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This is a Tool Assisted Speedrun of the Competition Levels in Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Azure Lake, Balloon Park, Chrome Gadget, Desert Palace, Endless Mine. I searched on TASvideos, SDA, and Youtube, and I was surprised to find out that nobody submitted a serious attempt at this. Since I thought it can be interesting, I decided to give it a try.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: <Gens v2.11 Movie 9Z>
  • Contains Speed/Entertainment Tradeoffs
  • Collect No Items
  • No Death
  • Takes No Damage
  • Uses No Password

Comments

In this Speedrun I beat the 5 competition levels in Sonic 3 & Knuckles as fast as possible, while trying to retain a decent level of variety. The usual Sonic tricks are used, as 8-rev spindashes in 8 frames, jumps inside loops, and so on. I play in Grand Prix mode with No Items, alone. This allows me to do everything I want in all the 5 levels. While Tails and Knuckles can be faster than Sonic in some levels, I chose to do a "Sonic Only" speedrun. If feedback is good I might consider another run with Tails or Knuckles.

Stage by stage comments

Azure Lake

Pretty much straight forward, with the exception of the first lap, due to the different speed (because of the Spin Dash).

Balloon Park

This is more interesting. Also because of the moving bar, I decided to add some variety here. The result may be suboptimal, but more entertaining, in my opinion.

Chrome Gadget, Desert Palace, Endless Mine

Nothing extraordinary going on here, I played these levels as well as I could.

Other comments

<Explain here things the audience would probably like to see> The Competition Levels don't get much love. This is the chance to see some good Speedrunning through them.
<Explain also things that could be improved in your movie> This could live with fewer entertainment tradeoffs, but I like them. I think my strategies are optimal for the most part.
<You may also suggest screenshots.> http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/2329/69424253wy2.png
mmbossman: Quoting the Rules: "A speed-oriented movie must beat all existing records If your movie is going to beat something, be sure it beats it. If your tool-assisted movie is slower than the non-tool-assisted world record of the game you play, your movie will almost certainly be rejected." As is mentioned in the thread, this movie fails to beat several of the records documented elsewhere. Thus, rejecting.

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Posted: 2/4/2009 10:18 AM
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TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2168: nineko's Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles "competition levels" in 02:57.75
Posted: 2/4/2009 10:25 AM
(Edited: 2/4/2009 11:10 AM)
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nineko
Banned User
Joined: 8/2/2008
Posts: 420
Location: italy
All of my previous TASes have been rejected. This time I tried harder, and I really think this is at least decent. Not perfect? Maybe. Feel free to obsolete it eventually. But I felt that the Competition Levels deserved some love. Encode. edit: fixed the encode
Gone.
Posted: 2/4/2009 10:30 AM
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Miles
Joined: 11/21/2006
Posts: 94
While watching it, I compared the times to the ones at the Sonic Center, and the only one you beat was Balloon Park... Is Sonic just slower on almost every stage? Also, isn't the max amount of revs 6?
Posted: 2/4/2009 10:44 AM
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oerg866
Joined: 1/9/2009
Posts: 4
Though I don't trust those "records" you're talking about -- there is no proof at all, and even if there were screenshots, you can fake them. Anyway, I really liked this TAS and also how you abused Baloon Park :D
Posted: 2/4/2009 11:09 AM
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Miles
Joined: 11/21/2006
Posts: 94
Not trusting the top records is fine (in fact, there's several I don't entirely trust either...). However; 11 people have faster Azure Lake times 22 people have faster Chrome Gadget times (but I think this uses Tails, which I'm assuming has an advantage) 7 people have faster Desert Palace times Unless there's some huge conspiracy, I would think that at least some people have faster times. And most importantly, there's videos on the site of faster Azure Lake and Desert Palace times using Sonic.
Posted: 2/4/2009 11:37 AM
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nineko
Banned User
Joined: 8/2/2008
Posts: 420
Location: italy
And you are randomly bashing me, because? Did I do something wrong to you? Tell me, because it seems so. It seems that the only purpose of your life is to see this submission rejected. Now that's constructive criticism! You have 4 posts, dude, you used literally half of them to say that someone is better than me. Well, thanks. All I know is that there aren't speedruns of the competition levels neither here nor on SDA, so I decided to make one, and it doesn' t look half bad. You're welcome to get those people to submit a run and obsolete mine, of course. But apparently nobody ever bothered to make a serious submission here, so for now my one is the only serious effort in that direction. Also, 2:06:91 < 2:21:18. Let's compare things in the same category. If "Ghost" submitted a 5-levels run now, my run would be 14 seconds faster. Therefore better. Furthermore, I wrote this even in the submission itself: "Contains Speed/Entertainment Tradeoffs".
Gone.
Posted: 2/4/2009 12:00 PM
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mike89
Active player (304)
Joined: 8/8/2005
Posts: 296
Location: NSW, Australia
nineko wrote:
You have 4 posts, dude, you used literally half of them to say that someone is better than me. Well, thanks.
Does this mean you'll take me seriously because I have 153? If so, listen up.
nineko wrote:
Also, 2:06:91 < 2:21:18. Let's compare things in the same category.
Right. Let's compare things in the same category indeed. 2:06:91 > 1:58:77. (The Total category also adds the single lap total.)
nineko wrote:
Furthermore, I wrote this even in the submission itself: "Contains Speed/Entertainment Tradeoffs".
Right, but the only level you said might have been suboptimal was Balloon Park (which, ironically, is probably the closest to optimal of all five).
nineko wrote:
But apparently nobody ever bothered to make a serious submission here, so for now my one is the only serious effort in that direction.
While this may be true, it doesn't mean your run should be accepted for publication.
Posted: 2/4/2009 12:11 PM
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mmbossman
Experienced player (828)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
GBx TAS of 2008
nineko wrote:
And you are randomly bashing me, because?
He's not bashing you, nowhere in his posts did he make any sort of personal attack. One of the first things you should do before submitting a TAS is to make sure it beats non-assisted times, especially if it's for a well known series like sonic games.
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Posted: 2/4/2009 12:13 PM
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nineko
Banned User
Joined: 8/2/2008
Posts: 420
Location: italy
mmbossman wrote:
One of the first things you should do before submitting a TAS is to make sure it beats non-assisted times, especially if it's for a well known series like sonic games.
I did, here and on SDA. I didn't know about that other website :(
Gone.
Posted: 2/4/2009 12:23 PM
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mmbossman
Experienced player (828)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
GBx TAS of 2008
And all he did was point out the existence of TSC, and was in no way bashing you. He brought up very valid points in a very approachable way, and you immediately jumped on him because you assume he has some sort of personal vendetta against you, when it's much more likely that he just really likes sonic.
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Posted: 2/4/2009 12:30 PM
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nineko
Banned User
Joined: 8/2/2008
Posts: 420
Location: italy
Maybe I should just give up altogether. I spent countless hours on this run, playing everything in frame advance mode trying several times looking for the optimal strategy, but apparently I suck anyway. Since this submission isn't optimal, my only chance is that it's considered at least entertaining, but I already know it won't be the case... Oh well, I tried.
Gone.
Posted: 2/4/2009 1:38 PM
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Randil
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I didn't know that there were competition levels in S3, so this is the first time I've seen them. Here are my thoughts on the TAS: Although the run itself was mostly dashing, it was short and the levels were varying enough to keep me entertained. I'm not a big Sonic-fan, but I think a competition levels TAS might be a good addition to this site. One thing that bothered me a little was that there were only stuff happening on half the screen, but of course that's just the way these levels work. Oh well. In terms of quality, not having played much Sonic but watched a whole lot of TASes, I thought this held good quality overall (I couldn't spot any mistakes in the run). It's probably not as optimized as the other Sonic runs on this site, but still pretty optimized. Hopefully those guys at Sonic center can share some of their strategies, if any of those faster times were with Sonic. Anyway, I vote 7.2 for entertainment (as I said, I'm not a big Sonic fan), and abstain for techinical.
My own page on this site.
Posted: 2/4/2009 2:08 PM
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Captain_Forehead
Player (79)
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Isn't the game called Sonic R? I'm probably thinking of another game.
Posted: 2/4/2009 2:17 PM
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Sir_VG
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Posts: 1913
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Captain Forehead wrote:
Isn't the game called Sonic R? I'm probably thinking of another game.
That's a whole nother game. As for this run, I'm sorry, but I can't give it high marks, given that The Sonic Center has runs with faster times and video proof of it too (Azure Lake with Sonic beats your time in your TAS). And with 4/5 levels beating you, I'm sorry, but there isn't enough speed/entertainment trade off to make it acceptable to me, especially given how short this run is. Link to videos: http://www.soniccenter.org/videos/sonic_3
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Posted: 2/7/2009 6:54 AM
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FractalFusion
Editor, Expert player (2073)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
Glitchy TAS of 2013 Gameboy TAS of 2013 PSX TASer of 2010
nineko wrote:
I spent countless hours on this run, playing everything in frame advance mode trying several times looking for the optimal strategy,
If you are spending "countless hours", yet have only 1200 rerecords, something is not right. Perhaps it is your keyboard controls. I wrote a guide some time ago explaining where keys should be located: http://tasvideos.org/GenericTips.html . Perhaps it is your knowledge of the game. Remember that knowledge is everything. Persistence is nothing without knowledge. It is highly recommended to know a game before making a TAS of it. This includes watching the existing S3&K runs carefully, and searching for existing records, especially if the game has a timer mode. Some of it will include trial and error by TAS, but as you TAS, you gain experience, and it is so much easier if you know the game.
Posted: 12/7/2011 7:47 PM
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TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... blech, stale!