(Link to video)

About the hack

Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix (commonly shortened to Sonic Megamix) is a work-in-progress multiperson disassembly modification of the original Sonic the Hedgehog videogame for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis, developed by Team Megamix and ported to the Sega Mega-CD in the last version. The game features the ability to play as one of five different characters: Sonic the Hedgehog, Mighty the Armadillo, Shadow the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, and Knuckles the Echidna. It is an extensive reworking of the original game, featuring new art, music, abilities, layouts, and other things.

Sonic abilities

Sonic's gameplay is based on pure speed.

  • <A>: Light Dash, dash towards a path of rings at 3072 sp/f
  • Double jump: Homing Attack, like in modern sonic games, sonic can do homming attacks when he is nearby a Badnik, Eggpot and monitors at 2560 sp/f.
  • Double jump when not near a target: Jump Dash, a very useful ability to gain instantly speed of 2560 sp/f.
  • Up+jump: Super Peel-Out, It's his exclusive ability in Sonic CD, when release the buttons Sonic starts running at 3072 sp/f, the speed shoes can buff the Super Peel-Out scaling the speed up to 4096 sp/f.
sp/f: Sub-Pixel(s) per frame

Emulator and tools Used

  • Gens Re-Recording 11b + Camera hack + Sonic TAS tools
  • Sega CD bios used: USA 1.10 - us_scd1_9210.bin

Game 0bjectives

  • Aims for fastest in-game time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Manipulates luck
  • Unofficial game

Time Table

LevelIn-game TimeTASed by
Sunny Shores 10:23'13nitsuja
Sunny Shores 20:21'40nitsuja
Sunny Shores 30:54'49nitsuja
Dark Fortress 10:23'04nitsuja
Dark Fortress 20:31'22nitsuja
Dark Fortress 30:49'59nitsuja
City Outskirts 10:23'07nitsuja, WST
City Outskirts 20:34'12Evil_3D, WST
City Outskirts 30:31'50Evil_3D, WST
Misty Maze 10:11'28Evil_3D, WST
Misty Maze 20:17'49Evil_3D, WST
Misty Maze 30:13'23Evil_3D, WST
Starry Night 10:26'23Evil_3D, WST
Starry Night 20:32'26Evil_3D, WST
Starry Night 30:27'43Evil_3D
Metallic Base 10:26'09Evil_3D, WST
Metallic Base 20:17'20Evil_3D, kaan55
Metallic Base 30:02'20Evil_3D, kaan55
The Final Fight0:14'36Evil_3D, WST
The real timer frames is displayed by the adress "FFFE25" (0-59 instead of 0-99 showed in the hack)

Comments about the movie

Glitches

Interestingly, this hack fixes the glitch called "horizontal underflow" or better known as "level warp" - the glitch that teleports the character instantly at the end of the level, keep in mind that it's not banned by us in the movie, the hack developers fixed it. But others like the "zip" are still present, since it's a routine incorporated into the game engine.

History

The history of this hack in the TAS world is interesting, there were many attempts to make TASes of this hack from the hand of DDRKhat, fano, emu2000, Comicalflop, Crramalama, but for some reason they were not submitted here (I guess because at that time of 2007 the hack was not as developed as now, seeing that team megamix paused his development in 2008, returned again in 2012, but according to the main developer is "paused" actually).
nitsuja started his wip in 2008, but he has discontinued it, and since he left the community in 2012 it was obvious that he would not be able to finish it.
There was an attempt by feeuzz to continue it but he lost his wip and is currently inactive, and recently there was a sub-optimal submission of PLAYERONE that we asked with WST: why not? So we grabbed nitsuja's wip and finished it, we decided to keep his input in order to maintain his legacy since his wip is up to our current standards.

B-B-Boss time! text removed

In this movie the "Boss time" text was removed, the reason is because it only prolongs the boss spawn time, which results in an unnecessary loss of In-game time.
If you want to see the text you can click here.

Stages

There really is not much to say about the levels, very high speed here, some zips there, some levels are more destroyed than others, the camhack encode speaks for itself, all the tricks and glitches are the same as you would find in any other Sonic any% TAS, but if you really want specific comments if you don't understand what happens, I can do it, just let me know.

The hack itself

For me, it's a good hack, TASing it was fun and a good experience with my other teammates, the levels are really good and full of atmosphere, the only bad thing for me was the repeatable music of the speed shoes, but beyond that It was nice, it only remains for you to judge and decide if the hack deserve a place in TASVideos along with other hacks published in the past.

Greetings


GoddessMaria: Judging.
Evil_3D: I put it back of respect for the judge, my friends and know the fate of the movie, maybe I'm exalted for the different final boss hits between versions, I'm sorry.
GoddessMaria: Re-claiming...
GoddessMaria: Before anything, I must address the version choice. There are 2 official releases and one that 1 that was an unofficial, incomplete leak. The first being of "Sonic 1 Megamix" v3.0, which is considered the most stable release and is on Genesis/Mega Drive. The most notable thing here is the number of hits the final boss takes before defeated. In the v3.0 release, Robotnik takes the same number of hits as the original Sonic the Hedgehog (16-bit). The next release and considered the most current (and probably final release) is v4.0b, which is what this submission uses. This version made some additions and changes that were omitted from v3.0 such as changing from Genesis/Mega Drive to SegaCD, updating a few zones, adding 2 more characters, and more. The other thing about this version is that, unlike v3.0, the final boss hit count was changed to 1. Nevertheless, both would be eligible for acceptance into Moons. Just not the same category side by side.
That being said, the hack in question is one of the most well known Sonic the Hedgehog ROM hacks to exist and is of really high quality. As for the submission... Does it do enough to justify acceptance onto the site? Yes! The optimization is solid and clear, the entertainment value holds well without dragging on too long, and the audience response has been mostly positive. With that out of the way...
I'm accepting this submission into Moons. Good work to the authors!
Stovent: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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I watched your TAS yesterday, and I'll say again: This hack is well suited for a sonic hack game (and even more for a SegaCD game). Also it's cool to hear songs of other genesis games between stages, like Sonic 3D Blast and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Yes vote.
My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.
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is a work-in-progress
Speedrunning work-in-progress hacks seems against the spirit of speedrunning in general. That said, it does look like development is "paused" since 2012, which I guess makes this stable enough (though it's not obvious what version of the hack this is even running). Removing the "Boss Battle" screen seems like cheating. In the video, it shows it takes ~5 seconds. If it was cut from the YouTube video, that'd be one thing... But actually removing it to gain 5 seconds on bosses, really means you are running a hack of a hack. As a result, I vote "no" for breaking the rules.
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Meerkov wrote:
Speedrunning work-in-progress hacks seems against the spirit of speedrunning in general. That said, it does look like development is "paused" since 2012, which I guess makes this stable enough.
Not at all, this hack has a speedrun page wich others sonic's hacks don't have https://www.speedrun.com/Sonic_Megamix ; the speedrunners uses the 4.0b Sega CD version of the game as this TAS The last version of Sonic megamix offers a full gameplay, you don't need to use debug mode or something like that to pass the levels. About the project I'm not very sure if is really in developement if you see the last news in his official page: http://www.teammegamix.com/ If you see, Stealth literally he ran out of development team, said this the last official "public" release of the game is the SegaCD version
Meerkov wrote:
(though it's not obvious what version of the hack this is even running).
Currently is writed in the submission page, "US 4.0b"
Meerkov wrote:
Removing the "Boss Battle" screen seems like cheating. In the video, it shows it takes ~5 seconds. If it was cut from the YouTube video, that'd be one thing... But actually removing it to gain 5 seconds on bosses, really means you are running a hack of a hack. As a result, I vote "no" for breaking the rules.
I don't think it will be "cheating", currently is a feature in the game options, you don't need to use "passwords" or modifing the game to remove it, since it's a TAS, naturally we have to adjust the options to have the shortest possible time, it is like choosing the version of a game that has the shortest time in subtitles. I respect your vote, we all have different points of view, I hope I have clarified some things.
You can see more TASes on my youtube channel
BigBoct
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I wish there wasn't so much zipping in the second half of the game. Still an awesome watch, though. Yes vote.
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boct1584 wrote:
I wish there wasn't so much zipping in the second half of the game. Still an awesome watch, though. Yes vote.
In all honesty, I’d love it too, too bad the game is so broken that sometimes those zips happen to you even when playing casually.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
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boct1584 wrote:
I wish there wasn't so much zipping in the second half of the game. Still an awesome watch, though. Yes vote.
Same here. At least it's not as bad as level wraps as that straight up teleports you to the end of the level.
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WST wrote:
boct1584 wrote:
I wish there wasn't so much zipping in the second half of the game. Still an awesome watch, though. Yes vote.
In all honesty, I’d love it too, too bad the game is so broken that sometimes those zips happen to you even when playing casually.
Is the version 3.0 Genesis release any better in that regard?
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boct1584 wrote:
Is the version 3.0 Genesis release any better in that regard?
I never played it, but I highly doubt — the glitches used here are common for all Sonic games (the original ones as well), they are not introduced by the hack’s developers. In fact, the developers even fixed one of the common bugs, known as level-wrap, it’s written in the description.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
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that hack is seriously impressive and the musics are awesomes incredible run, i hope to see a zipless one or a 100% one someday.... also, nice to see upthorn's name in the credits
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If the hack is acceptable it would be a good incentive to make a glitchless movie (personally I want to make one), since the levels ends very fast.
You can see more TASes on my youtube channel
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I would prefer doing a run with some other character
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om, nom, nom... sweet!
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Wanna fill me in on why this was cancelled?
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I found that the final boss in the 3.0 version needs 8 hits to be defeated, seeing that in CD version needs 1 hit it looks very strange and maybe it would have been rejected for this. The other reason is absence of audience/discussion, 4 NO and 13 YES for almost a month in a Sonic game does not look very good. Although I would have liked that the NO votes would have been justified or say that we did wrong for them.
You can see more TASes on my youtube channel
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Evil_3D wrote:
I found that the final boss in the 3.0 version needs 8 hits to be defeated, seeing that in CD version needs 1 hit it looks very strange and maybe it would have been rejected for this.
Well, but we didn’t modify the game, it’s 1 hit, but it’s real.
Evil_3D wrote:
The other reason is absence of audience/discussion, 4 NO and 13 YES for almost a month in a Sonic game does not look very good. Although I would have liked that the NO votes would have been justified or say that we did wrong for them.
Example. Again, the viewer somehow decided that you’ve modified the game, maybe it wasn’t clear that it’s done using built-in options (menu selection is really fast and hard to see anything). I wouldn’t worry so much about it, look at the rating at the movie on your channel, 34 «yes» 0 «no» ;) And I’d kindly ask you not to cancel the submission on your own without asking kaan and me since it’s not your solo work ^^
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
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Um, shouldn't the game name in the submission be called "Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix" instead of "Sonic 1 Megamix"?
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Kurabupengin wrote:
Um, shouldn't the game name in the submission be called "Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix" instead of "Sonic 1 Megamix"?
The game has been called both. Prior to the 4.0 releases, it has been referred to as "Sonic 1 Megamix". Regardless, the name will be changed to the former later anyway.
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glad it was uncancelled!
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [3719] SegaCD Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix by Evil_3D, kaan55, nitsuja & WST in 13:52.91
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Interesting hack, but what a shame about the speed shoes music trumping the level music. This ace tune from Cosmic Carnage suddenly appearing in Metallic Base Act 2 was a delight for 8 seconds, at least.
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Lol at seeing upthorn's name. Late yes vote. Would love to see 100% at some point.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
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What hack does this run obsolete?
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
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xnamkcor wrote:
What hack does this run obsolete?
This TAS does not obsolete any run. Or maybe I don't understand your question
[17:37:00]<TheCoreyBurton> It's N64 - it's ALWAYS bad news.
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Just to correct the movie description: "Level warp" is not used in this movie because this glitch is fixed in this hack, it was explained in the submission text as well.
You can see more TASes on my youtube channel