Wish there was an easy way to search through the thread, because I was wondering if anyone had the idea of doing a Ring Attack TAS of Sonic 1. I'm curious to know if we have enough glitches on hand to break stages enough to get all the rings. Special Stages could be included in this as well, so it could also double as a 100% TAS.
In my honest opinion, while using soft resets to skip cutscenes does save time, it would be very annoying to watch. Perhaps it's one of those things that'd be considered a speed/entertainment tradeoff?
Uhhh... jesus o.o
So here's some things I want to bring up after watching this:
1) Hydrocity Act 2, the death at the start to change the level boundary and allow for underflow. That aspect of it I understand completely... but I've never understood how you actually trigger it, and I don't think any of the past TAS submission notes mention it? There's nothing on the Game Resources page for the Sonic games, either.
2) Oh my lord, Ice Cap Zone is just skipped. This is faster than any other published run! The current Sonic & Tails run fights Eggman and opens the capsule. Apply this strategy to a run like that and we could get close to breaking the 26-minute barrier...
3) There were several points where watching the camhack encode made me feel... sick. This is due to the game unloading and reloading the level chunks rapidly, so it was flashing the level and a solid color. Probably should have an epilepsy warning on that video and get a standard encode put up ASAP.
Overall, voting yes.
Wonder why you don't go for score bonuses at the end of stages? I don't think it costs time, and nailing the best bonus is tricky to do in real time as well. Same goes for getting fruits and bonuses that are in the way that shouldn't cost time to collect.
The door clips in Round 19 are cool and good!
Also, before anyone mentions it: the warp that is present in the arcade version does not exist in this port. If you try it in this version, all it does is make Pac-Man walk backwards or turn upside down. Though, there is a hard mode that you can play by pressing Start at the ending, but I don't know if it would be worth doing.
Yes vote!
My two biggest complaints about the run:
1) Final hit on Final Zone (Scrap Brain 3) boss should be delayed to the last possible moment. This is because it falls slower when defeated. You showed the player being able to survive clipping into the floor; can this be taken advantage of to make the last hit delayed longer than what is possible in stock Sonic 1?
2) No input during Sky Chase Zone. I know, it's an autoscroller. I know, you're invincible. But this is a TAS, and one of the key elements of a TAS is entertainment value. Just sitting there is boring as hell. Do something! Try to kill all the badniks in style. Get all the rings. Hell, you're in Super forms, why not abuse that to get a crazy high hit combo by defeating enemies without jumping??
Voting no.
I mean with overworld movement. Right now you do long path to left, long path to right, short path down, long path to left. I'm just wondering if it would be faster to do short path down, short path up, long path to left, short path down? Might save a couple of seconds, but I don't know if that will throw off the RNG.
Can't tell if joking or not, but Elmira is one of two instant-kill hazards in the game (the other being the long, thin spike traps, which are somehow zipped through in some levels?!)
It's great to see this game from my childhood get destroyed. But wouldn't it be faster if you reversed the order of the stages in the lava cave? That way you only need to take a long path to a stage on the overworld once instead of three times.
Good gravy! Knuckles just don't care. Yes vote!
Also, I hope that Ice Cap ending can be pulled off with Sonic & Tails, that would make for a good-sized improvement to the currently published run...
Yeah I did eventually find it myself on the site. I understand that it's an interim thing until proper re-recording is implemented in the mainline MAME codebase, but until then, maybe a link should be added in the Preferred emulators tab on the Emulators page?
Anyone got an encode for this? I want to watch it but I have no idea how to get this fork of MAME set up... or even where to get it in the first place.
Should be noted that this does not sync on the latest versions of BizHawk, due to low level emulation improvements in the SMS core; encoders will need to install an older version first.
But yes, this is an impressive run! Yes vote!
Still watching it, but it is excellent so far. I do have two things to say:
1) Someone should consider looking into a 100% run of this game. (That would be all exits, all Star Coins collected, and all Star Coins spent) Such a run would require different strategies, and showcase other levels.
2) What the hell is going on in 5-Tower
EDIT: Finished watching, that was some excellent stuff. Yes vote!