Submission #2479: CtrlAltDestroy's GBC Rayman in 28:01.67

• Emulator used: I honestly forget, but it works fine with VBA 1.7.2 v21
• Aims for fastest time
• Takes damage to save time
• Manipulates luck (Final boss)
• Abuses programming errors (L+R to bypass some clipping detection)

The Game

The Movie

World 1: Spellbound Forest

• 1-1: Boring.
• 1-2: Still boring.
• 1-3: This is the most boring level in the whole movie. At least I pulled off a funny enemy kill.
• 1-4: Okay, now things get interesting. I start off taking a massive shortcut and just barely punching down the berry I need to continue.

World 2: Airy Tunes

• 2-1: A nice fast stage. I also take 2 huge shortcuts using L+R. Also, I move so fast that you can see the Electoon holding the exit sign disappear from existence, and at the end, there are two of them for a moment.
• 2-2: More fast sliding around. I could have used downward ledge boosts in the falling part, but I had to wait for a cloud platform to materialize. The ending of this level is surprising.
• 2-3: Somehow I conserve the fast sliding momentum when jumping across the clouds and bongos near the beginning.
• 2-4: The horns look suboptimal, but they're just really that slow. They stop moving as soon as I jump off them, and then I have to take the additional frame time to jump up and then back down to get them to go farther.

World 3: Rainy Forest

• 3-1: Upon entering this stage, I acquire the helicopter hair ability. I use it to take a rather big shortcut.
• 3-2: A few more huge shortcuts.
• 3-3: The second auto-scroller stage. Aside from some funny enemy kills, not too notable.

World 4: Rocky Peaks

• 4-1: The worlds are getting more dangerous. Obstacles are a lot more numerous and taking damage to save time becomes viable in many places. Also, some iced rocks make for some nice sliding strategy.
• 4-2: In this level, I have to ride 3 cloud elevators down into different parts of the level, in order to make some cloud platforms appear over a long stretch of instant-death spikes. After that, I use a major clipping oversight to take a shortcut to the end of the level.
• 4-3: Rayman gains a special power in this level to fly infinitely with his helicopter hair. While the helicopter is active, punching is useful for canceling it and immediately falling forward, making for some surprising moments.
• 4-4: I make short work of this annoying and long level by abusing the sliding physics.

World 5: Ancient Forest

• 5-1: Rayman gains another ability here: swinging from rings. These rings can give massive speed boosts by slinging Rayman forward if I punch early and then grab them when I'm underneath them. Getting the gold fist powerup makes it even easier to grab them from far away. Grabbing the rings from too close causes Rayman to swing painfully slow. My shortcuts and circumventing of intended platform paths really starts to get ridiculous on this level.
• 5-2: More swinging and crazy shortcuts.
• 5-3: Only one interesting shortcut here, unfortunately.

World 6: Fiery Depths

• 6-1: This is my favorite world. It's extremely hazardous, lots of places to take damage to save time. Also, awesome Cave of Bad Dreams music! I use mercy invincibility a lot to walk across spikes, some of which are instant-kill. Budgeting my hit points becomes vital here.
• 6-2: More life budgeting, running me down to 1 heart. I walk through a spike wall near the end of a level.
• 6-3: The third and final auto-scroller. Little boring, except the parts where I swing right through the lava, and hit the exit off the top of the screen.
• 6-4: Return of the infinite helicopter. I actually make a small planning error during this level and grab an out-of-the-way heart when there was another one directly in my path, because I thought I would have had to take damage again in the spinning spike rocks. Then I found a way through them, and forgot to go back and change my path. Oops. So, there's a possible 13-frame improvement to this level.

World 7: Arcane Forest

• 7-1: The last world, featuring ridiculously precarious platforming. But I take all the jumps and cut all the corners, abusing the sliding physics to their maximum potential to breeze through the place.
• 7-2: And more.
• 7-3: The Dark Rayman level. Dark Rayman is supposed to follow my movements exactly, and if I touch him, I die. But I actually manage to kill Dark Rayman! Watch the top of the screen around frame 89800. This is probably the funniest part in the movie.
• 7-4: Probably the hardest level to play for real. This level reverses your left and right controls. Of course, this means nothing in a TAS. A quick trip to VBA's menus fixed things up.

• Mr. Dark: This final boss battle was actually broken when I repaired the movie file, so I completely re-played it. So, while most of the movie's input is four years old, this boss battle was practically done yesterday!
  • Apologies for keeping Mr. Dark off the screen so much, but this causes his animations to end sooner, continuing the battle much faster.
  • The battle consists of three rounds, first where you must dodge a stream of falling hazards, and then when you have to punch Mr. Dark three times in the form of a floating black balloon. Mr. Dark's movement and position is horribly random, so I have to manipulate his appearance position. I take him out almost instantly.
  • The flames and fireballs are on a timer, so it doesn't matter where they go. But for the stupid lightning part, I must force the lightning to always strike the top stairstep, as that causes the fastest lightning animation. There are way too many lightning bolts, anyway...
  • I do a victory dance on the moon.
  • It is possible to skip the 3D Rayman head animation at the end, but I left it in for the sake of entertainment.
  • The credits music rocks.

Additional notes

• When a level begins, Rayman will immediately wave at the camera, unless he is subject to constant movement, in which case he will wait until the first possible moment to do the animation. I use this a lot to save the animation for funny moments.
• Instrument tracks in the music like to mute themselves for some reason. I believe this to be an emulation glitch, since this never happened when I played on the actual GBC.
• This game has 3 auto-scrolling stages, and the first is the worst. 1-3 is easily the most boring stage in the whole movie, so don't let it bother you. Things start picking up immediately after.
• The game has very, very strange edge physics. Usually it is optimal to jump before falling down a cliff if you wish to go down. In this game, most of the time, jumping off a cliff and walking off a cliff takes exactly the same amount of time, because if you're falling, the cliff will reach out and "grab" you, and cause you to slip off, killing your vertical momentum. The possibility of sometimes gaining boosts by hanging from the ledge also complicates things.
• Grabbing vines gives a horizontal boost. Grabbing most ledges does not.
• Grabbing edges sometimes gives a downward boost, and other times it does not. It depends on the shape of the ledge, my momentum prior, and the direction I need to go after dropping.
• The rerecord count in the movie represents the rerecords performed after having recovered the movie file, namely, the ones used during the final boss battle. The true rerecord count is greater than 35,000.

Conclusion