(Link to video)
IMPORTANT: If you want to play the movie back in Dolphin, disable the Memory Card (Options -> Options -> Configure... -> Gamecube -> Slot A -> <Nothing>)
Before anything, I want to thank Gamepro011, itsPersonnal, Kurect (a.k.a. Crydio), Sonicspeedruner and mapler90210 for all the help with strats and time savers during the run. I also want to thank all of the TSC (The Sonic Center) users, the TASVideos community, my Twitch followers and my Youtube subscribers for all the support! Thank you very much, this run wouldn't be possible without it!
About the TAS:
  • Game: Sonic Adventure DX
  • Author: THC98
  • Emulator used: Dolphin 3.0-735
  • Rerecords: Unknown (as I used Read-Only mode, the rerecord count of the dtm was wrong)
  • Completes Sonic's Story
  • Aims for fastest real time (over in-game time)
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Uses slight luck manipulation
  • Heavy glitch abuse
Individual level/boss times:
  • Chaos 0: 0:15.63
  • Emerald Coast: 0:48.25
  • Casinopolis: 0:03.88
  • Egg Hornet: 0:26.83
  • Windy Valley: 1:08.81
  • Ice Cap: 0:07.08
  • Chaos 4: 1:33.90
  • Twinkle Park: 0:47.80
  • Speed Highway: 0:54.71
  • Red Mountain: 0:40.31
  • Sky Deck: 0:44.81
  • Chaos 6: 0:20.26
  • Lost World: 0:50.81
  • Final Egg: 0:37.91
  • Egg Viper: 2:18.73
  • Final time (according to the VI number, without loading times): 25:48.75
  • Final time (according to the frames number, with loading times): 30:12.02
Tricks used in this movie:
-Full speed spindashes: I found out that alternating between the buttons B and X while spindashing to break the previous spindash is faster, and doing it everywhere saves many frames! I also watched the speed address to be sure that I got the full speed quickly in the whole TAS.
-Spindash hover: By holding A while charging a spindash that goes towards mid-air and continue holding A, you can extend your spindash distance and hover for some seconds, so you can reach places that are far faster than doing a jump right after the spindash.
-Jump dash: By pressing B right after doing a homing attack (pressing A in the air), you break the homing attack and get a stronger foward dash, increasing your speed.
-Wall clip: A spindash can go through a joint of two walls depending on the angle of the wall, your angle, position and speed. Actually, most of the joints lower than 90° can be clipped. However, many of the out of bounds clips used in the movie aren't done like that. They're done by exploiting false walls to go through them and skip a portion of the level.
-Booster glitch: This glitch is only used in Emerald Coast, and it consists in breaking the spindash right before touching a launch pad (booster). If done right, you'll knock the booster like if it was a wall, but you'll still be launched by the booster. This makes the speed given by the booster extends for the "knocked out" animation and to avoid getting so much height, seeing that going in the air is slower than spindashing on the ground.
As you can see, many levels, such as Ice Cap, Twinkle Park, Red Mountain, Sky Deck and Final Egg, had some huge route changes, but I think that they're all self-explainable, as they don't use any trick that wasn't told before.
Suggested Screenshots (by VI Number): 10783 | 25466 | 46061 | 79850

Nahoc: claiming for judging!
Nahoc: Accepting! This movie is just too good; great optimization, great audience response... gotta go fast!
Ilari: RGamma is going to handle this (in a few days)
Nahoc: changed movie file; now the re-record count is set to "unknown".

Patashu
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N. Harmonik wrote:
I wonder what a glitchless run would be like...
Sonic is far too busy going fast to care about 'rules' and 'developer intentions' and 'staying in bounds'.
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N. Harmonik wrote:
I wonder what a glitchless run would be like...
I suspect this is one of those games where it'd be very hard to tell what is intended and what counts as a glitch. For example, several of the big jumps in the first level (Emerald Coast) skip massive chunks of the level but as far as I'm aware, all you need to do to pull them off is be willing to jump in the "wrong" direction.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
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Very fast-paced and entertaining run! You totally broke this game. Yes vote for sure, and looking forward to your Tails' Story run.
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Really nice TAS, felt that speed that is expected from a Sonic TAS. Route planning seemed really good as well. Definitely a yes vote.
WST
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Yes vote for a Sonic TAS :)
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THC98
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deuxhero wrote:
Why did you change camera settings in the last level?
That was done to avoid lag frames that would be got by having to load many things in the same screen, and as the camera would stay stuck in the beggining of that section, it wouldn't be entertaining, as you wouldn't see what's happening.
deuxhero wrote:
As for Sky Chase 2, I thought you were going to go pacifist run to contrast "everything must die" in the first one from the first one. Very minor problem.
Well, I'd try a perfect score run, but as I did a TAS of it recently (which got desynced...), and it was VERY time consuming, I thought it wouldn't be interesting to do here, and it wouldn't make the movie faster or slower. So I decided to do random things there. Sorry about it being no entertaining at all :/
Youtube Channel | Twitch Channel • Finished projects: GC Sonic Adventure DX - Sonic | GC Sonic Adventure DX - Tails | GC Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Hero Story | GC Sonic Heroes - Team Sonic • Current projects: GC Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Dark Story - 1st WIP • Paused projects: GC Sonic Adventure DX - Knuckles - 1st WIP • Individual levels records: Sonic Adventure DX | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle • My Discord: Tales98#0408
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Aside from the Chao raising, what would be the "bad" part of a 100% run for SA:DX?
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
THC98
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hegyak wrote:
Aside from the Chao raising, what would be the "bad" part of a 100% run for SA:DX?
Getting all the missions of each level, like getting 50 rings and beating the level under a certain time. You'd have to play each level 3 times. And other bad thing would be Knuckles' and Big's RNG. For Knuckles, you need to get the best pieces layout, and for Big, you need to manipulate Froggy's position.
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Submission of the year? :) Big yes vote!
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Big yes! Just stunning!
Patashu
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Hey THC98, the nicovideo upload for this TAS is about to break 100k views. Grats :) Link to video
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
THC98
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Patashu wrote:
Hey THC98, the nicovideo upload for this TAS is about to break 100k views. Grats :)
Yeah, I saw that and got really surprised! :D
Youtube Channel | Twitch Channel • Finished projects: GC Sonic Adventure DX - Sonic | GC Sonic Adventure DX - Tails | GC Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Hero Story | GC Sonic Heroes - Team Sonic • Current projects: GC Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Dark Story - 1st WIP • Paused projects: GC Sonic Adventure DX - Knuckles - 1st WIP • Individual levels records: Sonic Adventure DX | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle • My Discord: Tales98#0408
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I vote yes for this incredible TAS!
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When I saw the first wip I knew the game would be broken, but not that broken! Wonderful work THC98.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
ars4326
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I gotta say, the last time I played a Sonic game was on the Sega Genesis; and even then, I thought that was pretty fast. This run blew me away. This was just a showcase in game-breaking speed and glitch exploitation. My only complaint is that the dev. team didn't use the voice cast from Sonic for Hire;) Definite 'yes' vote and hoping this get placed in the stars tier!
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Mitjitsu
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What happened to the re-record count? The real figure is clearly well in excess of 4393.
THC98
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Mitjitsu wrote:
What happened to the re-record count? The real figure is clearly well in excess of 4393.
As I used Read-Only Mode, the rerecord count got messed up, and yes, it's much higher than 4k rerecords. I got to calculate how many rerecords I used in Ice Cap, and it was around 7k rerecords!
Youtube Channel | Twitch Channel • Finished projects: GC Sonic Adventure DX - Sonic | GC Sonic Adventure DX - Tails | GC Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Hero Story | GC Sonic Heroes - Team Sonic • Current projects: GC Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Dark Story - 1st WIP • Paused projects: GC Sonic Adventure DX - Knuckles - 1st WIP • Individual levels records: Sonic Adventure DX | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle • My Discord: Tales98#0408
Mitjitsu
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THC98 wrote:
Mitjitsu wrote:
What happened to the re-record count? The real figure is clearly well in excess of 4393.
As I used Read-Only Mode, the rerecord count got messed up, and yes, it's much higher than 4k rerecords. I got to calculate how many rerecords I used in Ice Cap, and it was around 7k rerecords!
You could always hex edit the .dtm and give a more accurate guestimate like 45,837.
THC98
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Okay guys, so as I noticed that my TAS got accepted, I wanna thank you very much for all of the support! I also wanna say that I added the screenshot suggestions in the submission, so can you help me to find the best one? Thanks again!
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THC98 wrote:
Okay guys, so as I noticed that my TAS got accepted, I wanna thank you very much for all of the support! I also wanna say that I added the screenshot suggestions in the submission, so can you help me to find the best one? Thanks again!
I'm voting for the 3rd one (46061). Sonic going for the stars ^^.
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I like the fourth one the best. I think it really shows how fast-paced the action is in this run.
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4!
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3... 2... 1... 3!
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I like 1 and 3 best
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4 is the best