Introduction
I came across a new Sonic 3 & Knuckles TAS by BenInSweden, Chrezm, eandis, & kaan55. Its main feature was that it corrupted the lock-on technology, thus separating the games, essentially turning it into a Sonic & Knuckles run. Since I usually get the good ending of Sonic games when I play them, and how I like Sonic & Knuckles standalone more, I decided to use inputs from the Sonic 3 & Knuckles TAS for a new 100% Sonic & Knuckles TAS as a concept of how a TAS that corrupts the lock-on technology would look like if it had gotten the good ending.
Movie objectives
- Primarily aims for RTA-TB time
- Takes damage to save time
- Intentionally takes deaths to save time
- Uses glitches to save time
Zone explanations
The majority of the inputs are copied from
https://tasvideos.org/6890M. All inputs remain the same starting from Flying Battery Zone Act 1 up until the Sky Sanctuary boss in which I had to pause and unpause an additional time so that I obtain the correct CPU cycles to change the boss RNG. It then goes on as normal until the Death Egg Act 1 boss in which instead of defeating it with the Insta-Shield, I had to defeat it with Super Sonic instead. And due to desyncs, I had to redo the first Death Egg Zone Act 2 boss and the boss where you chase after Eggman.
Mushroom Hill Zone Act 1, Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2, The Doomsday Zone and the Special Stages are done by me though, so I'll explain these:
Mushroom Hill Zone Act 1
As you may have already known, the MHZ1 spawn point is different in Sonic & Knuckles. However, that doesn't actually change much in overall routing of the level and after the first giant ring, there are no major changes to account for the different spawnpoint.
Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2
No zips have been used in MHZ2 and I instead got the rest of the Chaos Emeralds. Since there isn't the additional giant ring in MHZ1, I didn't take damage near the cuckoo-like enemy guarding Special Stage 6. Instead, I took damage near the wasp-like enemy near the pullies and thus entering a giant ring that most 100% runs do not enter.
The Doomsday Zone
I didn't follow any routes seen in other TASes and made my own route, avoiding vertical movement. Within the final hit, as no more inputs can be provided to save time, no time was wasted by hitting the asteroids.
Special Stages
Within the first 3000 frames, you can turn on yellow spheres, thus changing the direction of the jump. The jumps that yellow spheres give you don't change depending on what direction you hit them. You can also do the same thing with red spheres but I didn't turn on any red spheres in this run.
Potential Improvements
- As Sonic 3 hasn't been locked on in this TAS, there's less RAM allocated. Because of this, in 0:18 in MHZ2, I wasn't able to do a slope jump to get jump to Special Stage 4, thus losing 3 seconds. And in 0:34, also in MHZ2, I wasn't able to use the Flame Shield boost on the mushroom next to the speed up monitor to go left, thus losing around 2-4 seconds.
- In DDZ, I avoid getting hit from the yellow dots and especially the rockets. If intentionally taking damage could potentially result in saving time, then it can also be improved.
