Top Gear 2 is an arcade racing game made and developed by the company Kemco for the Super Nintendo and was released on September 15th, 1993.
Here you sit in the year 1993 and this is it, the race of your life... However! We'll make this quick. You're watching the new, super-accelerated #1 world leader in racing games. this TAS will be screaming through 1 country and 4 races. This car will not be twisting, (sometimes jumping), not spinning, or flipping, At speeds of over 260 MPH. With Top Gear 2 's new and improved weather system you'll be driving through conditions such as Night or Shine, Snow or Fog. If you win all the races you will be claimed as the best racer in the world. Get your rear in gear because there's no half-fast about it.
Game Objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk Developer Build 2.0.0
- Uses Same Color Car
- Manipulates Frame Perfect Luck
- Uses Best Upgrades
- Uses a Password Glitch
- Skips Name Entry to Save Time
About the Run
This run is done on the USA version of Top Gear 2 and uses English Text. The goal of this run is to get to the credits as quickly as possible (USA%) using the fastest known methods currently possible. This TAS was started in April of 2018. Many improvements came and went. The previous TAS that was created which had a final (RTA) time of 9:10.210. The original TAS that I made was decent but had many flaws in a nearly perfect run. All of the inputs you see here, where recorded by me. However, as time went on I did have a little bit of help from the Top Gear community about theorizing the perfect run.
About the Category
USA% is the shortest category for Top Gear 2. Here an in-game password is used to skip directly to the final country with a fully stocked vehicle substantially faster than the competition it faces - conditions in which any human player would find it possible to win, yet obstacles, cars, and frame perfect skips allows for perfect reflexes and a great deal of luck. Back in 2013, this category was recognized as Any%. RallyFTW and I changed the name, the reason the name was changed is that Any% wouldn't make sense since, Any% is what this category is, but is renamed to USA% because I am only playing the last country in the game, which is the United States, hence the name USA% was created. I started this category back in 2013 and have used the same upgrades since then, with some minor upgrade changes here and there.
Console Differences
Top Gear 2 was the only Top Gear game to be released on multiple consoles at a time. Top Gear 2 was released on SNES, Genesis & Amiga CD 32. Top Gear 2 is the most optimal on the SNES version and this TAS will be using the SNES version for the most optimal gameplay and performance.
Regional Differences
Top Gear 2 and all of the other Top Gear games, all have different regions in which the game can be played. Top Gear 2, and all of the regions don't have any major updates that limit the current categories of the game, and all regions kind of play exactly the same. The only thing that changes from region to region is the aesthetics & Password inputs this includes: Brighter HUD & CPU 2nd place is noticeable, JPN version and EU version passwords differ from the USA game. Some characters on the password screen will include, Left & Right arrows for moving the cursor to a certain position to change a letter or number.
TAS from 2007 Vs. TAS in 2018
There was another TAS of this game back in 2007 by Dooty, which showcases the same things, but without any upgrades applied. I originally got my inspiration from that video to start running this category. My TAS in today's standards is a lot different, in fact, almost has no correlation to the original TAS by Dooty. In my TAS I use the best upgrades to finish the races quicker and frame perfect skips to make the run a little more entertaining to some extent.
My TAS Vs. RallyFTW's TAS Differences
Although our TAS's for this game and category may look similar, I do have the upper hand on this one. RallyFTW's TAS has everything that is needed for the fastest completion time but was bested by me, by looking a little deeper on some route changes in New York, & Los Angeles.
No Name Entry
You may see me skip over inputting a name. The reason I do this is that I would have lost frames and time around 2 seconds, which is very important to have if I want the perfect run for now.
RTA Vs. IGT in Top Gear Speedrunning
All of the Top Gear games besides Top Gear 2 uses IGT. The reason this run uses RTA timing is that the IGT is very inaccurate, sometimes at the start of races you will lose between 1 and 20 milliseconds each time before you are able to start driving. I'm not really sure why the game does this, but my general idea, would be loading in the level, however, for now, we still don't know the reason. Another funny factor about the IGT in Top Gear 2 that I don't use in this run, is being able to shave off 1 millisecond for every race you go through. If your car manages to get behind another car after crossing the finish line, the game will get confused and make the IGT count backward and make you save more time then the initial processing time calculated.
Wall Glitches Vs. No Wall Glitches
This category does not allow Wall Glitches and requires the player to play as "intended". The proper definition of a Wall Glitch is: A wall glitch is a glitch that allows the runner to make the game think he/she has finished the race by hitting the wall. An object needs to be in contact with the hitbox of the car in order for the glitch to work, however, not all walls are the same.
Automatic Vs. Manual
There are two types of transmissions in Top Gear 2. One is Automatic, which increases your speed automatically (go figure), and the other one is Manual, which you can tune yourself. Before Manual transmission was used, we used Automatic. The switch from Automatic to Manual was faster, so much faster than it saved around 10 seconds.
Car Colors
You will notice that I am only using one car color for the majority of this run. The reason this is is that if I were to switch to a different color every time, I would lose roughly around 0.5 - 1 second for every track. The game offers a much different variety of colors to choose from that be: Black, Green, White, Red, Blue, Grey, Yellow, & Purple.
Tracks
- United States: Las Vegas: Las Vegas is interesting because it's one of the only tracks in the game that will allow the player to hold A and Left on the controller to get a starting boost from a nitro. The only other track in the game at the moment that has a same starting boost is San Francisco. I framed advanced the nitro boost's here to get the best possible time, without losing speed.
- United States: Los Angeles: This track is also really interesting. Starting off, you can boost past the 2 sets of cars in front of you (which is frame perfect), and it saves roughly 1 1/2 seconds over normal play. Los Angeles is one of the tracks I also spent the most time on and checked each frame to see when the appropriate time to boost was. There is a small hill that leads into a tunnel, you are able to use all of your nitro's on each lap when the MPH hits 228, doing this is also frame perfect and closest it's come RTA would be 226 MPH.
- United States: New York: New York is the last snow stage in the game, and features a new technique called "turn throttling". Turn throttling was discovered by RallyFTW and is used in RTA runs today. Before this discovery we were sliding every which way possible, however, the way this works is quite unique. If you are going around a corner (which depends on the sharpness of the turn), you can tap the direction your car will go, and it will cancel out the sliding animation. I used earlier nitro's here on 2nd lap near the end because I wanted to go fast because waiting loses time overall.
- United States: San Francisco: San Francisco is the final track in the game. Unfortunately, you won't be seeing San Francisco all that much, since the entire stage is fog based. Just like Las Vegas, you are able to hold an A press and a Left press on the controller and steer off the track to get in front of the cars ahead. This little time saving was found by another runner "RallyFTW". Later on in the track, you will notice I held off from gearing up, unlike the previous 3 tracks. The reason this is, is because I wanted a lot of speed and maintaining that speed is very important, because you are then able to keep your speed down a hill which increases your speed to 234, then 228 after the uphill than to 230, before leveling back off below 230 then a nitro is used a little later to maintain the kept speed from earlier. This track also features a half a nitro pick up or known as "Speed Up". Right before my nitro runs out, I pick this up to maintain speed for a little longer than intended.
Upgrades:
- The Screaming V12 = Best Engine will allow me to keep the speed needed throughout the track.
- Kemco Rain Slicks = Best Wet Tires is only used once during this run and is for New York.
- No Generic Radials = Believe it or not, you actually don't need Dry Tires in this run, I didn't purchase any to save some inputs.
- 6 Speed Race Tranny = Alongside the Engine, this too will help me keep my speed.
- Super Boost 400 =(Until San Francisco, where Total Boost 600-R is purchased)
Here Technickle uses tools to show off just how crazy a race car can be. Focusing on winning rather than losing and achieving the fastest time currently possible.
I want to personally thank all of the Top Gear speedrunning community that has supported me on this TAS. I also want to thank RallyFTW for helping me along the way with this route in particular.
feos: This run uses a route that can be considered a valid any% branch here, because the password glitch is legitimate: it's not a cheat, since regular passwords are already doing the same thing, so there's no point for the developers in implementing such a feature in addition to them.
But this run uses a few restrictions that I consider arbitrary.
Avoiding the Reset that can be used to speed up the movie is not a
speed/entertainment trade-off, and even if it was, it's not really adding any entertainment. The same can be said about
avoiding the wall glitches. Both of these things are maybe considered optional by the RTA rules, but
our rules are stricter, because we're not just a site that documents who is speedrunning what. We aim for the highest possible quality for our movies, and we only showcase the current records for each category.
Rejecting, and looking forward for a proper any% run that uses all the existing tricks.
This game might have a movie that uses a fully upgraded car and only plays through the USA tracks to reduce the repetitive content, but there's no guarantee it'd be
entertaining enough for Moons. And if it isn't, we can't accept it either.