Game objectives
- Emulator used: Dolphin 4.0-8735
- Complete the sick story as fast as possible.
- Style points!
- Use all known tricks, cutscene skips, and glitches in a single run.
Tony Hawk's Underground (THUG), has four difficulty levels: Too Easy (which has nearly no bailing), Beginner, Normal, and Sick. Sick is, of course, the hardest difficulty, since it requires more points, bigger combos, better balancing, and superb knowledge of the game.
Unlike Pro Skater 1, 2, or 3, you make your own skater and go on your own adventure with them, attaining new tricks, skills, and stats along the way as you become a pro. All of this, and more, I will be going over in detail, since there is a lot of tech in this game that makes it as fast as it is!
One final note is that this currently beats the current Any% Sick record (at this time being 48:34), but not by much. Console version of THUG (and subsequently, emulators) are inferior to the PC version due to long load times, freezes at several points, and loading between chapters. Fog found out that if you just remove load times, it would be a 43:25. And, that is without the random stutters that GCN has! So, yeah, this run is pretty insane overall!
New Jersey
Chapter 1
Before I start the run, I go ahead and name of my skater. No real reason, but it doesn't take very long to do and authors the file for me (otherwise, it would just be Custom Skater).
As soon as I load in, I pause and edit in two tricks: The Indy 900 and a special manual, Casper Handstand. On a fresh file, you are only allowed three custom moves (attaining more as you learn new tricks from pros), but one of them, the McTwist, is required for story purposes. The Indy 900 gives the most points out of every trick in the game, and the Casper Handstand gives a good amount of points as well as being a special manual to string combos together.
Once I gain control again, there is a small trick I called called Quick Nollie. If you hit the Pressure/Nollie button (usually the left trigger), you skip animations faster and start riding faster. This is used mostly in New Jersey, but you can see it in several areas later on.
Right after this, I do a trick found by yib123 called Porch Skip. Originally, you would grab the top of the garage and pull yourself up, but, with a good angle and jump, you can jump on the porch and jump on the garage. Once I do this, I fall off the garage intentionally, time my jump, and hold down ollie again so I can double-jump onto the top of the house across from me. The rest of the mission is pretty self explanatory.
The next goal, Walk Charles, is an auto-scroller. I QN to get to Charles faster, and I have to "walk" him with skitching (which was introduced in THPS4). Before a second ticks down, and if I can, I let go of Charles and skitch back onto him without losing time. This one was found by Fog a while back, but it has no real effect on the goal and is just something interesting I wanted to show.
The Street Warriors car goal is dumb, even in TASing. The idea is to, of course, keep as much speed as possible, even going past tight corners. There are several times that I run into the environment to manipulate my angle a little bit. One of the cooler things I do is take a super-tight turn that stays close to the playground, and it is actually something that is faster overall. On this, I was able to attain a 0:46, where a :45 is considered a super-good time for an RTA run.
Chapter 2
The next couple of missions are self explanatory, as they serve as a tutorial on stuff like spine transfers and call-out tricks. The third goal requires me to get 100,000 points, so I do a quick combo to get special into a special manual and then I perform a buttslap and do a bunch of extra tricks to finish the combo.
Buttslapping is a glitch introduced in THUG1, that is available as late as Proving Ground, where you go over a ledge and fall a bit, jump, do a trick, and mash ollie at the beginning of the animation. The timing is weird, especially for TASing, but is used a lot in runs. Normally, humans can do 3 or 4 (with a super-rare 5), but TASing can go as far as around 9 or even 10!
The chapter 2 finale involves a cool little trick that was found by Coombs sometime back; I go to the Street Warriors car, pause, and restart the last goal. The game will give me back my skateboard (normally, of course, you shouldn't have it), and allow me to get to the stolen board pretty fast. This is slightly faster then the old strategy of jumping on the top of the building roofs.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 includes the biggest reset point in an RTA setting, because of the trick at the very end that completes New Jersey. Until then, there is still a bunch of small tech and optimizations done to go fast.
The second part of the first goal is one of the more difficult tricks for beginners, Bridge Skip. Usually, you would skitch the car, keep your speed by shuffling, and then jump across the bridge with a buttslap but,to tell since I did a lot more shuffles, I had enough speed to clear it without a buttslap.
Now here comes Stew the Security Guard. Nothing much here, but there is a frame-perfect cutscene skip by pressing the ollie button. Then, I go to the bratty kid and just a get a bunch of points with a pretty nice combo.
Save Eric has the reset point I was talking about. Usually, you would go through New Jersey to try and save Eric from the drug dealers. However, thanks to a trick discovered by Pyatters called Eric Skip, you can skip the second part of the goal by hitting the ollie button at one of two specific frames.
Now, the reason for this is still up to speculation, but the best way to describe the trick is like a cutscene skip. I get the cutscene skip, but the game has no trigger to go on (since the it was skipped), so it progressed to the next possible trigger, that being going to Manhattan.
Manhattan
Chapter 4
Manhattan isn't as tough as New Jersey, but it can still be evil.
Getting the high score is pretty simple, since all I had to do was get a nice combo going into a buttslap and doing a few special tricks.
Hold-Grind Combo is self explanatory, and then I get to helping the student. There is a lot of small tricks here and there that worked really well together. The first big thing is that I boneless to the top of an awning at the bank and takes a leap of faith towards the hovering purse item and continue the grind. It is very unforgiving and is never attempted, since the jump and angle need to be very precise.
The rest of this goal, and the rest of the chapter, is pretty easy to follow.
Chapter 5
Shoutouts to auto-scrollers! I just mess around, since I had nothing better to do.
The second goal is also pretty easy to follow, but a dumb thing to note is that it can be dumb, since the acid drop at the very end may not work (which drops your combo on Normal and Sick, so you need to restart).
Now I need to deliver nuts to the security guards, but I also take advantage of extremely good carng. In THUG1, there are cars driving around the level in set intervals and set speeds from set locations. Depending on your speed through the level, and a good RNG seed, cars could be in one location or another, be faster or slower, and all sorts of other things.
After I get inside the building after some nifty RNG, I get special and jump out of a window with the create-a-trick.
The final part of the chapter involves jumping over a car and doing tricks, but it introduces a neat speedrun mechanic as well! As long as you hit a gap once in your combo (it can be anywhere) and keep your combo, you can do all of your tricks without having to repeatedly hitting the gap. So, of course, I abuse the heck out of this and do a couple of buttslaps to keep the number of cycles low.
Chapter 6
This chapter is incredibly straight-forward, so there isn't really anything of note until the very end of the second goal. I found out, during TASing, that I could boneless at the very edge of the ramp and it would jump me to the top, land, and continue like normal. That's an awesome two second time save! :D
Tampa
Chapter 7
Tampa is the longest chapter, not because it is the hardest but because it has the most down-time. Chapter 7 is the only chapter that doesn't have any long downtime.
For the first goal, I need to tear down signs for the mayor, but there isn't really huge tech involved with this. However, I reworked a lot of the second goal from the RTA route. I am able to actually skate on top of the wooden board that is against the fence and buttslap off of it to the next donut, I grind, acid drop, go up the other side of the ramp, and then boneless across. Compared to the RTA route, it is a lot faster and a lot more technical and fun to look at.
The rest of the chapter is pretty easy to follow, just optimizations for the most part and (in the case of the car section) trying to keep my speed.
Chapter 8
Wallplant Combo is the hardest goal in the game on Sick difficulty, since you have to manual a large distance on the already hard physics of Sick. Of course, it is easy with TASing. At the end, I intentionally tip the balance meter one way to land the combo without having to jump (something I will be using a lot of later one).
Andrew's Combos is also pretty simple to follow, but the last combo was really cool. Doing that huge of a buttslap, doing an Indy 900, a McTwist, and one last flip trick is awesome to see (though I really wish I could do it RTA :( ).
All that is left is pretty easy stuff. I do a big bowl grind, do all of the tricks called-out, and beat Tony Hawk in a 1v1. But, I do mess around a lot in the 1v1 against Tony since I have to (unfortunately) wait out the timer.
Chapter 9
Competitions! And then there is waiting! Yay!
During the last three minutes of the chapter, I mess around a lot and do big buttslap combos, some boostplanting (a trick where you wallride the wall, grab almost instantly after), and all sorts of other shenanigans. Even though this game has gotten increasingly broken over the past year, we still have no way to skip this section. Maybe soon!
Chapter 10
Teams have literally no effect on the story, except for different shirts and logos. Birdhouse is just chosen because it is the first option.
San Diego
Chapter 11
This chapter is pretty overall until the end, so there isn't really anything of note till then. However, the last thing I do is a cutscene skip that we call Skeevo Skip or "Nighttime San Diego" (which I will show why it is called that later). For this trick, you need to hold a combo of tricks and wait around a second or two after the last trick is shown on the right-side. If you jump out of the combo and hit ollie on the right frame, it will skip the cutscene, save a pause, some loading, and have you next to the first chapter 12 goal!
Chapter 12
There is a bit more sick tech in this run that I take advantage of, with the first being Skeevo Setup. The acid drop goal can be a huge choke point for beginners, since you need to fall off of the tower with a very good angle, acid drop, keep your speed, keep your angle, and get at least one buttslap to get to the second. Bonelessing does work, but it can backfire easily and cause you to jump the top of the ramp instead.
The wallplant goal is extremely cool and was hype when we figured out how to get it to work. Originally, you would hit the very first poster in front of you, go to the top of the level for that poster, and come back to get the rest. However, there were some neat discoveries made that broke this goal and made it roughly 8 to 10 seconds faster!
- You should get the poster at the top of the level first. The reason for this is, from SilentLaws' discovery, you can actually wallplant the poster, wait for the poster to visually show up, and restart the goal. If you do this right, it will reward you the post anyways! Why? Because the goal has two triggers: Where the post shows up, visually, and the game rewarding the point. Restarting the goal carries this over!
- As long as you keep a combo going, you actually do not need to wallplant anymore posters and simply run into them. The only problem is that you have to be on your board and run into the green parts of the wall for it to count. I ran into this by accident one run a while back, but TH126 was the one who actually noticed it and figured out how to reproduce it.
Finding the instruments is just buttslapping all over the level, which is pretty sick. The only one not needed was the last one to get instrument (getting it normally doesn't waste any frames), but just looks cool. :P
Then carts! This one is tricky because there is a lot of things that can get in your way, mainly going up the slope towards the big building that we saw in the first goal of the area, and a bunch of other invisible ledges that will literally kill all of your speed. But, it went well!
Chapter 13
So, wait, how is it Nighttime in San Diego? Well, that Skeevo Skip I did before setup for it! Nighttime is supposed to be only available during a small cutscene after the cart goal at the end of Chapter 12, but doing the skip will also skip the trigger that sets the game back to daytime. Not gonna lie, Nighttime looks infinitely better!
Anyways, there isn't much to talk about this chapter. Buttslapping to help the team members, doing a cool flatland combo really quickly, and then collecting stickers. How fun!
The ending of the chapter is just more messing around while I wait out the timer, then do two combos to get all of the grinds done. Then, I need to do a nice (and I mean NICE) combo. And, I finish up with a lip trick.
Hawaii
Chapter 14
Hawaii used to be one of the worst levels. Good runs came here to die because, while stuff is easy, one mistake will cost you a lot of time.
The first goal, getting the leis, has a few cool tricks. The first one is that you can actually ride on the palm tree, jump to get the lei, and grind in the other direction. Another is that you can actually boneless up the ramp where the third lei is to grind a tree branch. And, finally, I do a near frame-perfect buttslap to jump across to the next lei and start grinding to the last.
Also more cars! And then collecting glorified combo letters!
The last goal has a few really cool tricks. I discovered, and with SilentLaws and yib123's help, that you can wallplant the soda machine, wait a split second and reset the goal, and wallplant again to get three. This is pretty similar to San Diego's wallplant trick. After that, I buttslap up a ramp to get to the marker faster and acid drop into the pool.
Chapter 15
This is a highly technical chapter, and actually features a route change from the normal Any% route.
Impressing the Girls was a cool sequence of combos. I kinda figured out a good combo on the fly, but the second combo was the hardest. It was hard to get a good combo with not a lot of height, and I also needed to get a good angle towards the third group of girls. "Your combos are so big!"
Luau Competition is the route change (which replaces Kill Wallows later) I wrote about a second ago. This is literally the hardest competition in Sick, but luckily yib123 suggested to buttslap off of a nearby palm tree to get more points. While it does look a little slow, it is actually as fast as I can get it. I found a faster strategy, but I am one point short and I fail the goal. :(
Wallows Combo is simple, even on Sick.
High Line has a cool trick I found out: You don't need to grind all of the way, you just need to jump past the trigger at the end of the line. So, I jump and land right past the trigger, which is a cool little timesave.
Off the Walls has two things to note:
- You do not need to handstand the entire way. As long as you handstand once going to the end of the area and handstand once back, it will count towards completion.
- yib123 suggested to wallplant at the very end of the area to get a good amount of speed going backwards, and save time in the process. It is one of those things that is so simple, you never think of. :P
To finish up the chapter, we do the hardest buttslap in the game. To get to the top of the hotel, you would normally have to do some parkour. However, an air-out triple buttslap will get you the height you need to get to the top. And, as soon as I land, I hit ollie on the right frame to skip a cutscene.
Chapter 16
A pretty short chapter, but it is really sweet. I found out you can go right of the ramp and double buttslap and land on the edge of the roof across the street. Then, we got some sweet combos!
And the McTwist is ezpz.
Vancouver/Slam City Jam/Vancouver 2
Chapter 17
Vancouver, overall, is pretty short. There is a lot of goals, but you aren't here for long. And, there really isn't anything big that I can talk about in this chapter either. A lot of things I do here has already been discussed.
But checkout the Impress Reporter goal if you want a really cool combo ;)
Oh and more cars!
Chapter 18
Slam City Jam time! Another route change is that I do Blimp instead of hip transfers, but unfortunately the blimp is the hardest vehicle to control. :/
Other then that, doing a bunch of tricks to get at least 3rd in competitions so I can have a face-off against Eric Sparrow to become a pro. A cool trick I found is that you don't have to go up the last ramp to finish the goal, you just need to land in front of it to count!
Chapter 19
Literally only two goals, and nothing of big to note. However, the wall-ride I do at the end of the chapter is HARD in an RTA setting and you can easily bail because of bad environment design.
Moscow
Chapter 20
Moscow, or Moskill, is considered one of the last gatekeepers to a good run. If you have a run survive this long, it is probably a good run. However, Moscow is relentless.
This chapter is pretty easy overall, since all you have to do is knock out security cameras and caveman onto a tank and get a big combo. While the first goal is self explanatory, the caveman goal is literally the worst. A common issue with Tony Hawk games is that it has shoddy trick detection during certain goals and very shoddy hit detection in others, and this goal is the worst of both worlds. Cavemaning sometimes doesn't correctly work, and sometimes it won't even work! But, I am able to get a caveman and do a very low-ground Indy 900 to get the points I need! Fun Fact: If the Indy 900 was a frame or two late, I would've bailed.
To end up the chapter, we have to jump over a wall (which is easy with buttslapping), knock out some Russian guards, and then ring the bell. Ringing the bell has one of the hardest cutscene skips in the game, requiring TWO perfect frame-inputs for it to work! I am able to buttslap to the top of the ladder for the first trigger, then I have to:
- Jump into the bell with a certain speed and timing
- Press ollie on a specific frame to skip the dialogue after ringing the bell.
- Press ollie again on another specific frame to skip the cutscene right after.
This also sets up Daytime Moscow later!
Chapter 21
This chapter is self-explanatory, so there really isn't anything to talk about.
Chapter 22
Now, before I start this chapter, I would like to say that I hate this chapter. A lot.
Because of the bell skip setup I did earlier, I was able to skip to Daytime Moscow in a similar manner to Nighttime San Diego. While Nighttime Moscow IS cooler, getting the bell skip allowed me to skip two cutscenes and a lot of text and some loading... So I guess it is worth it? Dunno, I still like Nighttime Moscow.
The first goal has us going around in circles to find agents, so there is a bit of grinding. The second part of the goal has literally the dumbest glitch in the franchise, Stupid Spines. SubZeroReptile found out that you can manipulate the 360 modifier to get a lot of points very quickly. The interesting part is that buttslaps also effect the modifier, somehow. So, after testing, it was found that a 720 (with a buttslap), a 540 (with a buttslap), and three 360s (without buttslaps) will give you 17 360 spins. Why? How? The hell I know. If you add in an extra 360, it goes down to six. And, for some reason, sometimes it will give you 14 instead of 17. So, yeah, this glitch is dumb. After landing the 17 360s, I turn around, do a BIG buttslap, and get a 1080 so it reward me with 3 360s (since, 360 times 3 is 1080 :P).
LAST CAR MISSION!? :D
After the car, we have to get the cure to Kalo. This goal is VERY hard on Sick, since you don't have a lot of time to hit hard jumps. But, it was easy overall and I threw in some special tricks to make it more interesting. :)
The final goal of Moscow involves us leaving Moscow. Luckily, buttslaps are the savior and, with Fog's suggestions, we can buttslap over a big gap, acid drop, and boneless close to Alexander. Once we get close, we also perform a cutscene skip on him because why not.
New Jersey 2
Chapter 23
Back to Jersey! This chapter is easy. All I am doing is doing a created trick and then doing a big level-wide combo. Easy stuff.
Chapter 24
If there was an RNGesus, this is where he can either give the go-ahead to finish the run or give you the worst RNG in history. You have to do one last call-out section that involves flips and grabs AND LIP TRICKS. Lip tricks are just slow overall, but this section went very well.
One thing I forgot to mention is that there is a sort of RNG manipulation in this game involving called-out tricks. Every ten frames or so, the game changes what tricks come up. The frustrating part is that tricks also change mid-goal, so I cannot map out what tricks I do extremely easily. Seeds are dumb.
To finish up the chapter, I need to do one big combo. So, I jump into playground, do a ~9x buttslap, do a few special tricks, go down street, and finish up the combo relatively quickly.
Then, we choose a team name for our pros! So, I choose 1 because, well, we're number one!
Pro Goals/Erics Line
Chapter 25
Gotta choose our pros, so we choose the top five! But, we use them in a weird order.
Chapter 26
Logically, your first goal would be the New Jersey goal, but I am saving it for last.
The first goal we do is the infamous THPS Challenge, the final gatekeeper. Unluckily for me, I did not have a verification file beforehand to alter the pro tricks, so I had to stick with stock tricks. While Tony Hawk was second on the list, I went to him because he has the Indy 900. I got a couple of really nice combos to complete this easily and, with the assistance of Switch to get even more points, I made this look easy. The big buttslap double Indy 900 at the end, however, is nearly suicide in an RTA attempt.
Next up is the Hawaii Spine Transfer challenge. This one is easy. I do get off my board at the very end so I can reset my speed, otherwise, if I do the spine transfer at the end, I can bail easily and also have INSANE height (which wastes a lot of time).
Next, we have the Vancouver Spine Transfer challenge. I switch to Bam for this one because, out of the remaining skaters, he has the best moveset. The transfers were easy enough, but I also go to show-off an incredibly awesome combo that we all talked about ages ago. A HUGE buttslap into an acid drop into another HUGE buttslap with a bunch of big tricks is cool to see. I got this quickly, too, which was surprising.
Then we have the Moscow Tapes goal. Easy.
Then, to end it off, the New Jersey goal. There is a lot of waiting around in this one, so I mess around a lot, but this goal (or any fifth pro goal) has the option to do the HARDEST trick in the entire franchise, Video Skip.
Video Skip... How do I explain this? Normally, you would have to finish the goal and watch a ~20 second long cutscene showing your team pro video. However, TkMala found out that you can skip all of this by hitting ollie on a certain frame. So, it's a frame-perfect trick right? Well, yes and no. It seems like there is some sort of sub-frame involved with the trick as well. More research needs to be done on this trick but, regardless, it is still the hardest trick in the game.
I was able to find out that there is a pause buffer method to Video Skip, however. There is also a single frame where you could hit pause after the goal is finished, and you can warp that way. However, it is still unlikely because, by the time you realize you hit pause on the right frame, you already unpaused. :/
The reason we do New Jerey's goal last is because I am going to warp to the final goal against Eric, which is in New Jersey. This saves an additional load screen.
Chapter 27
And the run comes down to one final battle against Eric! While there isn't anything big tech wise, there are a couple of difficult jumps that can ruin runs *cough* bridge jump *cough*.
And it's over!
Afterward
This was my first TAS, and I feel like I did pretty well with it. Of course, there are a few mistakes that I made (mainly in New Jersey) but I feel like I did really well. Fog showed me the basics of TASing, answered my questions along the way, and even gave suggestions for the run. So, of course, big shoutouts to him!
More shoutouts to everyone in the Tony Hawk Speedrun Community, you guys rock! <3
Next projects? I am not sure just yet, but it will probably be something with Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (either Story or Classic)!
Also I am sorry for the very long read, especially compared to the other Tony Hawk games; THUG just has soooooooooooooo much tech involved, but I hope I helped to show how dedicated I am to this game and we are as a community to pushing this game!
Samsara: oops my judging comment was deleted
Samsara: Man, I was waiting intensely for this run ever since Fog started working on THUG2, and it didn't disappoint at all. Great execution, great entertainment, great movie all around! Accepting to Moons!
Note to publishers: In case it's not immediate, Fog's already begun encoding this and should be claiming it shortly.
