• Emulator - Gens TEST 10
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Aims for fastest time
For a long time, nobody had taken it upon themselves to timeattack a Sonic game. Then came Sprint, doing Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Then came Xebra, who started doing Sonic 1 but got sick of it and gave up. Sonic 2 got a similar treatment from Hero Chaos Chao. After several exceptionally poor quality Sonic 2 speed run submissions (ranging between 30 and 40 minutes long), I decided that my first timeattack would be of this game.
So here it is, after months of hard work and a short hiatus.
Level times: (TSC records in parentheses)
  • Emerald Hill 1 - 0:18 (0:20)
  • Emerald Hill 2 - 0:36 (0:38)
  • Chemical Plant 1 - 0:17 (0:22)
  • Chemical Plant 2 - 0:51 (0:53)
  • Aquatic Ruin 1 - 0:19 (0:24)
  • Aquatic Ruin 2 - 0:38 (0:43)
  • Casino Night 1 - 0:25 (0:34)
  • Casino Night 2 - 0:55 (1:05)
  • Hill Top 1 - 0:39 (0:48)
  • Hill Top 2 - 0:48 (1:03)
  • Mystic Cave 1 - 0:28 (0:40)
  • Mystic Cave 2 - 0:37 (0:49)
  • Oil Ocean 1 - 0:26 (0:38)
  • Oil Ocean 2 - 0:48 (0:59)
  • Metropolis 1 - 0:54 (1:12)
  • Metropolis 2 - 0:50 (1:30)
  • Metropolis 3 - 1:30 (2:33)
  • Sky Chase - fixed length auto-scroller
  • Wing Fortress - 1:42 (1:56)
  • Death Egg - 0:42 (0:49)
Quirks/Glitches:
  • In Oil Ocean 2, falling into the sphere cannon after being injured by the spikes causes Sonic to gain some unusual abilities, allowing him to run and jump as if he were Super Sonic. This glitch lasts until he performs a spindash.
  • In Death Egg Zone, the explosions are replaced with animal graphics, apparently because I defeated the bosses too quickly.
Enjoy!

Phil No choice but to be published.

Active player (277)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Too late, should've told him to do that earlier
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
It's never too late.
Joined: 12/7/2004
Posts: 69
I hope this gets published soon because the Gens emulator doesn't work with my computer for some reason. It's a known issue, but no one is working to fix it :(
Zakatos
He/Him
Joined: 7/26/2004
Posts: 90
Location: Brazil, Sao Paulo, Campinas
Well, what could I add? Astonisinhg movie, inherited most techniques from SprintGod, now I wonder if the latter could surpass this. =) Now sorry to be "the" silly of the board, but can't help giving my critics (actually they're mostly suggestions). Q, wouldn't be waaay to cool if you managed to control Sonic AND Tails when it's time-favorable? Example the screw-elevator at Metropolis, if you avoid Tails to be off-screen since the beginning of the level, you gain a lot of frames by not having to wait for him to arrive. And, some bosses could be beaten faster with the aid of Tails, clerarly seeing is Casino Night's and Metropolis'. Finally, this would also give you the chance to lose your rings at every boss battle, avoiding the ring-counter and saving a few frames in the overall (though this could be purposely avoided by you in attempt not to lose the fun factor). Well, maybe this stands more for other nature of run, but if achieved, a Sonic+Tails run would be the supreme Sonic 2 run to me. Congratulations Nonetheless
The eyes of a machine are wonderful, but there's nothing like the the eyes of the heart – Old Cid, Cybercop
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
Q's is a 1-controller run. He does manipulate Tails where possible with just one controller, such as when he breaks a block with Tails in Hill Top.
Former player
Joined: 8/15/2004
Posts: 422
Location: Minnesota
I believe he tried something like that once, but got a huge desync.
Quietust
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 7/14/2004
Posts: 250
The desync I got was probably due to messing with savestates out of order (since I was still new to it), so I'll definitely try this in my next attempt (which is already underway, but probably won't be released for quite a while).
* Quietust, QMT Productions P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14887
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [335] Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog 2 by Quietust in 21:39.53
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 103
I've downloaded Mplayer to play this movie. It plays, but the sound is about 5 seconds ahead of the movie. I don't at all like what's become of the movie encoding and would like to know what is so much greater with this codec, since you abandoned the old one with ok quality and great compatibility, with this one? I watched the first 4 levels, then became tired of the movie due to the sound vs. video desync. If this continues I'm leaving emulator-made movies and just follow the console-speedruns. This also goes for the last few days of videos that's been published, and i really think that you loose some of you "fans" due to codecs and new applications to be installed. Now, I'm going to shut up and listen to you. (I love the Sonic series, but not like this)
Emulator Coder
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 453
Location: Norway
New applications? Just install newest ffdshow and you can use windows media player? ...
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 103
TNSe wrote:
New applications? Just install newest ffdshow and you can use windows media player? ...
I use a Mac, and this movie does not play in VLC, Windows Media Player, QuickTime 7 (with H264-support built in)... just in Mplayer, which I had to download = New Application. But this doesn't work either. I also have a computer with Linux and Windows, but this is too slow to even show the pictures right (i get 4 or 5 fps playing these movies... previous codec gave me watchable movies with this computer too). EDIT: I can play it in VLC, but just for 4-5 seconds, then it crashes.
Emulator Coder
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 453
Location: Norway
Ok, your problem is a bit different than I thought then... what cpu speed do you have? (and haev you tried to look for a newer version of VLC?)
xou
Joined: 4/26/2004
Posts: 118
Location: france
mario's picture and again that boring codec ... Is it so good at fast motion? lets see... ( poor sonic ) !
hello world !
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 103
TNSe wrote:
Ok, your problem is a bit different than I thought then... what cpu speed do you have? (and haev you tried to look for a newer version of VLC?)
I'll try with the latest VLC in a couple of minutes (just downloading the movie again - at school). I have a PowerMac Dual 2GHz G5 (2.5 GB RAM) at home, so that should be enough (QuickTime7 supports H.264, and plays 1920*1080 movies without lagging). My laptop (which I'm sitting with right now) is just an 1.2GHZ G4 (768 MB RAM), but also this one should be more than enough to play this kind of movie.
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 103
It worked well on my Laptop with VLC 0.8.1, but still not with latest version of Mplayer (which was suggested). Thanks... hope I'll be able to play the other 5 movies, at home that I haven't been able to watch, too.
Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (968)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3107
Location: Sweden
On a slightly more positive note, how about giving this movie a star? It has the same quality as the S3&K movie, and it looks extremely impressive even if you don't know the game, I think.
Editor, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Discuss stars here.
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 103
Wouldn't getting slower times than 30 timeunits sometimes save you a couple of seconds due to the bonus points taking some time to count down?
Skilled player (1404)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
A game like this should focus on time units. Slowing down would hurt the aesthetics badly.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 103
Ferret Warlord wrote:
A game like this should focus on time units. Slowing down would hurt the aesthetics badly.
OK, but isn't this site itself counting seconds from start to the end of the button-pressing? So it's not comparable to SMB1 (warpless)? I agree it would be less impressing to just waste time, though. EDIT: Btw... all movies works fine now except Prince of Persia 2 and LoZ: alttp (glitch version). I can see the first 10-20 secs with a very twitching image, than whatever program I use crashes.
Joined: 1/1/2022
Posts: 1716
Hello, I'm new on this forum, and sorry for my bad english, I'm french... I've seen the video, and I think waiting few seconds at the end of level Mystic Cave 1 and Oil Ocean 1 can save time, with 10000 pts time bonus instead of 50000 pts... Congratulations for the video^^
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
The goal of this movie is not to complete the game in the shortest time possible, but to minimize the time spent traversing each individual level.
Quietust
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 7/14/2004
Posts: 250
xebra wrote:
The goal of this movie is not to complete the game in the shortest time possible, but to minimize the time spent traversing each individual level.
Agreed. I've just updated the categories for the run to reflect this.
* Quietust, QMT Productions P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another
Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 46
I saw the video and it was really impressive. I noticed in oil ocean 2 yall have discovered the 'blue super sonic' bug. I figured as soon as someone found out about that, that everyone would figure out the rest. But apparently I was wrong. Since the rest of the bug is too long to describe I made a video of it. But this exploit will probably half your oil ocean 2 time. The Video: http://touch.evil2u.com/-TouchOPicturesTouchOVideos-/SonicOO2bug.zip
Former player
Joined: 8/15/2004
Posts: 422
Location: Minnesota
Woah.