Here is a speedrun with new and unique goals. It shows many parts of each level not visible in any other type of run. We practically see everything in the game.
For those not familiar with PERFECT BONUS, here’s a brief explanation.
PERFECT BONUS: This level bonus is obtained by collecting all free-floating rings in a level, so ring TVs aren’t necessary. Losing rings by taking damage doesn’t matter. The bonus is worth 50,000 points, which is useful for high scores, but it takes a lot of time.
- Goals:
- Priority: Collect all the rings as fast as possible.
- Don’t take any TV monitor worth 10 rings.
- No deaths.
- Don’t take damage or lose rings.
- Show PERFECT BONUS! On each level’s score tally screen.
- 1 Player controls 2 Characters.
| Zone | Time | Rings Collected |
|---|
| Emerald Hill Zone 1 | 1:11::59 | 225 |
| Emerald Hill Zone 2 | 1:29::42 | 226 |
| Chemical Plant Zone 1 | 1:49::51 | 195 |
| Chemical Plant Zone 2 | 2:09::24 | 152 |
| Aquatic Ruin Zone 1 | 1:06::12 | 176 |
| Aquatic Ruin Zone 2 | 2:01::25 | 217 |
| Casino Night Zone 1 | 2:11::53 | 232 |
| Casino Night Zone 2 | Skipped | --- |
| Hill Top Zone 1 | 1:07::55 | 146 |
| Hill Top Zone 2 | 3:04::34 | 199 |
| Mystic Cave Zone 1 | 1:16::56 | 183 |
| Mystic Cave Zone 2 | Skipped | --- |
| Oil Ocean Zone 1 | 2:02::19 | 207 |
| Oil Ocean Zone 2 | Skipped | --- |
| Metropolis Zone 1 | 1:41::47 | 218 |
| Metropolis Zone 2 | Skipped | --- |
| Metropolis Zone 3 | 2:25::08 | 153 |
| Sky Chase Zone | 2:05::58 | 67 |
| Wing Fortress Zone | 2:17::05 | 196 |
| Death Egg Zone | 0:41::13 | 0 |
| Total | 28:43::35 | 2795 |
- Start
- At the beginning, I used the level-select code because there are areas where unreachable (inside solid objects, too high, etc.) rings made PERFECT BONUS impossible. I used both controllers to speed up the song selection: 19, 65, 9, 17.
- Emerald Hill Zone 1
- In the early levels, Tails was a big help getting rings in nearby alternate routes to avoid backtracking.
- Emerald Hill Zone 2
- Here the situation is similar to the previous level and we had to sacrifice tails so Sonic could power through the level. Especially when 2 nearby routes with rings diverged.
- Chemical Plant Zone 1
- These zones were more complex due to the various possible paths. I had a good chance to improve this zone's route with practice. Tails does again a good job with the rings left in the zone.
- Chemical Plant Zone 2
- There was an unfortunate desync here when I edited the movie to have the level select code. While redoing the level, even though I found some improvements, the final time was around 3 seconds slower.
- Aquatic Ruin Zone 1
- The hard parts here were the underwater segments, because of slower movements, so I had to really take advantage of the spindash’s acceleration. I was also able to improve some things during the do-over, like the final jump which propelled me to the end quicker.
- Aquatic Ruin Zone 2
- Here was the first area with an unreachable ring. It’s in the second-to-last column underwater. However, we overcame that by abusing sprite collisions with Tails off-screen, and achieved our goal successfully.
- Casino Night Zone 1
- This zone’s design was a tough opponent. Something strange happens here: the music tempo speeds up when I collect 2 lives while I still have the speed-shoes on. I found a quick jump in the narrow passages that saved 1.4 seconds in each one.
- Casino Night Zone 2
- Level skipped. My only choice was to skip due to a group of rings that are way out of reach. Apologies for not playing.
- Hill Top Zone 1
- This zone was very simple: it only has 1 route which is easy to run through, and it has very few rings.
- Hill Top Zone 2
- This was a tough one, and thanks go to FuzZerd for finding a video demonstrating a strategy for backtracking so we can take both (normally exclusive) routes. Here, Tails plays an important role, since without him, PERFECT BONUS is impossible. Near the end of the lower path, I need to jump off the elevator early for sonic to bounce high enough on the extra life TV monitor to start backtracking. The height required means we would miss 3 rings, but Tails can take care of that. To go through the locked gates, Sonic must spindash in a precise location so he passes under it while it closes. Tails can also keep them open.
- Mystic Cave Zone 1
- Tails collects out-of-the-way rings, sometimes sacrificing himself. Tails was a big help and I would like to give special thanks to him for his work in this zone.
- Mystic Cave Zone 2
- Level skipped. There are out-of-the-way rings that only Knuckles can collect. Apologies for not playing this level.
- Oil Ocean Zone 1
- There were groups of rings that, when collected by both characters, saved time. Also, the ability to go under the oil helped with backtracking and advancing where necessary.
- Oil Ocean Zone 2
- Level skipped. It’s a shame to skip this level since we found some pretty good glitches to help with the unreachable rings.
- First, SkyChase found a glitch that causes antigravity and gives Super Sonic physics. It’s like a double glitch.
- Second, marzojr found how to get 2 of the 6 groups of unreachable rings (each group is 3 rings). The first and the last.
- We couldn’t figure out how to get to the other 4 groups, and for that reason, we had no choice but to skip this level.
- Metropolis Zone 1
- Since this is a zone that "loops" we can use a glitch that lets use go through some obstacles and terrain. The route-planning involved consideration of this fact so we could backtrack through points of no return.
- Metropolis Zone 2
- Level skipped. Also because of unreachable rings. Apologies for not playing this level.
- Metropolis Zone 3
- Route-planning here was a little more complex. I found a way to go through closed doors similar to the method used in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but here we need to do 3 quick spindashes with a single rev instead of 6. The screen moves back enough during the first 2 spindashes that the 3rd allows us to clip through, albeit with low speed. However, this is still much faster than waiting for the door to open normally.
Also on the last three spinning gears, we pause to waste 1 frame because there’s an frame-rule that doesn’t allow the jump to make it otherwise (the pause avoids this), so that’s why you hear a strange sound. And a little later we use the same trick as in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Any%.
And finally, the boss fight is a little slower than usual because we don’t want Sonic to take damage. The only way to break through the egg barrier that spins around Eggman is with damaged and invincible Tails.
- Sky Chase Zone
- These last 3 zones don’t show PERFECT BONUS when finished, but the goal is still met. Here, the only things to are get rings and destroy enemies. Initially I didn’t know there were rings hidden behind some clouds, but that problem was easily fixed.
- Wing Fortress Zone
- Eggman’s great flying fortress’ route was quite simple and didn’t require much planning. Just run through the fortress and pick up the rings you pass. I stop at the motors in the ship in order to advance when the path opens. Then, keep advancing in the normal route.
- Death Egg Zone
- Finally, the last zone. Here, the battle with Metal Sonic was easy. The hard thing to do was hitting the final boss the first 3 times. Afterwards, keep attacking with the same pattern and run away with a spindash at max speed.
Special Thanks
- Thanks to marzojr for his file sonic_hud.lua and to all involved in the development of this LUA file and for finding this helpful RAM value.
| Memory Address | Description |
|---|
| word @ FFFF40 (unsigned) | Shows the rings left to collect in a level for a PERFECT BONUS |
- Thanks to FuzZerd for finding the helpful Hill Top Zone 2 PERFECT BONUS strategy video. If not for that video, the level would have been skipped.
- Thanks to this team: bkDJ, marzojr, FuzZerd, DDRKhat, skychase and boct1584. They supported me and motivated me to finish this project.
- Thanks to bkDJ (mainly) and Hepburn (a little) for translating this submission.
- Also thanks to Tails, for speeding things up on many occasions.
Suggested Screenshot
I leave it to you to choose a good image.
Nach: While this run is pretty good for what it tries to do, it has a number of flaws. It uses a cheat code. It arbitrarily avoids some items and wastes time. It doesn't complete the whole game.
TASs are supposed to look practically perfect. When many people actually notice a flaw in the play, the perfect image is shattered, those sections need to be redone.
A TAS which aims to collect all rings should go through the game and beat it collecting all rings. The other objectives don't really work in this game.
Maybe you can just redo the sections/levels which need work, and copy+paste the input into a full run. I hope you don't get discouraged, this was a very good first time run other than the aforementioned problems. But in any case, I have no choice but to reject this. I hope you will submit a better run which fixes the issues with this one in the future.