Having the powers of flight and spindashing, Tails blasts through Sonic 1, leaving Sonic and even the mighty Knuckles eating dust in almost all levels of the game. This movie was made with Pu7o's Tails in Sonic 1 hack, version 2.1.1.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Gens 9Z
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes no damage
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Ignores delays caused by bonus effects

Comments

This impressive hack by Pu7o places Tails into Sonic the Hedgehog 1. Being a marked improvement (and complete rewrite) over the earlier version by drx, it underwent two revisions during the making of this movie to make Tails' flight and swimming work exactly like they do in Sonic 3 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
This was based on the Sonic and the Knuckles runs of Sonic 1. But differences between Tails and Sonic (spindash, flight and even hitbox size) and between Tails and Knuckles (flight vs. glide/climb) made some routes impossible while enabling others. Overall, the two-tailed game wrecker blasts through the game leaving everyone else far behind.
The biggest time saver was the abuse of the Sonic 3 enforced screen boundary for Tails' flight: whenever you start flight (or boost) at or above the top of the stage, vertical speed is set to zero, preventing horizontal speed loss due to drag. Thus, you can maintain a given altitude and horizontal speed for as long as Tails' can fly. The use of this technique is marked below.

Timetable

LevelTime
Green Hill 10:16:34
Green Hill 20:15:15
Green Hill 30:28:25
Marble 10:13:23
Marble 20:14:19
Marble 30:27:08
Spring Yard 10:18:41
Spring Yard 20:15:38
Spring Yard 30:38:49
Labyrinth 10:24:39
Labyrinth 20:24:08
Labyrinth 30:27:08
Star Light 10:17:19
Star Light 20:10:11
Star Light 30:29:27
Scrap Brain 10:21:22
Scrap Brain 20:19:13
Scrap Brain 30:08:45
Final1:12:58
Total7:23:22
The table shows the in-game timer values. The value after the final colon indicates the in-game frame counter, and is restricted to the [0-59] range. It is updated every frame (except during lag frames), and increments the in-game second when resetting to zero.

Stage by stage comments

Green Hill Zone 1

The flight and subsequent braking at around 0:09 avoid losing some time to jumping, and manipulate the position enough to make the most of the triple-jump boost at the loop and allow a bugged vertical speed drop after the tube which saves me some 4 frames of drag around 0:13:56. That flight is above spindash speed, and that speed is kept until the end.

Green Hill Zone 2

Alas, the ease with which Tails could enter the wall even for casual players at the start of this stage means Pu7o added some extra walls to prevent it. Thus, Tails has to go through by sheer speed. This is one of 3 levels in which Knuckles is faster than Tails, and the only level in which Sonic is faster than Tails.

Green Hill Zone 3

Same route as Knuckles. Some bits of flight here and there make Tails slightly faster.

Marble Zone 1

Same basic route as Knuckles, as using the cave zip from the Sonic run is slower. Using flight at 0:04:48 allows me to reach the slope at 0:06:44 with tremendous horizontal speed, resulting in a very high vertical speed. Pixel/subpixel manipulation allows me to hit the slope at 0:12:28 in very favorable conditions for that last jump.

Marble Zone 2

Same basic route as Knuckles, as the Sonic route is much, much slower. Abusing slope, Tails can fly to the top of the walls with minimal speed loss and without having to bounce on the bees. Letting go of the spindash even a frame before 0:07:35 hits the wall and stops; immediately after, subpixel manipulation allows me to hit the ground at an optimal slope change to fly up the wall.

Marble Zone 3

Same basic route as Knuckles, as using the cave zip from the Sonic run is slower. Delaying flight at the start results in a very large speed gain. I have to jump/brake at the top of the wall for the second spindash to avoid losing time. Some braking after the ground is done allows me to abuse slope when I hit the ground below and set up another optimal slope change at the final slope before the boss. The boss is killed perfectly: Robotnik can't be defeated even a frame earlier.

Spring Yard Zone 1

Starts more or less the same way as Knuckles, but uses the Sonic trick when getting the speed shoes (Knuckles can stop with glide there). I avoid rolling down the slope at around 0:07:00 to retain control when I jump 12 frames later; this allows me to lose less speed due to drag because of the enforced screen boundary abuse.

Spring Yard Zone 2

With some (massive) improvements courtesy of Upthorn, this level abuses the enforced screen boundaries only slightly: at the beginning, to keep most of the speed up until that big slope which I roll down. Slope jumping and abuse of changing slope lead to insane speeds for the rest of the level.

Spring Yard Zone 3

Sadly, Tails can't fly above the wall because of the enforced screen boundaries. It is also impossible to reach those moving sprites at 0:05:xx fast enough to not have to wait. Tails isn't fazed, and abuses the enforced screen boundaries to end the level very quickly. Even taking the speed shoes as Knuckles and Sonic do isn't enough to compete with Tails here. Flight saves the day further by allowing Tails to defeat the boss ultra fast. This level has some improvements by Upthorn, and is the only level other than the Final Zone to take more than 30 seconds.

Labyrinth Zone 1

Not much to say. Knuckles can use glide to great effect in this stage, saving about 1.5 seconds over Tails due to not having to wait as long to reach the ground after the several jumps.

Labyrinth Zone 2

A better start, and the shortcut from the Sonic run allow Tails to do this level faster than Sonic or Knuckles. This level has some improvements by Upthorn.

Labyrinth Zone 3

Swimming allows Tails to reproduce the shortcut used by Knuckles. It also allows Tails to enter the shortcut more efficiently, and to improve it markedly by not having to wait for the screen to catch up.

Star Light Zone 1

Flight allows me to touch the bridge a few frames earlier. Subpixel manipulation at the wall at 0:03:24 to 0:03:47 allow me to gain great speed by jumping at 0:06:54 and slope jumping afterward and still clip the edge at 0:07:36, allowing me to reach the ledge without using flight or the spring. Slope jumping and flight give me a high speed at the end.

Star Light Zone 2

Spindash and slope jumping give me some insane speeds to work with. Add in the enforced screen boundary abuse to keep most of the speed. The result: I have to do some braking at the end of the level so that the screen can catch up enough that I hit the end sign.

Star Light Zone 3

Slope jumping, enforced screen boundary abuse and subpixel manipulation (about 0:12:00 to 0:12:20) afford some insane speeds. Flight then allows me to slaughter Robotnik.

Scrap Brain Zone 1

Following the Knuckles route, as the Sonic route ends up being slower. Flight makes this route much more effective.

Scrap Brain Zone 2

Running through the fire at the beginning allow me to hit the gear in a way that I can gain absurd vertical speed in that jump. I use the Sonic shortcut, but improve it with judicious spindashing. At around 0:11:xx, I could brake faster or release the spindash earlier; but I would just bump into the saw and lose a lot more time than I do waiting a little bit. I then abuse the changing slopes and fly until the end. Stage transition is very optimized too.

Scrap Brain Zone 3

Using spindash and flight to improve on the shortcut from the Sonic run gives an insanely short time for this stage.

Final Zone

This is a single frame slower than the Knuckles version of the stage. I can't figure out where this frame is coming...

Other comments

I wish to send a big thanks to Upthorn: not only for several extremely useful suggestions for improvements, but also for actually improving 3 levels and for making a special version of Gens with camera hack for this ROM.
Possible improvements: It might be possible to improve Green Hill Zone 3 by one or two frames up until the boss, and maybe by another frame in the boss fight. Labyrinth Zone 1 might also be improvable by some 2 frames. And I think that it may be possible to gain a couple frames in the boss fight of Star Light Zone 3. I have tried to make these improvements in many different ways, but always ended up failing, though.
Suggested screenshot:

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. I'm not sure I got the right ROM though. (I tried Sonic Spinball (U) [p1].gen, which was the closest match to what you wrote.) Well, here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.

mmbossman: I am rejecting this submission because it is extremely similar to the Knuckles hack of Sonic 1 that is already published, with a detailed breakdown here. Although this run is both well done and entertaining, it is lacking in unique content, due to the fact that spin-dashing is identical, and flying is only minimally different than gliding. Best of luck on your next project, marzojr, you have some good TASing skills, so please take this decision as constructive criticism.

mmbossman: This submission has been given another chance at publication. If you feel it should be published, instead of returning to the grue, please post WHY in the thread. Similarly, if you do NOT think this movie should be published, post WHY.

mmbossman: People really like this run, so I'm reverting my previous decision. Accepting as a new run, to be placed in 'Concept/Demos' (at least for now).

ShinyDoofy: Will publish "soon".

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2140: marzojr's Genesis Tails in Sonic The Hedgehog in 14:29.30
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Congrats on submitting it. I give it a 9 in entertainment, good job.
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Sir_VG
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SBZ3 was awesome. Nice shortcut there. :)
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a Youtube link would be nice :P
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It's Tails and it's fast. Unfortunately, it really suffers from SMW syndrome. Namely, flying over most of the levels :\ Some of the best parts were in Spring Yard where you basically zoomed though shit at top speed.
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ZeXr0 wrote:
a Youtube link would be nice :P
I can't put this on Youtube because it's longer than 10 minutes. You can have an AVI instead. Also yeah, this is awesome, I saw all your WIPs and I love this run.
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Seems like nineko is at it again. Oh well, gonna encode it myself anyway :P
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I don't know why you hate me but I honestly don't care, and I'll just state once again the reasons that lead me to make encodes even if they're not used: I want to provide an option to people who either can't get Gens Movie to work, can't use torrents, or simply want to see an AVI with a decent quality. So yeah, nothing to see here folks, and I'm sorry that we get at this all the times. If you look at the older submissions you'll find out that through the years it's not uncommon that someone puts up an AVI while a submission is still in the Workbench, in order to help people to see the movie, and get as much feedback on the run as possible. So I don't really get what's your problem with me. I think the wisest thing I can do is to ignore you and keep volunteering. No offense, but your "I am the encoder, you must stfu" arrogance is annoying and meaningless.
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arflech
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^+1
ShinyDoofy wrote:
Seems like nineko is at it again. Oh well, gonna encode it myself anyway :P
itt i need to feel important
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I don't hate you and I'm deeply sorry if I seem arrogant. Initially, I was going to write "nineko beat me to it", yet found that such a post was too spammy. I don't have anything against your encodes or that you provide AVI files to people who don't want to wait until final publication for whatever reason; more likely, you're welcome to help the community. I also admire your will to continue after several "beatdowns" and giving your encodes a higher-than-usually-acceptable-for-publication bitrate to thus even possibly improve entertainment. Anyway, it's rather the hoster you choose to upload your files on I'm not happy about. Which one you take is is your very own choice and I can't blame you for that. Still I personally dislike Rapidshare because over the vast majority of times I've tried to download something from it lately, I end up waiting half an hour for 20 MByte because their bandwidth (for non-premium users) seems to be at a somewhat critical level. So because I knew it'd take me at least three times as long to download your encode than actually capturing a lossless one myself, I chose the latter. I admit my smiley at the end of the post was not very well chosen and might have drawn a wrong picture. Again, I'm sorry about that.
Joined: 12/1/2006
Posts: 26
Might as well mention that the "proper" title of the hack is "Miles 'Tails' Prower in Sonic the Hedgehog" (as seen on the title screen and the header), though it's often referred to as "Tails in Sonic 1" for convenience. With that said, this is awesome.
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As much as I enjoy seeing Sonic levels broken into itty bitty pieces, I can't really feel entertained by this one. I blame the mechanic that allows Tails to fly over levels so simply. No fault of your own, of course. Technically it appeared very sound. I'm rating it about 7/9.
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mike89 wrote:
I can't really feel entertained by this one
Isn't 7 a little high for "not really entertained"?
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upthorn
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I watched this last night but hadn't gotten it together to post yet. It's reasonably entertaining, and improved technically from the last one I watched, but there's still a couple of places where it looks like there's improvement yet to be eke'd out. GHZ1, LZ3, and SLZ3, to name a few. Rated 7/8. If this is published, I'd recommend against obsoleting the Knuckles version.
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Hey, it's still Sonic, after all. :P (meaning that it's always entertaining on some level, not that my voting is biased)
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EDIT: Well my post just got rendered worthless. *facepalm* Upthorn: I don't really think anybody was considering obsoleting the Knuckles TAS.
Cpadolf wrote:
Isn't 7 a little high for "not really entertained"?
100-point grading systems bring to mind school grading systems. Under those, 70% is considered C (average). It could also be cross-contamination. (I should also note that gaming reviews also usually go 0-50, then 51-75, then 76-100 for bad, meh, good, so people using 5 as an average grade is kind of rare.)
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I only watched your first WIP and was impressed at the time; this is a great improvement, especially the antics at the ends of levels and whatnot. Yet more proof that Sonic 1 was not designed with spindash in mind (not to mention not designed with a flying fox in mind). Rated near the already white hot part of the scale. Good job!
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i would have never expected Tails to be faster than the other two. nicely done. i gave both categories 8s.
Joined: 7/2/2007
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Thanks for the encode, Nineko! Looks very solid to me. And you didn't fly over all that many levels...except for all of Marble Garden and most of Spring Yard...um. Anyway, nice work.
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arflech
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ShinyDoofy wrote:
Anyway, it's rather the hoster you choose to upload your files on I'm not happy about. Which one you take is is your very own choice and I can't blame you for that. Still I personally dislike Rapidshare
I agree with that: MediaFire über alles.
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I gave it an 8.5 for entertainment, would have been higher if not for the constant flying over levels and missing out on actually seeing them (although i doubt that that can be helped), some of the other glitches were unexpected and entertaining though (like the disappear off of camera, camera scrolls right really fast OMG level is over trick :P). No point me giving a tech rating not knowing the hack, or having seen too many other sonic TAS's Thanks Pu7o for uploading to youtube so i could watch!
upthorn
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Satoryu wrote:
i would have never expected Tails to be faster than the other two. nicely done. i gave both categories 8s.
I'm pretty sure the Knuckles run would be faster if it were updated. Then again, that's an opinion I formed before I knew about the whole thing where Tails can spindash at the top of the level and then fly over it while maintaining that speed.
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arflech
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What baffled me was when Tails kept damaging an enemy while flying; I thought that during flight Tails would be as vulnerable as if he were standing up...
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If I recall correctly, Tails can damage things by hitting them from below when he's flying. Otherwise there's a boss in Sonic 3 that he'd be totally unable to defeat.
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