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Top Gear 2 is an arcade racing game made and developed by the company Kemco for the Super Nintendo and was released on September 15th, 1993. Here you sit in the year 1993 and this is it, the race of your life... However! We'll make this quick. You're watching the new, super-accelerated #1 world leader in racing games. this TAS will be screaming through 1 country and 4 races. This car will not be twisting, (sometimes jumping), not spinning, or flipping, At speeds of over 260 MPH. With Top Gear 2 's new and improved weather system you'll be driving through conditions such as Night or Shine, Snow or Fog. If you win all the races you will be claimed as the best racer in the world. Get your rear in gear because there's no half-fast about it.

Game Objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk Developer Build 2.0.0
  • Uses Same Color Car
  • Manipulates Frame Perfect Luck
  • Uses Best Upgrades
  • Uses a Password Glitch
  • Skips Name Entry to Save Time

About the Run

This run is done on the USA version of Top Gear 2 and uses English Text. The goal of this run is to get to the credits as quickly as possible (USA%) using the fastest known methods currently possible. This TAS was started in April of 2018. Many improvements came and went. The previous TAS that was created which had a final (RTA) time of 9:10.210. The original TAS that I made was decent but had many flaws in a nearly perfect run. All of the inputs you see here, where recorded by me. However, as time went on I did have a little bit of help from the Top Gear community about theorizing the perfect run.

About the Category

USA% is the shortest category for Top Gear 2. Here an in-game password is used to skip directly to the final country with a fully stocked vehicle substantially faster than the competition it faces - conditions in which any human player would find it possible to win, yet obstacles, cars, and frame perfect skips allows for perfect reflexes and a great deal of luck. Back in 2013, this category was recognized as Any%. RallyFTW and I changed the name, the reason the name was changed is that Any% wouldn't make sense since, Any% is what this category is, but is renamed to USA% because I am only playing the last country in the game, which is the United States, hence the name USA% was created. I started this category back in 2013 and have used the same upgrades since then, with some minor upgrade changes here and there.

Console Differences

Top Gear 2 was the only Top Gear game to be released on multiple consoles at a time. Top Gear 2 was released on SNES, Genesis & Amiga CD 32. Top Gear 2 is the most optimal on the SNES version and this TAS will be using the SNES version for the most optimal gameplay and performance.

Regional Differences

Top Gear 2 and all of the other Top Gear games, all have different regions in which the game can be played. Top Gear 2, and all of the regions don't have any major updates that limit the current categories of the game, and all regions kind of play exactly the same. The only thing that changes from region to region is the aesthetics & Password inputs this includes: Brighter HUD & CPU 2nd place is noticeable, JPN version and EU version passwords differ from the USA game. Some characters on the password screen will include, Left & Right arrows for moving the cursor to a certain position to change a letter or number.

TAS from 2007 Vs. TAS in 2018

There was another TAS of this game back in 2007 by Dooty, which showcases the same things, but without any upgrades applied. I originally got my inspiration from that video to start running this category. My TAS in today's standards is a lot different, in fact, almost has no correlation to the original TAS by Dooty. In my TAS I use the best upgrades to finish the races quicker and frame perfect skips to make the run a little more entertaining to some extent.

My TAS Vs. RallyFTW's TAS Differences

Although our TAS's for this game and category may look similar, I do have the upper hand on this one. RallyFTW's TAS has everything that is needed for the fastest completion time but was bested by me, by looking a little deeper on some route changes in New York, & Los Angeles.

No Name Entry

You may see me skip over inputting a name. The reason I do this is that I would have lost frames and time around 2 seconds, which is very important to have if I want the perfect run for now.

RTA Vs. IGT in Top Gear Speedrunning

All of the Top Gear games besides Top Gear 2 uses IGT. The reason this run uses RTA timing is that the IGT is very inaccurate, sometimes at the start of races you will lose between 1 and 20 milliseconds each time before you are able to start driving. I'm not really sure why the game does this, but my general idea, would be loading in the level, however, for now, we still don't know the reason. Another funny factor about the IGT in Top Gear 2 that I don't use in this run, is being able to shave off 1 millisecond for every race you go through. If your car manages to get behind another car after crossing the finish line, the game will get confused and make the IGT count backward and make you save more time then the initial processing time calculated.

Wall Glitches Vs. No Wall Glitches

This category does not allow Wall Glitches and requires the player to play as "intended". The proper definition of a Wall Glitch is: A wall glitch is a glitch that allows the runner to make the game think he/she has finished the race by hitting the wall. An object needs to be in contact with the hitbox of the car in order for the glitch to work, however, not all walls are the same.

Automatic Vs. Manual

There are two types of transmissions in Top Gear 2. One is Automatic, which increases your speed automatically (go figure), and the other one is Manual, which you can tune yourself. Before Manual transmission was used, we used Automatic. The switch from Automatic to Manual was faster, so much faster than it saved around 10 seconds.

Car Colors

You will notice that I am only using one car color for the majority of this run. The reason this is is that if I were to switch to a different color every time, I would lose roughly around 0.5 - 1 second for every track. The game offers a much different variety of colors to choose from that be: Black, Green, White, Red, Blue, Grey, Yellow, & Purple.

Tracks

  • United States: Las Vegas: Las Vegas is interesting because it's one of the only tracks in the game that will allow the player to hold A and Left on the controller to get a starting boost from a nitro. The only other track in the game at the moment that has a same starting boost is San Francisco. I framed advanced the nitro boost's here to get the best possible time, without losing speed.
  • United States: Los Angeles: This track is also really interesting. Starting off, you can boost past the 2 sets of cars in front of you (which is frame perfect), and it saves roughly 1 1/2 seconds over normal play. Los Angeles is one of the tracks I also spent the most time on and checked each frame to see when the appropriate time to boost was. There is a small hill that leads into a tunnel, you are able to use all of your nitro's on each lap when the MPH hits 228, doing this is also frame perfect and closest it's come RTA would be 226 MPH.
  • United States: New York: New York is the last snow stage in the game, and features a new technique called "turn throttling". Turn throttling was discovered by RallyFTW and is used in RTA runs today. Before this discovery we were sliding every which way possible, however, the way this works is quite unique. If you are going around a corner (which depends on the sharpness of the turn), you can tap the direction your car will go, and it will cancel out the sliding animation. I used earlier nitro's here on 2nd lap near the end because I wanted to go fast because waiting loses time overall.
  • United States: San Francisco: San Francisco is the final track in the game. Unfortunately, you won't be seeing San Francisco all that much, since the entire stage is fog based. Just like Las Vegas, you are able to hold an A press and a Left press on the controller and steer off the track to get in front of the cars ahead. This little time saving was found by another runner "RallyFTW". Later on in the track, you will notice I held off from gearing up, unlike the previous 3 tracks. The reason this is, is because I wanted a lot of speed and maintaining that speed is very important, because you are then able to keep your speed down a hill which increases your speed to 234, then 228 after the uphill than to 230, before leveling back off below 230 then a nitro is used a little later to maintain the kept speed from earlier. This track also features a half a nitro pick up or known as "Speed Up". Right before my nitro runs out, I pick this up to maintain speed for a little longer than intended.

Upgrades:

  • The Screaming V12 = Best Engine will allow me to keep the speed needed throughout the track.
  • Kemco Rain Slicks = Best Wet Tires is only used once during this run and is for New York.
  • No Generic Radials = Believe it or not, you actually don't need Dry Tires in this run, I didn't purchase any to save some inputs.
  • 6 Speed Race Tranny = Alongside the Engine, this too will help me keep my speed.
  • Super Boost 400 =(Until San Francisco, where Total Boost 600-R is purchased)
Here Technickle uses tools to show off just how crazy a race car can be. Focusing on winning rather than losing and achieving the fastest time currently possible.
I want to personally thank all of the Top Gear speedrunning community that has supported me on this TAS. I also want to thank RallyFTW for helping me along the way with this route in particular.
feos: Judging...
feos: This run uses a route that can be considered a valid any% branch here, because the password glitch is legitimate: it's not a cheat, since regular passwords are already doing the same thing, so there's no point for the developers in implementing such a feature in addition to them.
But this run uses a few restrictions that I consider arbitrary. Avoiding the Reset that can be used to speed up the movie is not a speed/entertainment trade-off, and even if it was, it's not really adding any entertainment. The same can be said about avoiding the wall glitches. Both of these things are maybe considered optional by the RTA rules, but our rules are stricter, because we're not just a site that documents who is speedrunning what. We aim for the highest possible quality for our movies, and we only showcase the current records for each category.
In addition, this run loses a little bit of time to an existing track-wise record. While this is not a major flaw, it should have also been avoided in the first place, because that record was known.
Rejecting, and looking forward for a proper any% run that uses all the existing tricks.
This game might have a movie that uses a fully upgraded car and only plays through the USA tracks to reduce the repetitive content, but there's no guarantee it'd be entertaining enough for Moons. And if it isn't, we can't accept it either.

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Posted: 6/28/2018 1:26 AM
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£e_Nécroyeur
Skilled player (1650)
Joined: 7/1/2013
Posts: 433
Arcade TASer of 2017 Arcade TAS of 2016 Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 Exotic platforms TAS of 2014
Technickle wrote:
I have never clicked on a discussion board post so fast IML Kappa
TASVideos forum is thrilling! :)
Posted: 7/2/2018 8:22 PM
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feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11268
Location: RU
NES TAS of 2011
I watched this and found it decent in terms of entertainment. I have some questions. From the first SNES Top Gear game I know that managing the gears is extremely important: there you can accelerate way faster while being at the 4th gear. Also, the frame you switch the gear at greatly influences the distance and speed you reach, because it would accelerate you differently depending on some tricky internal mechanics. Does gear switching have the same effects here? If yes, was it as carefully managed? From the first game I also noticed that if you reach a sharp turn with too high speed, for instance from having used nitro, you either get thrown off-road, or you have to brake not too lose too much speed to this. Isn't spending nitro only on (relatively) straight track segments faster? Was all the menuing optimized to death? I see tons of mashing there, and also that sometimes the game would just not react at certain buttons. If this run is to be redone and made more optimal, leaving any sloppiness in the menus would be disappointing. Similarly, the movie should be stopped when the last necessary input is entered - input that results in the fastest game completion, so it should also be entered ASAP. We measure movie time by this last input, not by anything else. How much time would wall glitch save overall? Do all the cars have identical parameters that don't affect time? Is it correct that once you've entered the track using the password glitch, you get money just as a reward for quitting? Have you used the tool that provides the most control over your tas for a newcomer - tastudio? This run syncs on the latest bizhawk release, which got a whole bunch of tastudio improvements. This thing lets you spend the least effort on checking minor things back in the past without having to rerecord the future inputs once again, as well as tons of other helpful features. Can you guys upload TheRallyFTW's movie file to our userfiles so we could do proper comparison? If this run loses to some existing records, or is overall not optimal enough (for example, if some of us can easily and significantly improve it), it will have to be rejected.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 7/5/2018 7:03 AM
Post subject: answering questions for feos
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Technickle
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Joined: 1/10/2017
Posts: 73
Location: Brattleboro Vermont
Gears work a lot differently in Top Gear 2 and have to be manually operated using L or R shoulder buttons. Switching gears here was carefully managed, on Los Vegas, you notice I just barely got 252 going down the hill, so I had time to the R press carefully in order for that to work out right. In Top Gear 1 you do accelerate a lot quicker in 4th gear, and you do also accelerate quicker in Top Gear 2 while in 4th gear If you manage to lose speed somehow. The menuing was pretty much perfect, some screens could be 1 or 2 frames better depending on what the transition is. I was mashing the menuing because staying idle and waiting for the next input can be a little boring at times, so I decided to spice it up a little bit. You are correct about last meaningful input and I kind of neglected that here and waited longer than I should have (only because listening to the title music is catchy sometimes), however, this will be fixed if I manage to recreate a better playthrough at some point. Wall Glitch will save 1 minute and 4 seconds, however, since the category I was TAS 'ing this for didn't allow it, I can't do it here. All car models are the same and have the same hitboxes, however, if something is found that I don't know about I will redo it in a future TAS. Yeah, you get the starting amount of money the game will default you to. For an example: Ireland (using the password glitch) gives you $80,000, and Auckland gives $0. All of these money values are the default amount of money the game is allowed to give the player during that time. I have been using TAS-studio for awhile now and I am pretty proficient at it. I will have RallyFTW upload his file to the database here, as I am sure he has it somehow somewhere, so I will contact him about it asap. I only lose 6 milliseconds on Los Vegas compared to Rally's 1:51.05 to my 1:51.11 and Rally does have an explanation to this I believe he made in a big post on the first page.
Posted: 7/5/2018 4:26 PM
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feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11268
Location: RU
NES TAS of 2011
Thanks. I want this game to be properly TASed, so I obviously want you to keep working on it, but please consider a few points. As I mentioned in the judgment note for your other movie, this game is not entertaining for the unfamiliar people. Maybe a fully upgraded car with all the known glitches could be entertaining enough for Moons, but a regular any% run still seems to only belong to the Vault. And for Vault, we don't allow avoiding time-saving glitches (the wall glitch in this case). Also, the Movie Rules demand that all the known records are beaten if one aims for acceptance. http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#SpeedOrientedMovieMustBeatAllExistingRecords Finally, you need to use all the known tricks that save time, unless there's some artistic reason to avoid minor time-saves, but this is very moot usually, so just use ALL the known tricks that save time. And to ensure your future submission is optimal, please use userfiles to upload your WIPs, and post them on the forum so others could check and help/advice before it's too late.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 7/9/2018 9:52 PM
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TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... want more!
Posted: 9/4/2018 10:24 AM
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RallyFTW
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Joined: 4/17/2013
Posts: 3
Location: Plainfield, Illinois
feos wrote:
From the first SNES Top Gear game I know that managing the gears is extremely important: there you can accelerate way faster while being at the 4th gear. Also, the frame you switch the gear at greatly influences the distance and speed you reach, because it would accelerate you differently depending on some tricky internal mechanics. Does gear switching have the same effects here? If yes, was it as carefully managed?
While I don't speedrun the first Top Gear game, the second game has a very big emphasis on staying in lower gears to gain most of your acceleration (namely, 1st gear). You don't accelerate as quickly in higher gears to get to your top speed as you would in the lower gears.
feos wrote:
From the first game I also noticed that if you reach a sharp turn with too high speed, for instance from having used nitro, you either get thrown off-road, or you have to brake not too lose too much speed to this. Isn't spending nitro only on (relatively) straight track segments faster?
In this game, unless you're on a snow stage that incorporates some sort of hydroplaning mechanic, turning while using a nitro doesn't really hinder your handling, especially if you've accounted for it beforehand.
feos wrote:
Was all the menuing optimized to death? I see tons of mashing there, and also that sometimes the game would just not react at certain buttons. If this run is to be redone and made more optimal, leaving any sloppiness in the menus would be disappointing.
It wasn't.
feos wrote:
How much time would wall glitch save overall?
A lot. I mention the entertainment value of this glitch in my last post, along with what might be the most entertaining way to perform it - while we don't know the true limitations of this glitch (e.g. where we can perform it, how fast or slow we need to go to perform it, how to clear an entire track with only one wall glitch, etc.), we know that it can be done, and that it can finish a track very quickly.
feos wrote:
Do all the cars have identical parameters that don't affect time?
I'm not sure if this is a car paint question, or if it is a AI question. Regarding the former, paint doesn't matter, and it's changed as a meme. Regarding the latter, AI is a very peculiar thing; from what makes sense in my mind, each AI will initially go as fast as a permitted, programmed constant top speed will allow it to go. If it is bumped from behind, and the AI increases it speed as a cause of it, it will stay at this new constant speed, without dropping any speed (unless it is stopped by getting bumped in front from either another AI or the player). I'd like to make a note here that this is speculation from the 15 years I've been casually playing this game, and not actual information found from reading code from the game itself. As much as I'd love to say I currently know the most about how this game operates, I have no knowledge of exploring the game's code.
feos wrote:
Is it correct that once you've entered the track using the password glitch, you get money just as a reward for quitting?
You get money from the Continue Country menu (at the sum of $10,000 per Country being skipped from Australasia). Using the password glitch is a method we use to force the game to give us a password, instead of having to put in a pre-made password with extra stuff. What's great about this is that we don't have to worry about people adding extra money to get better upgrades - we can just use arbitrary limitations set by the game itself to complete the game as fast as we can (and the limitations are good enough to where we can abuse some of the games flaws, more so than Dooty's TAS does).
feos wrote:
Can you guys upload TheRallyFTW's movie file to our userfiles so we could do proper comparison? If this run loses to some existing records, or is overall not optimal enough (for example, if some of us can easily and significantly improve it), it will have to be rejected.
...nah, you good fam. Seriously, though, I really only made the TAS as a proof of concept for speedrunning this game - while I wanted the quality of it to be as good as something that could be submitted to TASvideos, I didn't want to submit it here, because I knew there was still some room of improvement after finishing it. But more than this, the file is on a different computer, and on an outdated version of Bizhawk. If I were to recreate this TAS (which I barely have any interest in doing at the moment, never mind not having the time to do it at a reasonable pace), it'd already be a submission here. Shoot, maybe I've should - it'd be a waste not to, anyways. If you still want it in its current form, I could happily provide it for you, but I wouldn't want it to be an actual submission. Let me know if you'd like it.
Washed up Top Gear 2 player, here. Message me on Discord if you have any questions related to speedrunning or TASing the game. Discord: Rally#0001.
Posted: 9/4/2018 3:58 PM
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feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11268
Location: RU
NES TAS of 2011
Since this submission is already rejected, I don't particularly need your WIP as a reference. But it's still nice to have it for future.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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