My time has come,

I've done a hefty amount of messing around with this glitch. It's really peculiar in that it's the only glitch of the series (at least that I know of) which is hardware-dependent. That is, it only occurs when played on a PS1. I've heard of some people getting it on emulator, but I've never seen footage of it myself so until I get more details or see it for myself I'm chalking that up to just stories.

That said, here's what we know about this glitch:

• It's hardware dependant. There is no documentation of it occurring with any hardware that is not a PlayStation 1. Whether or not it would occur on a burned disk is a good question, and has yet to be tested;
• It can be triggered with either flame or fireball;
• If it's your first time entering Ripto's Arena, the glitch will not activate. That is, it seems the pre-boss cutscene cancels the activation of the glitch somehow;
• It's activated from entering the battle from behind the warp point. You mention that you approached it from the bottom, do you remember if you had to turn around a bit after entering? as if you'd missed the entrance and had to double back? I tried activating it from the bottom like you said and I couldn't do it;
• When the glitch activates, Ripto will start attacking you immediately, unlike the usual where any boss in this game waits for you to move first before doing anything;
• When the glitch activates, your charge becomes a strange mix of walking, charging and supercharging at the same time. It also cannot be cancelled by letting go of square. You have to bonk to stop charging;
• When the glitch activates, you gain the superfly in all three phases of the fight, and it's ridiculously fast, much faster than any other instance of superfly in the game. You move faster than your fireballs. Since this effect carries into the third phase, it makes beating the bird much harder than it normally is;
• When the glitch activates, you get that really weird charge/glide hybrid you pointed out in your video. This appears nowhere else in the game
• When the glitch activates, the game will sometimes remove your ability to pause. What causes this is unknown, and it is not consistent. However, once the ability to pause disappears, it does not seem to return. When you are still able to pause, the "Exit Level" option is replaced with a "Quit Game" option. This is not just a text glitch. Selecting that option spits you out to the main menu;
• When the glitch activates, any Sparx you had in the homeworld is now invisible, but the game will treat you as having no Sparx. That is, if you enter with gold Sparx, you will now be shown as having no Sparx, but you can still take 4 hits before dying. The game will give you sheep as if you had no Sparx, getting a sheep before dying will make Sparx come back in the colour he should be. This does not persist after dying. Once you die, you will always respawn without Sparx, will be unable to eat butteflies, and will die in one hit; EDIT: I just did a new test and now the game completely removed my (gold) Sparx when I entered, but I had to take 2 hits before sheep started dropping. When I got a sheep, a green Sparx appeared instead of the expected blue.
• Occasionally, the game will become extremely unstable, and will crash if you venture even remotely out of bounds. Other times, you have the entire world to explore. There isn't much there, but you can go really far (good luck finding your way back);
• Regardless, crashing the game here is like any other hard crash in this game, and you will begin hearing random lines of dialogue from throughout the game (and sometimes the CTR demo);

That's all I can recall at the moment, but I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two things. If you have any other quesitons, feel free to ask them here or reach out to me on Discord.

"This board doesn't look the way I want it to look and that makes me angry" >(

I was writing a little something as well, but NoName summarized my thoughts pretty nicely. Refer to his points, they're pretty damn good.

I just want to ask you a hypothetical question:

Let's say InternetGuy2007 has seen a few runs of Crash Bandicoot 2, and decides to give it a try. He doesn't necessarily want, nor does he have the means, to buy and ship a PAL PS2 and copy of the game (the recognized fastest version) to where he lives, so he decides to download ePSXe and the game's ISO to give it a try. Next thing we know, InternetGuy2007 starts getting really good at the game. Despite the 2.5 minute disadvantage brought by emulating over actual hardware, after a few months of grinding out the game, he beats the WR time. He's on an inferior version, but still beats the record time.

Now what you're suggesting, is that this guy's time should not be allowed on the leaderboard because he's on inferior hardware? Or is this some sort of exception?