Submission #3101: FuzZerd, Sonikkustar, upthorn & Aglar's Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 18:42.37

At last, after several months of hard dedicated work, the new and improved Sonic 2 TAS has finally made it into theatres near you!

This movie is a 4384 frame (01:13.07) improvement over the previously published run. Although there are some new glitches & zips, most of the time was saved plainly due to optimization.

Emerald Hill 1 This level was done entirely by Upthorn. I tried to look for improvements when I was first sent his file, and again later on when I was more competent at TASing this game.

Emerald Hill 2 At first I had planned on just using Upthorn's input for this level, as I had done in EH1. But a bit later in the run aglar mentioned that his run taking the upper route was barely slower. We managed to save nearly a second over upthorn's time by taking the upper route.

Chemical Plant 1 This is almost an exact copy of aglar's input. The only difference is at the very end, where we saved a few frames by breaking and spindashing instead of jumping. I even tried to change the input to more suit my personal style (using c to jump instead of what's used here) but, surprisingly, even slight changes like that resulted in slower times.

Chemical Plant 2 Yes, that enemy did give me 300 points. I had a lot of trouble with the door, and it may be possible to do that part a few frames faster.

I had to redo the boss a few times when someone would find an improvement before it, because the moving platforms are on a universal timer.

Aquatic Ruin 1 An interesting note is that I had to pretty much redo the level about 3 times, as when I went back to add tails' input, he kept catching up to sonic. Each time I redid the level I found more improvements, and eventually realized that skipping the speedshoes would save a lot of time. I thought that this was a lot of work at the time, but later in the run having to redo large sections of a level several times became a common occurance.

Aquatic Ruin 2 By doing an extra spindash underwater we gained a lot more speed. Having tails follow us underwater causes a lot of lag, but allows us to use the spring pad at high speed. This saves quite a bit of time and allowed us to land in the tunnel without the need to enter the water again, or take damage.

The 2 pauses are to wait for the boss to show up with out having the in game timer continue.

The way it works is this(this is somewhat speculation on my part): When the camera reaches a certain position on this level a timer starts. At the end of the timer another timer starts. (This is why we need two pauses) But the timers keep going even when the game is paused. This trick saves a little over a second of in game time, at no cost of real time.

By defeating the boss at the same frame he swings his hammer, I cause a glitch where he and the camera start moving to the right immediatly. This saves about 3 and a half seconds.

Casino Night 1 This level was zipped. Its not horizontal-underflow, but horizontal underflow would actually be slower, as it would require the screen to scroll left a bit before scrolling back to the right. Unfourtunately, It doesnt save a lot of time.

Casino Night 2 I managed to save 4 frames getting to the first red spring by messing with the spindash length, jump height, and jump timing. Getting the speedshoes ended up being a bit faster since it allowed us to keep speed going up hill, and gain speed quicker after getting the second set of speedshoes. Rolling under the flipper also saved a few frames.

But the major improvement came from the way we bounced off of bumpers and went through a flipper a little bit later in the level. The way we did it made it so that we had more downward y-velocity. This saved us the trouble of having us bounce off the two other bumpers. Surprisingly, 3 frames were also saved on the boss.

At the capsule we had to decide between hitting the capsule with sonic and being a few frames faster in game time, or hitting it with tails and being about half a second faster in real time. I decided to go with the tails hit since it looked much cooler, and didn't cause the games seconds timer to increment.

Hill Top 1 About 40 frames saved in this beginning section here from better movement. I also made Tails go far ahead which made the ball on the teeter-totter get thrown into the air. This allowed me to get thrown up slightly earlier.

The zip has a bit of an upgrade now. Instead of just pushing me across the solid wall, I get sunk into the ground! This allowed me to spin dash under the moving wall and get a better X-position than in nitsuja's movie. This managed to save about 40 frames.

Hill Top 2 We have Tails pass through the wall at the begining because later on in the level, he could open the door earler which would allow us to pass it much faster. Unfortunately this didn't save much time as the platforms were in a bad position. and having tails on screen caused some lag.

Tails also stays with us so that he is able to save time at the boss by hitting Robotnick earlier. This only saved 1 in-game frame though at the cost of 4 lag frames.

Mystic Cave 1 There were several optimizations in this level. One huge one was doing the bridge skip using an entirely new strat. This alone saved about 45 frames.

After the level was done, I found a use for Tails being offscreen in the level. With him offscreen, we would be able to pass through the bridge completely! We managed to save 69 frames after implementing this trick.

Mystic Cave 2 Some small amount of frames saved here. Nothing really special, but it does include a box "zip" if you can really call it that.

The boss had to be redone not once, not twice, but 4 times. Even more than the Chemical Plant boss! Blame the constant improvements for this one.

Oil Ocean 1 There was some optimization here and there, but the big improvememnt came from what could be considered a route change.

By jumping on the slopes, we were able to get just over 5000 speed. This allowed us to go past some sections without the use of a spindash which saved 6 frames per column that I had to spindash under. This saved about 2 seconds total.

A bit of time was saved by breaking and spindashing after a jump.

Note: If you look at Tails through the cam-hack, youll notice something quite strange.

Oil Ocean 2 A lot of unexpected frames saved here!

First, By doing a higher jump at the start, we managed to land into the Oil 11 frames earlier. Then we managed to do 5 less jumps in the oil without losing speed which added the total to about 38 frames. Were not exactly sure how 5 jumps translate to a 20 frame gain but we took it!

By having Tails spawn on the platform, we were able to hit Robotnick without losing time. 16 frames were saved on this boss.

Metropolis 1 I did the jump off the quarter pipe a little differently, which caused the steam spring to load in a little earlier. I also manipulated Sonic's y subpixels to be a lower value at the piston which managed to save 1 frame. Sonik made Tails follow Sonic this time around which allowed him to hit the switch before Sonic. This made the gate open up earlier. Other improvements were better speed at the springs and the use of a jump off the slope instead of a spindash.

One big timesaver here was a screw glitch which lets us fall through the floor. This saved about 5 seconds off the stage. Doing a spindash up the slope off the screen ended up being faster then jumping off screen first for some reason. I have tails touch the platform on the earliest frame to cause it to fall a few frames faster.

The other was the crusher trick, which saved about 6 seconds, and was found by Upthorn.

Metropolis 2 This time, instead of skipping one section, we skip the entire act! A roll off the platform and a spindash before the zip saved a bit of time off the zip.

Metropolis 3 There was some cleanup in this early part of the level. I got better positioning for the zip here which pushed us a few pixels to the right. Unfortunately this didn't save enough time to get an earlier cycle on the spinning platform under the spikes. I also got more speed after the springs & managed to get in the left hole of the screw instead of the right.

The gears were an interesting situation. At first we were having trouble with the fact that we couldnt make it. A few weeks have passed, and we instead came up with a work around. This in turn helped save some frames.

Obviously, the big improvement is yet another screw zip. This time, it saves almost 8 seconds! By scrolling the screen down before entering the warp pipe we save about 30 frames, which is another trick found by Upthorn.

The boss fight was improved by 38 frames due plainly to optimization.

Sky Chase This is an autoscroller, and 2:06 is generally considered perfect for this level. So naturally we saved three frames and got 2:05. Turns out, Nitsuja didnt do a full spindash at the end. Fixing that saved us these 3 frames.

Also, Sonik tried to make Sky Chase more interesting this time around. Theres a suprise near the middle if you guys want to listen too. ;)

Wing Fortress The constant pausing here was for the platforms, since they open up on a specific frame rule, about 40 frames of pauses were needed. At first we paniced beause we didnt know what to do. But then we learned that the patforms acted on a universal timer like the spinning platforms in Chemical Plant. This means that even if we pause the game and unpause, The platforms will still stick out on the same frame. So, with a couple of pauses, we simply waited for the platforms to open at the right time. I believe we saved over 30 frames in this section total.

There were other improvements in this stage as well. This included a 4 frame improvement at the very beggining of the stage due to small optimizations, using one less spindash to get up the ramp, and a 2 frame improvement at the boss. 1 frame was also saved from entering the cutscene faster.

Death Egg Those who watch my videos on youtube might recognize the input for this level. Especially for metal sonic. (I used old input for the final boss as well, but then optimized it after.) the input is from my Robotnik's Revenge TAS.

1 frame saved on the Metal Sonic fight, 6 frames saved on the Final Boss, & 1 frame saved from the spin dash. All this adds up to is an epic 8 frame improvement here.

FuzZerd's Thoughts:

Ok, first off, I would like to apologize for this running taking so long to complete. I knew it was a big project when I started, and knew it would take a long time, but I didn't expect it would take quite this long, I thought we would be done before 2011.

I wanted this run to be arguably perfect. Btw I consider in game time to be only visible time (i.e. in game seconds) which is part of why I decided to do the CN2 capsule the way I did it.

I first started wanting to do this a LONG time ago when I found out about the screw glitch and realized it wasn't in the run. Then the Met 2 zip was found. I added it to nitsuja's movie and synced up Met 3. Only to find that SC desynced. I was a bit discouraged and mentioned it to upthorn. And he made a vague mention of improvements to Emerald Hill Zone. ("that's like saying that the Emerald Hill improvement caused Chemical Plant Zone to desync") but I couldn't get his WiP. I put off TASing the game for awhile because I didn't want to have to do the whole game, and I didn't even see any improvements to Emerald Hill Zone.

I eventaully did find a 2 frame improvement to EH1, and got impatiant. That's when I started working on the run again. I somehow saved a bit more time on EH1 and found some optimization on EH2. I didn't really think I would be able to find much improvement at all, so that was encouraging.

I posted my WiP, and then aglar messaged me telling me that he had worked on the game up through CP1. I was surpised to find out that there was a notable improvement to CP1 since I didn't really expect to find many improvements, let alone improvements on EVERY level. he also made concrete mention of improvements to Emerald Hill Zone by upthorn and nitsuja. I made sure to get his WiP before continuing. This is when the run really started to take off. Part of the reason there are so many rerecords is because upthorns WiP of EH already had about 20k rerecords.

I need to give a huge thanks to Sonikkustar, with out whom this run may have never seen the light of day. He probably did about as much, if not more work then I did.

Towards the end of the run I started to get lazy, and Sonikkustar picked up a bit of the slack. every time I said "I don't really want to do this part" or "I'm not sure how to improve this part" he went and did it for me! and he did a lot of the work in making the points where nothings really happening entertaining. Something I don't feel I'm very good at. (for instance he did all of Sky Chase Zone)

I guess I'm a bit biased, but all in all I think this finished movie is truly amazing and entertaining! And I'm incredibly proud at what I did and impressed at what Sonikkustar did. I feel like this is my lifes work!

Sonikkustar's Thoughts:

Wow...I mean wow. This was certaintly an experiece I will never forget. I mean, I never thought I would help make any sort of Sonic TAS, let alone actually have my input in a completed submission! It truly was enjoyable working with FuzZerd, and I am glad that we finally finished what some folks on IRC consider "The greatest classic Sonic TAS to date".

It all started back in Fall of 2010. I saw that FuzZerd & marzojr were starting to weed out improvements from Nitsuja's TAS. As usual, I got interested and looked foward to their completed work. A few weeks later, I hear that FuzZerd was starting an improvement entirely from scratch, which got me even more excited for the end product. I tried to help out by listing the times from Nitsuja's run. Thats when I mentioned that I wanted to chat with him on Skype to discuss further improvements. Eventually after AR1, I managed to do some input for AR2. It was then I discovered I was half decent with Sonic TASing! So I tried to improve later levels, and with luck, managed to save quite a bit! It was at this point that I think he considered to have me co-author with him for the rest of the game. I honestly dont remember anymore, It was such a long project.

I honestly didnt even realize that we were working together. I literally had to ask him:

[9/2/2010 6:04:33 PM] Sonikkustar: So are we considered to be working on this together. [9/2/2010 6:04:33 PM] Sonikkustar: >_< [9/2/2010 6:04:40 PM] fuzzerd: yeah [9/2/2010 6:04:48 PM] fuzzerd: I think so anyway lol [9/2/2010 6:04:51 PM] Sonikkustar: lol [9/2/2010 6:04:54 PM] Sonikkustar: ok [9/2/2010 6:04:59 PM] Sonikkustar: I wasnt sure. [9/2/2010 6:05:02 PM] fuzzerd: I was planning on putting you as second author [9/2/2010 6:05:09 PM] Sonikkustar: ^^ [9/2/2010 6:05:11 PM] Sonikkustar: Thanks. [9/2/2010 6:05:21 PM] Sonikkustar: I hope I contributed enough. [9/2/2010 6:05:34 PM] fuzzerd: and then upthorn and aglar as third and fourth [9/2/2010 6:05:40 PM] fuzzerd: unless they say they didn't do enough. [9/2/2010 6:05:44 PM] Sonikkustar: Nice [9/2/2010 6:05:54 PM] fuzzerd: since they only did (most of) one level

Since then, I took this run as my own. I gave a lot of dedication to finishing this run and making it as amazing as possible. This finished movie was incredibly hard to make, but many people were looking foward to it since its probably the first ever complete run to not only challenge Nitsuja's published movie, but succeed at defeating it!

Thanks for everyones support! I feel very, very proud of this run. In fact, this might be my greatest run yet. Thanks to everyone who were looking foward to this movie! I hope you guys like this epic! :)

None atm. Go find some if you want!

We would like to give a Super Sonic Shoutout to the following people.

marzojr, stanski, mike89, nitsuja, Upthorn, Aglar, & everyone else from TASVideos & even Speed Demos Archive for their encouragement, patience & help. They were certaintly looking foward to this run's completion and wanted it to be the best it can be. We hope that we've delivered expectations and have created a noteworthy movie that satisfies all. Thank you everyone!

Truncated: Claimed for judging!

feos: HD encode.

Truncated: Setting to delayed, waiting for new version from Fuzzerd with improvements from Upthorn. (If this is incorrect, PM or say something in the topic.)

sgrunt: Replaced submission with a 512 frame faster version at the request of one of the authors.

Truncated: Setting back to judging underway to accepted!