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Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
My cousin and I recently were talking about a speedrun discussed on the forums.  Namely, the Secret of Mana speedrun.  The thought of a multiplayer co-op speedrun came up with much declaration of how freakin' awesome it would be to see done.

It was shortly after this when we realized that we had Sonic Mega Collection sitting on the Gamecube behind us, which includes three games that can be played with Sonic and Tails simultaneously.  We quickly rushed to it to begin preliminary testing runs.  We decided that Sonic 3 & Knuckles (S3K heretofore) would be the best choice for several reasons:

1) S3K allows Sonic a number of special abilities with special shields, plus the ridiculously over-powered Insta-Shield ability.

2) Tails is allowed to fly on command, and even pick up Sonic in an air lift maneuver which works wonders for skipping sections of stages and even occaisionally giving him a boost of speed.

3) Sonic 2 is evil at the end, and nobody wants to do a Single Segment run only to fight TWO bosses in the last stage with 0 rings, and about 20 hits to kill the both of them (8 and approximately 12).  Ouch.

So the run has begun.  Unfortunately, it won't be finished ANY time soon, as my cousin has to return to Washington on the 30th, and won't be back for who knows how long.  However, we have begun accumulating tricks and tactics for stages and bosses.

Among other things, we make use of Tails' air lift ability often, as it allows Sonic to travel faster in the air (as long as they aren't ascending and he doesn't have the Fire Shield), Sonic's special shields and his insta-shield ability, and Tails as the main weapon in most boss fights.  If anyone has more specific tricks, or questions about our tactics so far, post away, we'd love to have some feedback.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, TAILS stands for Tenacious Airborne Invincible Little Striker.  XD
Thread title:  
Yoshi's eggs are at my mercy!
Hmm, certainly sounds interesting, remember to abuse Tails as a boss killer, since his deaths are nothing to care about. xD

Umm..trying to think of some shortcuts I remember..

» Flying Battery Act 1
Um, might want to play around first, somewhere in the level is a section where you can push a bush of spikes to the right, revealing a whole to fall in. Skipping a big portion of the level.

» Sandopolis Act 1
Whenever you exit the first building thingy, on the slid falling toward the right, as you're coming up, go OVER the sandwall, much faster route.

That's all I can think of, it's been years since I last played. >>;
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
heh.  Done and Done.  XD
Also tenkiforecast
I'd see it... S3&K is my favorite Sonic game... that could be really good. No doomsday zone... then there's Sandopolis... EVIL ZONE. EVIL.

I can't think of too many shortcuts, I bet you know the hydropolis act 1 part to skip the water... but I don't know what else.
I'll be really interested in this run

all I can say though is good luck
Are you getting Chaos Emeralds to do the Doomsday Zone, or skipping Doomsday?
And S3&K >>> S3K.  Tongue
Yoshi's eggs are at my mercy!
Uhh, you don't need the emeralds for Doomsday zone. You'll just become Super Sonic without emeralds. And having Hyper Sonic isn't needed for all the time wasted on getting 14 emeralds. So it's best to just skip every big ring, and just abuse the fact they just magically give Sonic 7 emeralds at Doomsday. Grin
No they don't.
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
Yeah, I'm sorry Tri-Hex, but even without having beaten the game twice yesterday during practice runs, I know you're completely mistaken about Doomsday.  This will be pure speed, no chaos emeralds, no bonus stages, no deaths.  Doomsday is fairly boring, all told.  It may not be fixed scrolling, but it still isn't particularly fun to play, let alone watch.  Maybe some day there will be a Super Sonic run included, but for now, no dice.  Besides, once you get Super Sonic, the run becomes so much less interesting to watch, since all of the enemies are no threat, you go twice as fast and jump much higher, you can't use the insta-shield or special abilities, and TAILS' usefulness becomes moot.  Super Sonic is boring, even if the special stages are interesting.

As for Hydrocity, yes, we use that as well.  The main difficulties so far are Marble Garden (which we *mostly* have), and most of the & Knuckles portion, since we've only actually played those levels twice each so far.
Yoshi's eggs are at my mercy!
Oh. >_>; Sorry then, I could've swarn you didn't. But then again, I'm sitting here scrolling over crap that I havn't played in years, and then sit here and argue. Sorry Smiley
Edit history:
HeroPenguin: 2005-06-25 07:43:15 am
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
WAH-HAHAHAHA!  Well, there's definitely one highlight of our run so far:

Sky Sanctuary.  2:22.  TAILS broke it.  XD
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
I know people regularly and often damn the Sandopolis Zone...

but DAMN that Sandopolis zone!  o_O  http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/videogames/sonic/sandopolis1.png
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/videogames/sonic/sandopolis2.png

T_T
Also tenkiforecast
Sandopolis = evil.

my least favorite part of any sonic game...
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
Well, me and my cousin have finished our first (absolutely craptastic) full test run.  Aside from a number of ludicrous deaths on Sandopolis, Lava Reef, and Death Egg, the run was relatively satisfactory.  There are a number of places we need work on (like the above-mentioned zones), but the run is officially finished with the planning stages.  All of our routes are finalized, barring any startling new discoveries that defy conventions of the game, all that is left to do is practice, and hook up the VCR.  XP

If anyone was curious, our death-ridden run finished with a final time of 1:31, starting at the instant Sonic can move at the beginning of Angel Island, ending after the final hit is landed on the fleeing Robotnik at the end of Death Egg act 2.  Very conservative estimate says that we can take ten minutes off, my personal opinion says that we can do more, since at LEAST that much was due to deaths, and there were other mistakes that can be perfected.  Also, many places where Sonic's Insta-Shield can be abused as a time-saver, and refinement of Tails control so he's always on hand when needed to airlift.

The Goal for now:  1:10
Nice job dudes. I like how you work together well. I think one reason there are no sonic runs on this site is that theres pressure to make them very perfect (when you compare human times to sonic center’s emulator times). So don’t over exert yourselves to making it flawless, and actually finish the run above all else. I would love to see this go up.
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
Well, unless we get a tape and everything recorded and ready to ship to Nate by thursday at 11:30, it won't actually go up for several months.  My cousin goes back to Washington and won't be back until likely the christmas season, if that.  However, if that IS the case, you can rest assured that we will have been practicing on our own enough to make this run highly optimized.  However, if possible, we will send in a run before the end of the week, and then it gets to hang out with Nate until he can convert it, and then with Radix until he fits it in an update.  XP

This WILL go up, however.  That we know.
Quote:
Nice job dudes. I like how you work together well. I think one reason there are no sonic runs on this site is that theres pressure to make them very perfect (when you compare human times to sonic center’s emulator times). So don’t over exert yourselves to making it flawless, and actually finish the run above all else. I would love to see this go up.


erm, the Soniccenter times ARE NOT emulated. I believe the reason that there aren't any speedruns of sonic up is because they are pretty hard to do. Well, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all the other games are easy or anything, but unlike mario, or megaman, or or metroid, or any of those type of platform games, sonic has TONS of multiple paths to choose from. There are also a variety of factors that determine exactly how fast sonic can go, so unlike most games where the player has a set maximum speed, sonic can continue to reach new heights of speed! The problem is finding where and when these heights of speed can be reached!

Anybody can make a sonic speedrun, but it'll most likely turn out to be crap if they dont know what they are doing!

Now about this speedrun. I'm looking very forward to it! I think the emulated speedrun time is 45 minutes (it was like 50 mins) so me thinks that a perfect human run could be a little under one minute. Of course, there's no such thing as perfect when it comes to human speedruns, so a total time of 1:10 will be quite impressive I believe. I wish you the best of luck on this speedrun!
Yoshi's eggs are at my mercy!
Despite how impossible the pressure is, I recommend checking out the Sonic 3 & Knuckles run at Bisqwit's site. The guy abuses that camera glitch where you hold down, and press something to make it fly through like that. And also the fastest routes possible. His time was at 51 minutes for the same game you're doing:

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/nesvideos/movies.cgi?rec=Y

Good luck again.
Sorry, its just that whenever people talk about Soniccenter, they say the levels are emulated (so it seems). But a run is better than no run because it’s motivation for anyone who wants to perfect it.

BTW if the runs aren’t emulated, why aren’t there any on SDA?
welcome to the machine
Aren't there already a few sites that try to keep track of these sort of things?
Yes, but they don't have our style, wisdom, lovability and panache. Actually, you'll find that some of the game pages here are little more than fancy links to other sites. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here so where good quality archives exist elsewhere we're just a Yellow Pages service.


http://speeddemosarchive.com/rules.html

There really should be a link to the sc though, once it goes back up in it's entirety at least.
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
I have seen the SprintGod run before.  This run will NOT abuse the camera glitch, because I simply prefer to do things legitimately, i.e. more or less the way the programmers intended.  Glitches will NOT be used in this run, or any runs of mine (except in cases where they have ZERO impact on the game itself/are used in a blooper reel, one of which will be in the S3&K run...  no hints!), just pure skill.

I'm looking over his run again anyway, to see where I can use some of his methods, or things I didn't think of before.  Mostly though, I don't think my route will change.
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
It occurs to me now after another practice run that I should rephrase my stance on glitches in my runs:

I will never be using a glitch in a run INTENTIONALLY.  GOD I'm so sick of the flagrant programming errors in S3&K.  Let's list, shall we?  Cheesy

Slow Tails:  Randomly occurs when Tails catches up with Sonic, makes his inertia levels double, more or less.  meaning he can't accelerate, can't stop, can't airlift properly, and just all around sucks.  Killing Tails occaisionally fixes this problem, but often wastes way too much time.  Only really hurts in long lateral airlift sequences, or boss fights where Tails is the primary attacker.

Butterfinger Tails:  Randomly occurs for no apparent reason, but somehow worse on Sky Sanctuary.  Sometimes Tails WILL NOT grab Sonic while flying.  there is no discernable cause to this, nor is there a solution, except to try again.  Wastes precious seconds.

Ramp Stick:  When curled into a ball and going at a high speed, sometimes ramps will spontaneously decide to STOP YOU COLD.  There is no solution to this other than to avoid the problem ramps, or to avoid rolling at high speeds.

Ramp WTF:  randomly occurs in specific locations that I have no idea where they are, aside from a specific spot in Hydro City 1 and several places in Carnival Night.  When running along a ramp, or ceiling, or whatever, sometimes you will inexplicably fly through the side of the wall, and either wind up in some andom location elsewhere in the level, or simply remain stuck in the wall.  w t f. Fun fact:  In the manual, they mention these glitch spots as "robotnik traps designed to activate when approaching ac certain speed" (paraphrased).  The programmers KNEW these existed, and instead of fixing them, left them in and rationalized them as traps.  FUN!  >O  Even better, they say that when trapped as such, the only escape is to use the RESET button.  W T F.

There are more, but these are the main problem ones.  They show up far too often to be ignorable, and while perhaps not run-breakers themselves (aside from the Ramp WTF), will definitely hamper any time attempted.

No, I am not quitting this run, but I REALLY needed that out of my system.
Quote:
Sorry, its just that whenever people talk about Soniccenter, they say the levels are emulated (so it seems). But a run is better than no run because it’s motivation for anyone who wants to perfect it.

BTW if the runs aren’t emulated, why aren’t there any on SDA?


well that's because there aren't videos for every single level, though there are for most Shocked

I believe that mike89 has a recorded vid for everysingle level for one of the gamegear games (sonic 2 gg me thinks) however, he used an emulator to play (but he didn't use savestates, he just doesn't have a gg) and unfortunately, emulated runs aren't allowed here!

Quote:
There really should be a link to the sc though, once it goes back up in it's entirety at least.
rolken said at the end of june. He's running out of time though so he better not pull anything out of his ass :O


Quote:
Ramp Stick:  When curled into a ball and going at a high speed, sometimes ramps will spontaneously decide to STOP YOU COLD.  There is no solution to this other than to avoid the problem ramps, or to avoid rolling at high speeds.

Argh I hate this! I feel your pain though. It sucks ass when you've got a really good run going and you only need one stupid glitch to ruin it for you Sad
For the ramps- are you holding the d-pad down when you roll? If so, just let it go when you turn into a ball. Maybe it'll help *shrug*
Rock on, Earthbound. Rock on.
It doesn't.  It's entirely speed-based, as far as I'm aware.  I do know that it doesn't work to not hold down, though.  it's also random, because it doesn't ALWAYS happen.  The Sonic games are some of the most flagrantly buggy games I have ever played.  It's sad, really.