If you're very familiar with the previous run, you might want to to watch the new run before reading about it for surprises.
- Emulator used: Gens 11a + Camhack + SolidityViewer + (partial)HitboxDisplay + LUA HUD for Genesis Sonic games (I recommend using a normal emulator when watching it for the first time)
- Aims for fastest ingame time
- Takes damage to save time
- Controls 2 players
- Abuses programming errors
- Manipulates Luck
- Contains Speed/entertainment tradeoffs
One thing was clear to me after finishing the "Sonic 1" run - I would never TAS another Sonic game again. And what happened? I TASed another Sonic game. It started at the very end of my last project when I was bored and just felt like trying to shave off some frames in the first level of this game. After saving a handful of those I still wasn't motivated to take on the run as a whole, then I found a timesaver of half a second at the end of the level - still not motivated, but then after another half a second timesaver at the middle of the level that pushed the time down another ingame second I did start to consider taking it after all. 4 months later the total ingame improvement became 3956 frames (65.93 seconds) with the following breakdowns.
Timetable (the times are correctly read as minutes:seconds::frames)
| Act | New time | Old time | Frames saved | Total frames saved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emerald Hill 1 | 0:15::34 | 0:16::42 | 68 | 68 |
| Emerald Hill 2 | 0:33::31 | 0:33::39 | 8 | 76 |
| Chemical Plant 1 | 0:16::33 | 0:16::50 | 17 | 93 |
| Chemical Plant 2 | 0:31::59 | 0:32::46 | 47 | 140 |
| Aquatic Ruin 1 | 0:12::50 | 0:16::30 | 220 | 360 |
| Aquatic Ruin 2 | 0:27::16 | 0:30::09 | 173 | 533 |
| Casino Night 1 | 0:19::32 | 0:23::35 | 243 | 776 |
| Casino Night 2 | 0:44::54 | 0:47::50 | 176 | 952 |
| Hill Top 1 | 0:24::25 | 0:27::10 | 165 | 1117 |
| Hill Top 2 | 0:38::32 | 0:43::44 | 312 | 1429 |
| Mystic Cave 1 | 0:22::12 | 0:23::19 | 67 | 1496 |
| Mystic Cave 2 | 0:32::11 | 0:35::14 | 183 | 1679 |
| Oil Ocean 1 | 0:16::42 | 0:20::32 | 230 | 1909 |
| Oil Ocean 2 | 0:29::20 | 0:30::09 | 49 | 1958 |
| Metropolis 1 | 0:31::16 | 0:32::26 | 70 | 2028 |
| Metropolis 2 | 0:12::23 | 0:13::36 | 73 | 2101 |
| Metropolis 3 | 0:32::38 | 0:59::41 | 1623 | 3724 |
| Sky Chase | 2:05::57 | 2:05::57 | 0 | 3724 |
| Wing Fortress | 1:30::08 | 1:33::45 | 217 | 3941 |
| Death Egg | 0:40::30 | 0:40::45 | 15 | 3956 |
- New total time: 11:38::23
- Old total time: 12:44::19
Level-by-level details
Emerald Hill 1
Main improvements came from 2 maneuvers. The first one was jumping to the spring board after taking the shoes, which required some subpixel positioning before that box in order to work. The second was about gaining slightly more speed and different positioning at the loops which allowed me to run through the springboard, then by positioning yourself correctly (this is off camera) you could run up the hills that would normally launch you into the air.
Emerald Hill 2
A small improvement here, despite taking 2 different routes than last time - since they were almost identical in terms of speed.
Chemical Plant 1
This act was basically my only previous experience with the game, spending around 10 hours here learning about the physics in this game and ultimately made a run where most of it was used in the previous TAS. This time around, with much more experience, I brought some extra touch to this act by doing many things slightly better than last time.
Chemical Plant 2
Around 35 frames were saved by getting a higher horizontal speed when jumping to the platforms that goes in circles. Some extra nitpicking brought the time down 1 ingame second.
Aquatic Ruin 1
Using Tails at the beginning, then used the new loop zip found by skychase.
Aquatic Ruin 2
Used the zip found by skychase and Felipe.
Casino Night 1
Used the zip discovered by GlitchMan resulting in a 4 seconds improvement.
Casino Night 2
Lots of changes throughout the level. Much time was gained by spindashing into the loops, something you might've seen in Felipe's Perfect Bonus run (I found it independently of him though), which also allowed for a route change early on. Tails' behavior after losing control over him was extremely weird:). At the end I choosed, like in the previous run, to hit the capsule with Tails', losing 10 ingame frames. It could be seen as both "real time"-saver (which proved to be very important later on in the run) and a speed/entertainment tradeoff.
Hill Top 1
Much time was saved by better movement in the beginning, then I found a way to extend the zip a bit. It's not too far away that I could've zipped even further but in order to even extend it as much as I did some rather extreme positioning had to be done so there was hardly any room to do things differently.
Hill Top 2
Slightly better gameplay in the beginning saved me some frames after the rising-lava room. I was then fooling around with different way to improve the next part, when I unexpectedly found a way to cut more than 4 seconds off that section. Some new maneuvering at the last springboards also saved a decent amount of frames. The boss fight was just as fast as in the previous run even though Tails didn't take damage like before.
Mystic Cave 1
Some better precision up until around half of the act. Then I found a faster route for Sonic that saved almost 1 second.
Mystic Cave 2
30 frames saved before the boss, then I used GlitchMan's trick to have Tails' dealing hits to it earlier than supposed.
Oil Ocean 1
The only reason for this big improvement is building up more speed by better slope jumps, and then keeping that speed much longer. Sonic is not far away from staying ahead of the screen all the way until the end.
Oil Ocean 2
Not much to say here. All savings came from just going crazy in the oil.
Metropolis 1
Smoother gameplay through the first part of the level lead to me saving 46 frames before the crusher zip, then the new way of scrolling down screen took care of most of the other frames.
Metropolis 2
Went down the same platform but zipped at a different place.
Metropolis 3
Used the zip discovered by GlitchMan to get through the left side of the screen and got to the boss 26,5 seconds earlier than in the previous run. Then I saved 32 frames at the boss which was mostly due to Tails taking damage early.
Sky Chase
Autoscroller - not my favorite thing to TAS. Just did what felt was best at the moment, and of course preserved the the nice little maneuvers at the middle of the act.
Wing Fortress
3 frames saved up until taking damage at the propeller. This time at the appearing/disappearing platforms I needed to do a short pause to make them appear at the right time. At the second to last booster I utilized a glitch which sets Sonic in a state where he, among other things - such as not being able to spindsh under normal circumstances, reacts with a slope in such a way that if helands on a slope with a certain angle, then he'll keep moving in that angle until he jumps. To learn more about the glitch, read this post plus the two below. I was also wrong about one thing, it did save time using a spindash at the place I mentioned. In the boss fight, I needed to spindash to the left at the beginning since otherwise Sonic would be too high up to be able to deliver the final blow.
Death Egg
1 frame gained between the bosses by better positioning. And finally defeated Robotnik 16 frames faster. 2 frames where lost after that, tough, since the boss was higher up when being defeated and the end sequence isn't triggered until he's still on the floor - but I can give that away, I'm just glad it's over.
Thanks to
The authors to the previous run: FuzZerd and Sonikkustar, great run that I learned much from.
marzojr for his LUA HUD script containing lots of useful stuff, especially the jump predictor which I can say for sure both made the run better and cut the time it took to create by many weeks. He also shared useful behind-the-scene info about the game making it more obvious how to handle certain parts, and he helped with various other stuff throughout the making of the run.
GlitchMan for his username-prefix discoveries.
Quietust and Nitsuja for making the first two TASes of this game, which definitely have been helpful for the later runs.
Upthorn for finding the route in EH1 that was used in the previous run.
werster for finding out that it was possible to defeat the WF boss using the slope glitch.
Felipe and skychase for finding 2 different zips in ARZ
feos: HD encode with CamHack (2 screens) and selective blending. Check it out. Thanks Nanogyth!
adelikat: Replacing submission file on behalf of the author. Improvements were as follows:
Aquaric Ruin 1 was improved by 176 ingame frames.
Aquatic Ruin 2 was improved by 146 ingame frames.
Wing Fortress was improved by 159 ingame frames.
All this resulted in a ingame improvement of 481 frames and an input file which became 421 frames faster.
Mukki: Judging...
Mukki: Fantastic improvement. Easily accepted.
Guga: Processing...