Kirby's Dream Land 2
Abbreviation — KDL2

Details
Developers	HAL Laboratory
Release Dates	JP: March 21, 1995 NA: May 1, 1995 EU: July 31, 1995
Platforms	GB, GBP, KDC, 3DS, Switch
Categories
Main	Any%, Best Ending, 100%
Miscellaneous	n/a
Extensions	n/a

Summary

Kirby's Dream Land 2 (commonly called KDL2) was originally released on the Game Boy in 1995 and had since been ported to Kirby's Dream Collection (Wii), the 3DS Virtual Console, and the Nintendo Switch Online service. This was the first Kirby game to introduce the animal friends (those being Rick the hamster, Coo the owl, and Kine the fish) and is also the first Kirby game to have multiple endings. You can receive the "bad" ending by defeating King Dedede without collecting the Rainbow Drops while the best ending can be acquired by collecting the seven rainbow drops in each world and defeating Dark Matter, a new boss after King Dedede.

The speedrun has three main categories, those being Any%, Best Ending, and 100%. Any%s route avoids the Rainbow Drops and ends when King Dedede is defeated. In Best Ending and 100% you grab the seven Rainbow Drops and defeat Dark Matter at the end of the game instead. In the 100% category you will need to play the six bonus games in each world and also will need to grab "Gooey girl" (or Chao if you are playing the Japanese version of the game) at some point.

Rules

Run Start and Run End

Pretty straight forward rules for running this game. Time starts on clicking a file with 0% completed and the time ending will depend on the category you are playing. Any% times end on the final hit of King Dedede, Best Ending ends on the final hit on Dark Matter, and 100% ends at the end of the "best ending" credits and "The End" shows up on screen. General Rules

The allowed Game Boy Emulators are bgb and Gambatte. All other emulators are banned.
All emulator added functions are not allowed. This includes save states, turbo, speedup, rewinds, etc.
Currently turbo controllers are not allowed due to strict advantages gained from using one, however discussion about turbo controllers has been brought up every now and again.
If running 100%, show the 100% file completed at the end of the run.
Video proof is required.

Platforms

You are able to play this game on a various amount of platforms due to re-releases, however a lot of these releases do not match the original framerate on original hardware or have the same load times. Currently it is believed that playing on Wii U is the fastest way to play the game and saves somewhere between 5 to 10 seconds compared to GB in the Any% category, however more testing needs to be done. Here is what we currently believe to be the fastest to slowest versions to play the game (top of the list being the fastest, bottom the slowest):

WiiU
Wii
3DS VC
GB / GBC / NSO / GBP / GBI / Emu
SGB2
Super Game Boy (after time conversion)

The Super Game Boy (SGB1) is allowed, however because the SGB1 uses the clock speed of the SNES instead of the GB, it runs 2.4% faster (https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Super_Game_Boy_timing). Times must be converted using this SNES to GB time converter http://nudua.com/convert

Version Differences

While the speedrun itself isn't effected by which version you play on, there are a few random differences between the Japanese and English releases.

Learning, Tutorials, Documentation and Guides

KDL2 is overall a pretty simple game in the series compared to some of the other games, but we still want to make learning the game as smooth of a process as possible. Especially with some of the tricky learning curves, we also wanted to give the proper resources to optimal strats, easy strats, middling strats, and backup strats.

Game Information Documentation

Mechanics and Tech
Animal Friends and Abilities
Glitches
RNG and RNG Manipulation
Mid-Boss and Boss Info

Guides

Small Any% guide for one off runners and racers!

Main Categories

Any%
Best Ending/100%

Misc and Meme Categories

Rick%
All Items

Videos to check out!

The KDL2 100% TAS by illayaya!
KDL2 Any% ran by BBQSauz at SGDQ 2015
KDL2 Best Ending ran by zorlaxseven at SGDQ 2017
Current KDL2 Any% WR (November 2021)
Current KDL2 Best Ending WR (December 2022)
Current KDL2 100% WR (January 2022)

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