Submission #8362: Tuffcracker & rodonic01's Arcade SegaSonic the Hedgehog in 10:33.75

This run aims to complete SegaSonic the Hedgehog as fast as possible using various tricks/glitches along the way.

Before I explain the run, let me give a quick overview of the game.

SegaSonic the Hedgehog (yes that is the actual name) is an arcade game that was released in 1993. The game was only ever released in Japan, however unused graphics of SatAM Robotnik found leftover in the game files suggests there was a planned localization for North American audiences. The game plays similar to Sonic 3D Blast, in an isometric pseudo-3D game style. You control one of three characters: Sonic the Hedgehog, Mighty the Armadillo, and Ray the Flying Squirrel, and your job is to navigate through 7 levels filled with traps and obstacles in order to stop Robo- I mean, Eggman's diabolical scheme. Your character is NOT controlled using a d-pad, but a trackball. This can sometimes make the game weird to play, especially if you're acclimated to a d-pad, and it also makes the game extremely difficult to properly emulate. The game is pretty straight-forward, as the only way you can go is forward, because behind you is another one of Eggman's diabolical traps (be it icicles, a collapsing floor, a slope you can clip into (if you know, you know), etc.), and ahead of you is an obstacle course of which you need to navigate. The game does not run on the usual "take damage, lose rings" system that we all know and love. It actually has a health system, where everytime you hit spikes or fall off the edge, you lose a portion of your health. You can regain health by collecting rings, and if you run out of health, then you have to insert a coin to continue or it's game over!

Now for my favorite part of the run:

Rings are a very valuable asset in SegaSonic due to the fact that they restore health and allow more room for error. However, this game, like most other Sonic games, has a score tally at the end of every level, save for Eggman's Tower. There, it will tally up the rings you've collected, and if you've collected a certain percentage of rings in the level, will give you bonus rings. But there's one tiny little issue with this: Rings take one frame to tally for every ring you've collected in the level. Since this is the case, rings are best avoided, since you have enough health to make it to the end with the damage boosts used in the run. 6 out of 7 levels can be beaten without collecting rings, and the minimum rings needed to beat the game is two. So two frames are lost over the course of the run, meanwhile several more frames are saved due to skipping rings.

After selecting your character, the game begins with a tutorial which can be skipped with the player 1 jump button. Then the game will play a roughly 10 second cutscene setting up the story of the game. After the cutscene, you are required to jump into the bars to break them, and then after walking through the doorway to the outside, you will be launched into the first level, Volcanic Vault.

This level is pretty straightforward, however some things happen that are not intended. When running down the first slope at the start, a boulder is supposed to be following right behind you. But if you have optimal movement and proper positioning, you will activate a glitch called the "boulder glitch." After the slope, spinning the trackball will speed up the mini-cutscene of Sonic being launched upwards by said boulder, saving over half a second. Then you open some grates, climb the bridge that collapsed, avoid some lava geysers, and finally, end the level.

Icy Isle is... well, an ice level. Gaining forward momentum is slower than the last level, and the ground is very slippery, which can lead to you falling off the edge. In fact, I do fall off the edge towards the monkey bars section. Even though falling off takes away half of my health, getting spawned back on the other side is faster than climbing on the bars. There is nothing else that is really of note here.

Desert Dodge features twisters behind you, sinkholes spawning in the sand, and quicksand! There are several sandpits which you can EASILY fall into and die, costing almost 5 seconds. However, there is a tiny part on the edge of the pit that allows you to walk past unscathed. Other than that, there is also not anything else of real note here.

Trap Tower has very big rolling cylinders that attempt to crush Sonic if he does not move quickly. It also features these square crushers with spikes that also try to crush Sonic. Normally, you have to wait for a couple of them to raise up to be able to move on. However, there is a very small spot on the edge of the pathway where you can run right past ALL of the crushers and save about a second over waiting for them to raise back up! There is one spot where you need to move in to dodge the electric poles that come out of the ground, and get back into the same position on the edge, which is certainly not easy as one small mistake can lead to either you hitting the crusher, or falling off the edge.

After leaving Trap Tower, one of the cylinders comes out of the tower and starts a chain reaction of the floor completely falling away. You have to navigate throughout the pathway without falling out of the sky, while avoiding boulders and outrunning the collapsing floor. After making it past some fiery boulders, you come to the first and only boss fight in the game. However, instead of fighting the boss normally, we're going to use a trick to cheese the fight! After getting up to the boss platform, I take damage from the electric fence. After landing, I bump into the boss to get a bounce back, and then I jump into a precise position into the boss, which gets me stuck bouncing between two invisible walls on the boss, which gets all of the hits in very quickly and eventually ends the level! Taking damage at an earlier point will mess up the trick, so we want to not take damage before we get up to the platform.

After Sonic gets jinxed by Eggman, he falls down into a little Water Way down below. Down there, there are some Wild turtles and little badniks that reside in these gray blocks. We can jump into these blocks to break them, which rewards us with rings. But a speedrunner named SpectralPlatypus showed me that we can actually use these blocks to boost us forward! By jumping above the blocks with forward momentum, changing momentum completely backwards right before hitting it can give a massive boost forwards, which is much faster than walking! All in all, this trick saved 20 frames over not using the boosts! After climbing out of the water, we climb up onto the ledge and come to the first of two unavoidable rings. Performing frame perfect jumps on the little rafts in the next Wild Water Way allow for quicker forward movement, as just walking on them slows you down since the rafts are going the opposite direction. We climb another ledge, collect the last unavoidable ring, wait for the next sequence of rafts, perform the same frame perfect jumps, and finally finish the level!

There is nothing really of note here, as the path up to Eggman is pretty straightforward. After getting to Eggman, he presses a button to blow up the tower, and we have 20 seconds to get out before it does! Collecting rings during this sequence does not matter at this point, since we do not get a score tally upon leaving. Once we exit the doorway, we are greeted with the ending cutscene and SegaSonic the Hedgehog is officially beaten!

I could not find another SegaSonic submission on TASvideos, so I think this is the first one! I believe that this run could be further optimized, maybe with better movement and better trackball management. I want to give a massive thank you to:

WAAAAAAAAAAAH

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.

Darkman425: There was one part that I felt a bit odd to me. There's the section of Desert Dodge that has the areas of sand that slow down movement. I was curious if jumping over them would allow for some faster speed by going over them. Turns out the sand magically snaps the player out of the air and into the slowdown sand and thus jumping doesn't yield any speed benefit in that section. That answered my concern.

Everything seems well done. Accepting to Standard.

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