Submission #8855: Tuffcracker, rodonic01 & SpectralPlatypus's Arcade SegaSonic the Hedgehog in 10:23.98

This run aims to complete SegaSonic the Hedgehog as fast as possible using various tricks/glitches along the way. This also improves upon the currently published run by 410 frames.

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 Japan in 1993. The game was not released outside of Japan, but there are SatAM Robotnik sprites that are buried in the game files which suggests there may have been a planned North America localization at some point. 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, etc.), and ahead of you is an obstacle course 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! A lot of your progression is also dependent on Sonic's position and the position of the camera, which can be abused to skip certain parts where you might need to wait for the camera.

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. All of the levels can technically be beaten without collecting rings, however the saves in the level with the unavoidable rings wastes too much time to be worth it. So two frames are lost over the course of the run, meanwhile several more frames are saved due to skipping rings. Jumping over rings does not cost much, if any momentum at all, so you don't have to worry about weaving around 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. However, fellow TASer and SegaSonic RTA runner SpectralPlatypus (who will be referred to as Spectral) discovered a way to clip through the bars! By running into the bars in a very specific way at the edge near the lava, you can get knocked backwards THROUGH them. This did not initially save any time, but with more optimized movement, it saved a single frame. (Remember! Every frame counts! plus it looks cool) 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," where the boulders that are supposed to be behind you are invisible. 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. An extra frame was saved at this point as well. Instead of opening the gates, Spectral once again discovered a way to get past them! If you jump into the corner of the gates in a specific way (similar to the intro bars), you can clip right through the gate. The movement at this part was optimized by rodonic01, and saved over 200 frames! Balancing on the edge of the bridge before it falls also saves a tiny bit of time, and after climbing it and evading some lava geysers, the level is complete!

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. Before I get to the monkey bars, I jump and decide to take a quick dip in the not-a-pool and I fall off the edge to my doom. However, since the camera has scrolled far enough, I respawn on the other side quicker than the previous strategy for this area! This was found by Spectral as well, and again saved mere frames. 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. 12 frames were saved in this level from tighter execution and abusing the edges of the walkway to go faster. Other than that, there is not anything else of 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. Unfortunately, no time was saved here.

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. There is a section where you are supposed to grab some vines and watch Sonic swing on them for a little bit. However, we can skip this by falling off the edge. When we fall off the edge, we get an intentional game over, so we have to insert a coin to continue the game. This places us on the other side of the vines, allowing us to skip them. This saves a second and a half, or 91 frames over taking the vines normally. There is actually a faster method that involves spawning in the second player after you kill off the first player, however, as this is a "one player" run, this is not shown, but it does save another second over the shown method. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Spectral discovered we could abuse the ramp before the vines to launch and fall off the edge of the platform without having to wait for the animation to play out. This makes us die quicker, and also lets us start scrolling the screen on the first possible frame. After being chased by rolling boulders, we jump off the edge early (again, discovered by Spectral) and we skip the animation of the first catapult/spoon launching Sonic to the other side and saving more time. This trick is known as Spoon Skip.

Before we get to the boss, we encounter some fiery boulders that we are supposed to navigate around. But going around them is too slow! Spectral showed me a trick that involves going inbetween the boulders, which saved yet another 15 frames. After the 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! Before getting up to the boss platform, I hit the fiery boulder to take damage. 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! Hitting the fiery boulder was 14 frames faster than the old method of hitting the electric fence. 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. Thanks to Spectral, we managed to improve this level by 86 frames with a more optimized boss fight and the two new skips!

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 Spectral 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! We also discovered a trick I call Carl Boost, where you can use the turtles to boost the same way as the blocks, although it is much more difficult because of their smaller hitbox. 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. After climbing up and collecting the last unavoidable ring, we can make a blind jump onto the next set of rafts and finish the level! The blind jump saved half a second over the old method of waiting. 58 frames were saved in total in this level.

There is nothing really of note here, as the path up to Eggman is pretty straightforward. We have to wait for some crushers, but we still managed to save 19 frames! 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! 16 more frames were saved during the final descent.

I believe there may be more tricks we haven't discovered yet, but it may be unlikely due to the fact that we ran this game over with a fine-tooth comb. I would like to thank:

WAAAAAAH

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.

ThunderAxe31: File replaced with a 16 frames improvement.

ThunderAxe31: Un-claiming.

ThunderAxe31: Re-claiming for judging.

ThunderAxe31: Accepting as improvement of the current publication.

EZGames69: Processing...