(Link to video)
Submission Text Full Submission Page
Objectives:
  • Emulator used: Gens 11b + Camhack + SolidityViewer + (partial)HitboxDisplay + LUA HUD for Genesis Sonic games
  • Aims for fastest in-game time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • No take any ring and 10-ring TV
  • No deaths
All equipment mentioned here had important participation. After finishing each zone, Tee-N-Tee was commissioned to make one last improvement to each zone and was improved about 1 minute of this another.
Table of times
ZoneTime (mm:ss::ff)FramesPlayer
Emerald Hill Zone 10:18::431123Tee-N-Tee
Emerald Hill Zone 20:35::152115Tee-N-Tee
Chemical Plant Zone 10:14::47887Tee-N-Tee
Chemical Plant Zone 20:34::562096Hat/Tee-N-Tee
Aquatic Ruin Zone 10:12::52772Tee-N-Tee
Aquatic Ruin Zone 20:28::271707Tee-N-Tee
Casino Night Zone 10:16::25985Tee-N-Tee
Casino Night Zone 20:35::342134Hat/Tee-N-Tee
Hill Top Zone 10:25::371537Tee-N-Tee
Hill Top Zone 20:45::262726Tee-N-Tee/WST
Mystic Cave Zone 10:27::411661Hat/Tee-N-Tee
Mystic Cave Zone 20:33::151995Tee-N-Tee
Oil Ocean Zone 10:16::561016Tee-N-Tee
Oil Ocean Zone 20:29::251765Tee-N-Tee
Metropolis Zone 10:30::521852Hat/Tee-N-Tee
Metropolis Zone 20:20::381238Tee-N-Tee
Metropolis Zone 30:47::172837Hat/Tee-N-Tee
Sky Chase Zone2:05::577557skychase
Wing Fortress Zone1:21::084868Tee-N-Tee
Death Egg Zone0:40::282428Hat/Tee-N-Tee
Total12:01::3943299S2K Team
Details by each zone
Emerald Hill Zone 1
The first route was planned by Aglar here, after Tee-N-Tee improve his moves touching Invincibility-TV and avoid possible damages more forward for not lose speed.
Emerald Hill Zone 2
This route was planned by Aglar too, after Tee-N-Tee improve his moves, avoiding losing speed in some situations.
Chemical Plant Zone 1
Is applied the level-wrap discovered by Tee-N-Tee but with Knuckles you must go more forward for get sufficient speed. (Sonic can get this speed more fastly)
Chemical Plant Zone 2
Here Knuckles can jump in the inclination for do a zip (discovered by Hat) and avoid the rings are down. After, we doing a second zip using the floating platform for reach the battle area.
Aquatic Ruin Zone 1
Tee-N-Tee do the same zip used in Sonic 2 TAS movie. NO HAVE DIFFERENCES HERE REALLY.
Aquatic Ruin Zone 2
Tee-N-Tee do the zip discovered by skychase and Felipe used in Sonic 2 TAS. But by reason of level structure isn't possible do the same moves. Instead of that, wait a few frames to do the zip to the right and level-wrap. Tee-N-Tee have applied the Pauses-Trick and discovered and alternate boss-glitch where is the same glitch but you must hit him 1 frame after he stop moving.
Casino Night Zone 1
Tee-N-Tee (again) does a zip and level-wrap by falling between the spikes. However, is necessary a short wait to do a jump and be in a good position, otherwise Knuckles would stay trapped.
Casino Night Zone 2
For Kunckles is easy to do this level-wrap. The same technique to CN1. And you remember the best fast move to climb with Knuckles.
[<b] [<b] [<b] [<b] [c>] [c>] [c>]
When you reach the battle area, you can hit the boss a little before it is visible, another advantage of using this level-wrap.
Hill Top Zone 1
The route was improved for Tee-N-Tee and here was possible to use the same zip using a spindash to delay the camera and avoid some rings.
Hill Top Zone 2
Almost the same route making some changes and techniques to prevent the rings, as advancing a bit buried in the ground to avoid 6 rings. However, was impossible to use the zip due to the structure of the map (a stupid invisible object placed there)
Mystic Cave Zone 1
First it was improved by Hat, but after Tee-N-Tee adjust the last details. Using almost the same route harnessing the Knuckles's power of flight for overfly the bridge.
Mystic Cave Zone 2
Thanks to a label-wrap discovered by skychase was immediately possible to reach the boss and destroyed him fastly.
Oil Ocean Zone 1
Tee-N-Tee use the same route taking oil even a little earlier. NO HAVE MANY DIFFERENCES HERE REALLY.
Oil Ocean Zone 2
Use the same route. Sometimes Knuckles quickly flew to stop and make a spindash at maximum speed. NO HAVE DIFFERENCES HERE REALLY.
Metropolis Zone 1
There is a great abuse through structures but is the only way to prevent rings besides being faster than a normal route.
Metropolis Zone 2
We can't take damage without barrier. So the level-wrap took more time and we can't take TV-rings. Tee-N-Tee managed to improve the time here. (The old path was climb to top.)
Metropolis Zone 3
Here we haven't second player, an alternative zip is used to do the same level-wrap. Also thanks to Kiske was ahead with his submission, we have improved boss battle.
Sky Chase Zone
This was done by Sky Chase and I liked a good idea not take rings and not attack enemies.
Wing Fortress Zone
Tee-N-Tee discovered a very useful zip to quickly pass the all level.The boss is facing the same way.
Death Egg Zone
Knuckles's jump is enough to attack the boss as in S2, waiting a little the first hit. WELL THOUGHT Tee-N-Tee
Another details
It was only possible in some zones where we face the boss when Knuckles was at the upper limit of the level. This made the game recognize a higher upper limit and Knuckles only had to move the camera up to quickly remove the animals from the capsule.
Possible improvements
This submission shows a lot to improve the project S2K Any%. Of course that could be potential improvements, some zip or level-wrap undiscovered, while not required to take rings.
Suggest Screenshot [dead links removed]
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58311 <- I suggest this

Samsara: Well, this is gonna be interesting.
Samsara: It was, indeed, interesting.
This run has 34 votes: 18 Yes, 12 No, and 4 Meh, with a 58% on the submissions page. Those are pretty telling numbers, but what's more telling are the posts in the thread.
While there are cries of "Why are you voting No when you were entertained?" in response to these telling posts, that doesn't make them invalid at all. The fact of the matter is that this run, while sufficiently optimized, bears an uncanny resemblance to the any% run of the game that's currently on the Workbench, being judged just as this run is. As a lot of people have said, the horizontal underflows and the zips remove most of the point of the run. While yes, it's fast and it avoids rings, it removes the central point of the run. The (starred, I might add) S3&K "max rings" submission is an absolutely fine example of a run that satisfies its point and differentiates itself from other published runs. If horizontal underflows and zips were removed from this run, then this would be a different story: If rings were actively being avoided the whole run instead of just skipping whole stages with the same tired glitches, this would have a much better shot at publication.
But as it is right now, it's just the any% run with less rings. There's almost no excitement that directly comes from the goal choice.
I'm rejecting this run for being an arbitrary category and not getting good enough audience feedback to make Moons.

WST
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Anty-Lemon wrote:
Eh. Alongside the existing Sonic 2 TAS it mostly loses its charm. There are a few really nice jumps here and there, but imo it'd be a lot more entertaining as an RTA run, since a single hit means death
… even more, collecting a ring also would count as a death :)
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WST wrote:
Anty-Lemon wrote:
Eh. Alongside the existing Sonic 2 TAS it mostly loses its charm. There are a few really nice jumps here and there, but imo it'd be a lot more entertaining as an RTA run, since a single hit means death
… even more, collecting a ring also would count as a death :)
That reminds me of a joke hack of Sonic 1 that I once saw. Sonic games have always been rather easy. One way to make it extremely difficult is to play it without taking any damage/death/hits, and yes, this is really hard to do because Sonic doesn't exactly have the best control. There are a few no damage runs on Youtube, and even a hack called Sonic 1 - YOLO Edition where there are no rings or powerups and taking a single hit is game over. No, this joke hack goes even further. Appropriately titled "OMG THE RED RINGS" (hint: sonicretro), every coin and powerup is replaced with an up-and-down-moving red coin sprite with a gigantic hitbox that kills you. Its only purpose is for sheer absurdity as every stage (except Final Zone, of course) becomes at least near-impossible to complete. (The game is literally impossible to complete barring glitches/codes/debug, in case you were wondering.) Many hacks at sonicretro are gimmick hacks though, so it's not that special anyway. So that just reinforces that the Sonic games are built around collecting coins so much that it is almost impossible (if not impossible) to avoid collecting them. I don't think there would be an RTA that collects no rings any time soon. So that only leaves a TAS, which, while the novelty factor is there, appears to be constrained in such a way (was OOB necessary?) that, in my opinion, doesn't justify setting the goal of avoiding rings in the first place.
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WST wrote:
FYI the poll is asking:
Did you find this movie entertaining?
And not “does this movie worth publishing?”. Thus, the poll is only intended to determine if the run should be placed into moons or the vault, if it gets accepted. However, for this particular run the acception is not guaranteed, despite it’s quality, as the goal choice may seem a bit pointless.
Well, you can technically argue that for some people, the category, or in some cases, the fact an improvement exists (completely) ruins the movie for them. :P
skychase
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Actually, many levels are possible without zipping right to the end and turned like this during the optimization process. I wonder if time could be sacrificed for entertainement purposes. However, since i'm lightyears away from Tee-N-Tee TASing skills, the run would look really unoptimized if I gave it a second try.
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WST wrote:
FYI the poll is asking:
Did you find this movie entertaining?
And not “does this movie worth publishing?”. Thus, the poll is only intended to determine if the run should be placed into moons or the vault, if it gets accepted. However, for this particular run the acception is not guaranteed, despite it’s quality, as the goal choice may seem a bit pointless.
But I didn't find it entertaining: because in my opinion this movie is too similar to the already published movie. Novelty is entertaining, repeating something I've already seen is not.
WST
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Captain Obvious? That was for Hat
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om, nom, nom... sweet!
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k have all the authors of this run gone insane
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter - some loser
WST
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arandomgameTASer wrote:
k have all the authors of this run gone insane
What? This is my “standard” kind of response, which I have been using for a long time… Do you guys even understand jokes? 1 2 3 P.S.: I am not an author; and thus even voted, and my vote was “no”, and I think it was one of the first “no” votes, which can probably be confirmed by a site admin. And I completely misunderstand reaction to my posts here. For example the one addressed to Hat. And now this. Please stop considering me an author of this. As well as about Kiske’s run. I took minimal participation and do not even have my input in both cases. I appreciate Hat’s decidion to list me, and I am not rejecting it, but I’d like to remind that I did not ask about it explicitly. It just looks stupid when any my message dedicated to the run authors gets replied like I am the author by myself.
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arandomgameTASer wrote:
k have all the authors of this run gone insane
Yes, but a long time ago and each one on their own way. That said, I enjoyed this run a lot. Thank you all for contributing to making it a reality. Tee-N-Tee, do you reckon this goal could be completed without taking advatage of zips? If so, do you feel like working on such a project?
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Invariel wrote:
arandomgameTASer wrote:
Giving it a No. Don't get me wrong, it was very entertaining. I just think the goal choice is a bit too arbitrary.
I see it as being on par with "small only" or "pacifist". I think the goal choice is quite validated, considering how plentiful rings are in the game.
The difference is that in SMW, some powerups and Yoshi speed things up a lot and are even expected to complete some levels. Pacifist in games like Contra requires evading a lot of things. Walkathon required glitches to even be doable. They require major changes to run strategy. Sonic games on the other hand were all designed for rings to never be necessary and all that they're useful for is occasional damage boost zips and TV bounces. It's like doing a "no coins" Mario run.
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Zeupar wrote:
Yes, but a long time ago and each one on their own way. That said, I enjoyed this run a lot. Thank you all for contributing to making it a reality. Tee-N-Tee, do you reckon this goal could be completed without taking advatage of zips? If so, do you feel like working on such a project?
Uh, I don't think Tee-N-Tee really cares about it, he contributed for fun, his skills, of course, improved everything in the run, but i don't really think he took this project "too" seriously.
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Interestingly, there has been a [Submission=2001]ringless Sonic 1 submission[/submission] before, which has been rejected mostly due to the author forgoing zips/level wraps. This time it's been the other way around. My approach was the following: beating the game without collecting rings, doing so in the fastest time, that's a pretty clear cut in my opinion. If I followed the judge's advice and add the objective "no zips/wraps", that would undoubtedly make the run more arbitrary.
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This does feel a lot like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, because once the zipless version gets accepted, then the zip version is faster, completing the same major goal (no rings). :|
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The people’ preferences changed a lot since that time. That particular submission was made in 2008, when the zips and glitches were quite new for most of the viewers, who probably bored from almost-glitchess runs like SprintGod’s ones. Viewers wanted more runs like nitsuja’s one. Year by year, more and more new glitches and shortcuts were being found, and they made the gameplay less entertaining, because nowadays most stages are beaten way too fast to enjoy the TAS-like perfect trajectories and acrobatics. So, the interest to low glitch runs has reborn. That’s my opinion. A good illustration is TheYogWog’s TAS, way worse optimized than this one, but still having a huge mountain of Yes votes and thus having a star.
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If you actually read that thread, there are a lot more issues raised with the run than "no zips." One of them being that the rule wasn't "no zipping", but "no zipping except where I zip," which would be considered arbitrary and nonsensical as fuck today too.