Submission #4735: Fog's GC Tony Hawk's Underground 2 in 08:26.17

Watch the spectacle that is the World Destruction Tour, as Tony Hawk, Bam Margera, and a bunch of other idiots break shit across the world, defying physics and sanity in more ways than one!

I was itching to do a TAS of a Tony Hawk game, and eventually decided to do THUG2's Story Mode. The easy difficulty is chosen here for multiple reasons:

The route is similar to the RTA route of the game, but with more optimizations and TAS only tricks.

Buttslap is a glitch in the which allows you to get extra height off an elevated surface. As soon as you start falling from the edge of the elevated surface, if you do a flip/grab trick and mash ollie (jump), it'll exponentially increase the height of your jump by tricking the game to ollie multiple times. You will hear multiple board snaps while doing a buttslap. Most notably used in Berlin to go from the the roof of the mini-skatepark to reach Paulie (the wheelchair kid), but also used in Skatopia to gain quick height.

Quick turns allow you to quickly change direction while on your skateboard and keep the momentum. It's done by tapping the switch stance button + down twice in succession. Used in Australia and New Orleans

A new glitch I found while making the TAS, which allows you to skip the waiting period between activating the arcade mission and being able to actually move. The glitch works by somehow making your character bail after activating the Arcade goal. You're not normally able to trigger the Arcade (or any goal) while doing a trick or in a combo. However, if you ollie right before you activate the Arcade machine, your character will continue moving forward after activating it. This glitch is used in Australia, as the Arcade machine is near a police officer who will knock you down if you go near him. Could potentially work in Boston and Barcelona as the Arcade machine is beside Out of Bounds triggers.

Perhaps the most important glitch in the game, as it allows you to skip the end missions of Australia, New Orleans, and Skatopia. If you complete the last goal to continue in front of either Tony or Bam (depending on who is on the level) and quickly talk to them, a text message which would normally pop up to progress you to the next checkpoint will appear at the beginning of the last set of goals. In Australia and New Orleans, pressing "Lets Get Out of Here" will bring you straight to the next level. In Skatopia, it will bring you to the final mission, skipping Bam's mission of setting up the fireworks.

Training is completely unnecessary to complete the story mode, so I change levels as soon as possible to go to Boston. In this run, you never actually see Training as a black screen appears where the menu would have normally been.

I access the Arcade machine as soon as possible, and score the required points as I make my way to Jeers to find Jesse James. I must still do an ollie for the stats earned to properly apply to the character. The stats are used across the secret skaters, so it's important to get the stats applied. I switch to Jesse as soon as possible, as he is the fastest character (but difficult to control) in the level. Jesse is physically unable to bail. Period. I use this to our advantage multiple times in the level to either change the direction of Jesse or to land combos. I must find Ben Franklin to unlock his goals to beat the level as fast as possible, and then switch back to Jesse. The route diverges from RTA as normally Ben is used up to Combo on the High Seas, then switch to Bob Burnquist to complete the level. Here, I substitute a goal so I do not have to use Bob at all.

The route is almost identical to RTA, but with more optimizations and good placement of bull dung which allows me to complete the goal earlier than usual. Barcelona is the only level which requires the focus combos to begin and end in focus. The rest of the levels which do a focus-related goal only need focus to be applied at the end of the combo before landing. I immediately switch from the Bullfighter back to Rodney Mullen upon unlocking him as Rodney's stats are much better than the bullfighter's.

This level is where the most notable use of Buttslaps can be found. I use it in this level to jump onto the roof of one building to get to the roof of the other building where Paulie is waiting to be unlocked. Using buttslaps as done in this run is TAS only, as frame perfect inputs are required to get the height needed to get on the roofs. The natas spins are done in such a way that I can transfer between poles as fast as possible without touching the ground. The focus combos here only require me to use them at the end of the combo before landing, and landing the combo clean. Route is once again similar to RTA strategies but with more optimizations.

The first level where the Text Message Warp is used. Allows us to skip the final set of goals in the level, saving about a minute. A quick turn is used here to position myself to focus double kickflip over the cars. I also use the Arcade scorelist skip here to save 50 frames which allows me to start the goal sooner. The route is similar to RTA, with more optimizations.

The float can spawn in one of two places, the most optimal place is directly to the left of the skater upon starting the level, with the second spawn being much slower at the opposite side of the level. Luckily for me, the float spawned in the best position. I use a quick turn to quickly position myself to knock off some more skulls. For the drop into the pit, the pit can launch you in any of four directions. One frame off and you can potentially exit completely opposite of where you want to go. I use another Buttslap here for entertainment purposes as I must wait for the cutscene to start after raising the dead. I also use the Text Message Warp here to skip the final mission of the level. Once again, we stick relatively close to the RTA route.

The final level of the game. I use Buttslaps multiple times in the level to get some quick height to make it to the weather baloon and to do a natas spin on the top of the tree. Doing an acid drop allows me to get to the Billboard faster than simply jumping off. Bigfoot has a faster speed when doing a manual, which is why he's able to go up the hill with ease. I use retry goal multiple times to quickly knock out some goals in the same area as the original failed goal. The Text Message Warp is once again used here to skip one of the final set of missions of the game. However, it does not skip all of the missions. I must still escape from Skatopia with both Tony Hawk and the default skater. Normally in RTA, you collect all of the dogs to escape, where as I only use two dogs to barely escape (0.01 seconds left). The final mission is simply exiting the level as fast as possible.

As far as possible improvements, the Arcade scorelist skip might work in Boston and Barcelona, but was too far into the movie when it was found, and would only save about a second and a half total. Otherwise, the only potential improvements would be in better movement in some areas.

Nahoc: Judging...

Nahoc: Alright! Even though we usually prefer movies done on the hardest difficulty possible, this TAS seems like a special case. I'll accept it for now, but if someone happens to do a new TAS on the hardest difficulty that looks better and whatnot, we'll see what we'll do. Good job!

Fog: Publishing...