that method consistently enough to include it in a run.

The rest of the level went well. In the sliding section, I land sideways after jumping because it seems to preserve your speed better.

The Menhir Hills (part 1)

The level is pretty straightforward until the end of the second walking shell section. If you run into the gap with good positioning, you can jump over it, saving some time compared to flying across the gap using the barrel. After crossing the gap, I use a glitch called infinite barrel flying. By starting to fly while you're invincible, you can fly forever. I use this trick to go straight to the end of the area.

The Cave of Bad Dreams

Cave of Bad Dreams is one of the tougher levels and has quite a few places where you can lose time. The first is the miniboss battle, which is one of the most random parts of the game. If an enemy spawns behind the orange pedestal or behind another enemy, you can't hit him until you move somewhere else. This time, I had great luck with the spawn positions. Unfortunately, I messed up throwing the orb afterward, negating the time gain from the lucky miniboss fight.

On my way to the orange orb, I use another cool timesaver. After entering the trigger zone for the first of two moving platforms, I stand still for a few seconds. At this time, the first platform is moving, but the second platform isn't. When I get to the first platform, it's ready to leave, so I don't have to wait for it. If I hadn't stood still earlier, I would've stood still waiting for the first platform to move anyway, but I would have been inside the trigger zone for the second platform while I did, causing me to miss the second platform's first cycle. Thus, by standing still before activating the second platform, I can get to it on its first cycle.

The orbs are pretty annoying. If you're not careful about where you walk, the camera can get into very inconvenient positions, making it easy to throw the orbs the wrong way. With the orange orb, I take a moment to go into first-person mode and aim my next throw carefully in order to avoid a run-ending glitch where the orb falls and respawns endlessly. Throwing the orbs onto the pedestals is also a pain; the orange orb likes to auto-aim at the blue pedestal, which wastes time. I got the orbs in place pretty quickly here, though.

The boss fight is the most dangerous part of the level. There are several places where you need to stop the skulls with good timing. Stop them too close to Rayman and they'll be too far away from the next platform, forcing you to wait for another skull. Stop them too far away from Rayman and you won't be able to reach them. Overall, I did a decent job with the skulls in this run.

The Menhir Hills (part 2)

In the first room, I save time by letting the walking shell see me, then getting a few lums while he's tiring himself out. In the purple lum room, I skip a few purple lums by shooting the third one from just the right position.

The Canopy

Here's one of the hardest levels in the run. There are several timesaving glitches that are easy to mess up. First, though, I have to go through the spider room. It's possible to go straight through and collect all the lums in one pass, but the spider usually knocks you down if you try that. So, I skip to the second half of the room using the purple lum, complete that half, and then do the first half. Later, after freeing Globox, I shoot the pole from the bottom part of the room. Normally, you have to ride the plant to the top and then knock down the pole. The method I use here is faster because Globox can start walking up the pole sooner.

One of the make-or-break moments of the run comes just after I get the shot upgrade. By using a damage boost from the pirate, I can get over the laser fence and skip destroying it. Unfortunately, it took me a while to get over, which is one of the biggest time losses in the run. I still saved quite a bit of time compared to playing this section normally, though.

If you skip destroying the laser fence, Globox does not follow you to the next room, so you are forced to skip hiding in the bush. I do so by taking advantage of the way the door works. Once it starts opening, it won't start closing until it is all the way open. So, once the door is closed, I back up to make it start opening, then immediately run forward to get through it before it closes again. This trick may not look hard, but the timing is pretty tight, so I was relieved to get it on my first try. After getting through the door and breaking the cage, I leave the room momentarily to unload the Teensy. This causes the portal to appear immediately, so I don't have to wait for the Teensy to open it. However, I have to be careful when I'm leaving the room because the door can close behind me. To avoid getting locked out, I manipulate the opening and closing of the door the same way I did to get through it in the first place.

Whale Bay

This is one of the easier levels, but I do use a few tricks to save time. In the room with the second switch, I run to the corner and fire a shot to hit the switch from afar, skipping some platforming. Then, after the first screen fade, I clip through a tree to skip straight to the room with the walking shell.

The Sanctuary of Stone and Fire

Near the beginning, the pirate can kill me in one hit with his hook attack, so I have to be careful and avoid it. Sometimes I deliberately take damage to gain invincibility so the hook won't hit me. I can lose time if I take too many hits, but I got through quickly in this run.

After riding the plum to the cave near the start of the level, I avoid picking up the green lum by staying away from it. This allows me to death warp later and avoid a lot of backtracking. After the room with the green lum, I made probably the biggest mistake of the run. While I was waiting for a plum to fall into my hands, the plum suddenly started moving to the side, causing me to fail to catch it. I don't think I had ever seen this happen before, and I had no plan B. I waited for a few seconds for another plum to grow before realizing that I was waiting in the wrong place; the plums grow on the tree, not the metal spike! I had to jump back up to the tree and get another plum.

The walking shell section in this level is the glitchiest in the game in terms of crashing into the floor. In some places, you'll probably crash if you boost; in other places, you'll probably crash if you don't boost. There's no good way to do it other than using trial and error to figure out where to boost or not boost, then memorizing the plan. After the walking shell section, I ride the plum up a few seams and walls to get out of bounds and go straight to the next lum. Getting up the first seam can take a while, but I did it pretty quickly here. You can skip the miniboss, but since I have the golden fists, fighting him doesn't take long. It's easy to lose time trying to skip him, so I just fight him.

The rest of the level is long, but straightforward. I made a few small mistakes, but things mostly went well.

The Echoing Caves

In the first room, I use a damage boost to get up to a higher ledge, bypassing the nearby tunnel. After getting the lums in the area, I clip through the door, skipping the switches and saving a lot of time. In order to get through the door, I change the graphics to high resolution to make the game laggier.

Partway through this level, I go back to the Fairy Glade to get the last two lums. This section can be tricky because there are lots of small platforms to jump on, but it went well here. The next barrel flying section is also tricky because when you start it, Rayman often faces the wrong way, causing you to crash. I find that approaching the torch from the side helps make Rayman face the right way, so that's what I do here. In the last room, I death warp after freeing the Teensy to make the portal appear immediately. This trick is similar to the one I use in the Canopy.

The Precipice

I used to have trouble with this level, but it's pretty easy for me now. I lost some time while climbing up the tower in the second area, but overall, the level went well.

The Top of the World

Another easy level. Every time you kill one of the barrel pirates, there's a text that takes a couple seconds, so I avoid killing the first two. After freeing the Teensy, I use the same handy trick I used in the Echoing Caves: death warp to make the portal appear immediately. Although I don't kill the first two barrel pirates, I kill the last one because if you don't, you can easily get hit by his zap attack and lose time.

The Sanctuary of Rock and Lava

The spinning platform room is dangerous because it's easy to miss some of the lums in the cage if you don't look at them long enough. For that reason, I aim the camera toward those lums for a while to give them plenty of time to float over to me. In one run attempt, I missed a lum in this room, but didn't notice until I finished the level, at which point it was too late to go back. I finished the game in 2:29:58, but with only 999/1000 lums! After that, I practiced this room quite a bit to ensure I wouldn't make the same mistake again.

Beneath the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava

A fairly easy level. You can save time by keeping the golden fists long enough to break the floor, but unfortunately, I lost my golden fist by taking a hit in the first room. Other than that, the level went well.

The Walk of Power

Going backward to this level after Beneath the Sanctuary of Rock and Lava (as opposed to doing it after Top of the World) adds a few seconds of Hall of Doors navigation. However, it allows me to enter Tomb of the Ancients with full golden fists. The golden fists save a lot of time there, more than compensating for the initial time investment in the Hall of Doors.

Most of the level is straightforward, but there are a few little timesavers. Near the beginning, after getting the 20th lum, I run forward to make a lilypad spawn. Then I run back to get a lum and run forward again. This maneuver makes the lilypad spawn as soon as possible, saving time. At the end of the level, I approach the portal stone from the side, which allows me to jump on top of it. This approach actually results in a higher in-game time, but it allows me to enter the portal immediately once it appears. If you just go straight toward the portal stone, you have a wait a while to enter the portal after it appears, resulting in a slower real time.

The level went smoothly. My time was 1:34.24.

Tomb of the Ancients

I call the next three levels the Big Three. Each of them has many places where you can easily mess up and lose time. The first of these risky spots is in the room with three sunken platforms. Rather than raising the middle platform, I use a damage boost from a piranha to get over the gap. Back when I did my old any% run, a method to skip this platform was known, but it was tough and I decided not to use it. However, it was discovered that if you shoot after getting hit in the air, you gain control of Rayman immediately, allowing you to use a damage boost to get across the gap. This newer method is much easier, but you can still die if you're not careful. After clearing the gap, I go to the thousandth lum area, which is where the golden fists are most useful. I can kill each of the pirates with two uncharged shots. Without the golden fists, each pirate would take six uncharged shots or two charged shots. One of my shots went through a pirate without damaging him for some reason, so the fight was a little slow.

The area with tons of ghost chickens is another dangerous part. The chickens can spawn right next to you and either knock you into the poison water or damage you and take your golden fists. Also, if you grab one of the purple lums the wrong way, you can swing into the water and die. So, I move through this room very carefully. Unfortunately, I did take a hit from one of the chickens. It cost me almost no time, but it forced me to be cautious for the rest of the level to avoid losing my last golden fist. Perhaps the trickiest part of the level is the pirate miniboss. I skip killing him to save time, which means I have to avoid his one-hit-kill hook attack while carrying the barrel through the room. I take a strange-looking path to manipulate the pirate into running to the corner so I can get past him. Then, while breaking the cage, I make sure my shots don't bounce off the walls and hit him; if they do, he'll start firing shots at me, which could easily take away my last golden fist. Despite these risks, the miniboss room went well. Because I saved a golden fist until the end of the level, the Clark battle only took a few seconds. Overall, the level was fast.

The Iron Mountains

This is probably the hardest level to do quickly. The first tough section is the spinning platform room near the beginning. One of the switches doesn't have any auto-aiming on it, so you have to aim at it manually. If you miss the first shot, it can be hard to line up another one, but I didn't have any trouble this time. In the next few rooms, there are many pirates that can hit you and take your golden fists, but I made it through with two golden fists, which is pretty good.

The big run killer is the walking shell section. You need to lure the robot into knocking the rocks away, then get the lums underneath the rocks. The robot's movements can be unpredictable, though, and he kills you in one hit. Also, sometimes he doesn't kick a rock away even though it looks like he's running right into it. I spent a lot of time here looking for a good strategy and practicing. Despite my efforts, I never quite got this part down, and it killed some very promising run attempts. This time, though, I did fine. After getting the lums, you need to make the jump to the exit. This jump is very risky because of the uneven ground; sometimes, when you press A to jump, you're in the air and you don't jump, so you'll just run off the edge and die. Also, even if you land on the other side, sometimes you crash into the floor for no apparent reason. When I made it through these parts, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. This is another hard level that I got through quickly.

The Prison Ship

The big danger here is the sliding section at the beginning. It's very easy to miss a lum. When this happens, you usually have to death warp and play up to that point again, which can waste a lot of time. Thankfully, I didn't miss any lums in this run. After the first screen fade, I press against a railing and jump up to get a few lums. I think it's possible to get all the lums here without either using this technique or death warping, but it's very difficult and can cost you a lot of time if you get it wrong, so I use this method instead. The most dangerous part of the level is the circle of lums right before the second screen fade. I call this section the Ring of Death. If you fall into the pit without collecting all the lums, the only way to go back is to finish the level, then replay the entire thing. Repeating the level costs so much time that the run is effectively over. It's easy to fall into the pit if you're not careful, but I practiced this part (and the sliding section as a whole) regularly and became pretty consistent at it. My practice paid off; the sliding section went well in this run. The rest of the level is easier and it also went well.

The Crow's Nest

At the beginning of Razorbeard's first form, I hold right so that I can land the first hit quickly. The rest of the first form was a little bit slow; sometimes he shoots the bombs at you faster, but I'm not sure why. In the second form, I take advantage of an easter egg: hold A and B while flying into the circle at the top of the arena and you'll enter a secret tunnel. Once you're through the tunnel, you'll have infinite ammo, which saves time. I missed one shot at Razorbeard, but it didn't slow me down much.

Final time: 2:29:47

I'm thrilled to finally have sub-2:30. I can say with certainty that this is by far the best speed run I've ever done. It had no deaths (aside from intentional death warps) and the tricks went very well on the whole. I doubt I'll ever try to improve it. I think I've said that about all my runs, but I'm pretty sure this time; this run was hard enough that it would just be too much work to do the whole thing over again. After taking a break from the game for a few months, I plan on doing another any% run. A while back, I set an ultimate goal of getting sub-2:30 100% and sub-2 any%. With 100% in the bag, I'm halfway there. My gut feeling is that sub-2 any% will be easier, but I haven't done any% in a while, so I'll have to see how feasible it is.

Thanks for watching the run. Let me know what you think of it. To learn more about Rayman 2 glitches and strategies, check out the SDA Strategy Wiki.