Submission #6841: GTFoxN6Y0899's Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles "Game Change Glitch%" in 01:36.89

This glitch (found by LucasRPDJ) allows the game to switch from Sonic 3 and knuckles to Sonic and knuckles using debug mode.

Glitch Explanation:

Samsara: ...I'll be switching into Memory in the middle of this judgement.

Memory: Alright, I've successfully activated the Judge Change Glitch.

Hello, GTFoxN6Y0899, and welcome to TASvideos!

First off, I have to say I really like the little info blurb on the encode. That was cute! It's clear you're a fan of the site, and I always love seeing new faces in the community who are openly inspired by what we do. I really hope you stick around!

There's a small problem with being new to the TASvideos community, though, and it's not knowing our rules. Unfortunately, this run breaks... Quite a lot of our rules. I'll be going over them in turn, because that's precisely the kind of person I am, but I want to make it clear in advance that I don't mean this to be discouraging at all. I want this to be a learning experience, like Sonic's Schoolhouse, except more fun! I'm even going to assign homework! Don't worry, it's going to be actually good homework. The kind where you, like, do a fun thing at home and you don't get graded on it the next day in class. It'll be fun, unlike Sonic's Schoolhouse.

As Spikestuff pointed out, this would've made for a great April Fool's Day submission. AFD submissions are ways to just have fun and show off weird things with TASes without the burden of having them judged as real submissions, and this is a genuinely interesting glitch that could've gotten a positive reaction as an AFD run, but... It's August, so... Let me break it all down. Like Sonic's Schoolhouse.

As MattyXB pointed out...

"It must beat the game. Single-level movies that don't finish the game are rejected. Where applicable, the movie must reach an ending screen that positively signifies a game is finished successfully."

The movie does not reach an ending screen, it just reaches the title screen of a different game. We cannot accept this as a full movie in that case. In fact, I'm not really sure where to actually end a run like this. I suppose you'd have to beat Sonic and Knuckles? Debug to Death Egg 2, maybe? Deathing Eggman does take you back to the S&K title screen immediately... Which would honestly be another interesting thing to show off with this glitch, but, well, there's far more problems than just the endpoint.

Referencing Spikestuff's post again...

"This includes any in-game codes, input sequences such as the Konami Code, as well as immediately accessible hidden menus."

The level select cheat is used to be able to use the debug mode cheat to be able to perform this glitch. We've managed to achieve rule-breaking Inception, here. While level selects and debug modes can be useful for TAS routing, they're not allowed in most runs. The most common way we allow them is when they're not accessible through codes, but through actual game glitches. A good example of this is this now-obsoleted Earthbound movie that accesses the debug menu through checking one of the very corners of the game map (if my memory serves me correctly, and considering I Judge Change Glitched into Memory, I think I have an advantage there).

Since these are explicitly codes, they are not acceptable.

"Esoteric and unorthodox goals are acceptable, but only as long as they make for entertaining movies."

Our submission polls ask people how entertaining they think a movie is, and as of the time of this judgement, this submission has 2 Meh votes and 13 No votes, for a total percentage of 6%. The comments in the thread do seem to enjoy the nature of the glitch, but most seem to agree that it is not entertaining enough to warrant a separate branch on the site. It is much better suited for an explanation video or a personal project for your channel.

To elaborate a little further on our rules: Entertainment is THE defining factor for non-standard goals. It's not a factor for all submissions:

"Vault: Goal choice is limited to fastest completion time (any%) and full-completion (such as 100% or best ending). Other goal choices are not eligible for this tier."

...But this isn't any% or full completion, so it would not qualify for Vault. I don't think even an optimized movie would be entertaining enough to make it to Moons, either, due to the nature of the goal choice.

I've left this section for last, as I feel it's the most important one. You'll see why at the end.

"A speed-oriented movie must beat all existing records."

For anyone reading this who happens to be unaware of how the codes work in S3K, here's a quick summary:

The level select cheat is activated in Angel Island 1, by hanging off of a rope swing and pressing L L L R R R D D D. If you hear a ring sound, you did it correctly, and you can press Start + A to go back to the main menu for it. The debug mode is accessed in the same way, but in Mushroom Hill 1 with one of those lift things. You have to hold A while selecting a stage in the level select to activate debug mode.

I bring this up for comparison points with other runs of S3K. The currently published Knuckles TAS passes that rope swing with an IGT of 4 seconds, while this run reaches it at 10. This RTA run reaches a different rope swing with an IGT of 9 (which works with the level select cheat).

The 100% Knuckles TAS reaches a lift in Mushroom Hill 1 with an IGT of 23, while this run reaches one at 31. That 23 second IGT includes the 100% TAS going out of its way to play the two bonus stages. Losing several seconds to a separate TAS that already loses several seconds in and of itself due to its own goal choice is unacceptable. It seems clear to me that the route used in the 100% TAS to get to the upper lift is faster.

"The movie's technical quality must be acceptable. Don't be lazy."

The Sega logos aren't cleared as fast as possible, and the rest of the menuing is noticeably slow. Frame advance and more liberal usage of rerecords need to be used, here! That's the great thing about TASing, you literally have all the time in the world to do things as fast as possible. Movement also looks very slow even watching in realtime. The Sonic games are incredibly complicated, 79 re-records likely isn't enough to optimize a single spindash, let alone an entire TAS.

"We will try and beat your movie. We should hopefully not succeed."

GoddessMaria has provided an improved input file and an encode of the movie, using the same route you take and optimizing performing the glitch, but she's not the only one who tried to beat your run. I have also done this, and... I'm not going to provide the input file!

Why? Well, remember when I said I was going to assign homework?

Yep, I'm actually doing that. GTFoxN6Y0899, I want you to try to optimize this run. Even if the goal choice isn't acceptable, I think it's actually a really good goal choice to hone your craft as a TASer. It's a short run, it requires you to learn some of the Sonic physics for movement, it gives you a reason to study other runs and see what they do, and it gives you an excuse to look further into this glitch and see if anything can be done either faster or just differently in general.

Your goal is to beat my run's time, which is 3307 frames, or 0:55.19, over 40 seconds faster than this submission. I'll disregard timing differences between Gens and BizHawk, because... Well, I think I am literally the only person in history who has TASed a Genesis Sonic game on BizHawk. The reason I am not providing the actual file is because I want you to put in the work to discover what I learned for yourself. Use all of the tools at your disposal in order to optimize your run, then put it up on Userfiles and post it in the S3K game thread when you have a run faster than mine. Feel free to use that thread anyway and ask around the community for advice (I highly recommend it, in fact), there are plenty of Sonic TASers out there who are more than willing to help you out, and tons of information about the game floating around on the site. "Figuring things out by yourself" doesn't actually mean you have to do all the work on your own!

I will give a couple hints though: My file is intentionally not fully optimized, so you should definitely be able to perform everything faster. Definitely use the upper route in Mushroom Hill 1: Below 20 IGT is easily possible, which means you should be aiming for less than that. I perform the glitch using mostly the same strategy shown in your run and GoddessMaria's test file, but I managed to optimize it by a good amount over both. People in the submission thread brought up that using debug mode to place and subsequently break several monitors at once can also activate this glitch: Look into that for sure!

This may take you a while, and that's absolutely fine! Like I said, you have all the time in the world to make a TAS, so you want to make it the absolute best you possibly can, and then keep trying to improve it from there. There are published TASes that have taken weeks, months, even years. I've personally spent close to a full year working on a single run, and while this obviously won't take you anywhere close to as long, it's still important to keep all this in mind as a TASer. There's no rush, no time limit, no deadlines or anything to worry about. Just keep working at it, keep improving, and who knows, maybe in the future we'll see your name attached to the best Sonic TAS we've ever seen.

For now, though, I'm rejecting this run (and this category outright) for cheat usage, suboptimal movements, and not being a complete run.