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Run summary

Sonic 2 for Master System in 18:44.28 with all emeralds. A fair percentage of this time can be allocated to counting down the ridiculously sized time bonus (the maximum is 300000 points, and I obtain this six times).

Run description

  • Aims for fastest (primarily in-game) time
  • Items: 100%
  • Best ending
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck

Emulator information

Dega 1.14a was used to record this run. L+R is on (I'm not sure if you can even turn it off), and it's used quite a bit. Sound is 44100kHz (just in case). I didn't actually change any defaults, though, so hopefully there aren't any problems.

General notes

The fastest means of movement in the game is the roll-jump. The speed of this can be further increased by rolling down a hill. However there's a small slowdown when you hit the ground, so it pays to make them as long as possible most of the time.
Collecting all six emeralds allows me to play Crystal Egg - it doesn't add that much time, and it doesn't really feel complete without Crystal Egg at the end.
The timer in this game sucks. It carries over fractions of a second from the previous level, meaning it's not entirely accurate. Some levels, therefore, are actually a second shorter than they appear.
Some specific level notes:
Aqua Lake 1 - I got hung up on this level for about a week because it seemed to be half a second slower than the real-time video I was using as reference. Sprint told me he only managed 16 because the timer on the PAL version ran slower, but I didn't like this explanation because it didn't meet the usual 5:6 ratio. So I ran my TAS against his speedrun side by side. I came out in front.
Draw your own conclusions.
Scrambled Egg 1 - This level is slower than the equivalent real time video, but only because there's a shortcut on the Game Gear version that the Master System version can't make.
Scrambled Egg 3 - If that looks like random input in the tube... well, it is. I basically mashed random buttons until Silver Sonic bent to my will.
After three hits, I had to force him into my preferred pattern again, but I couldn't manage it a third time and it got one proper attack in.
Crystal Egg 3 - I feel this isn't a great end to the run (normally Robotnik would be spouting attacks at you) but the alternative was to torture myself with nonsensical hitboxes and frustrating attack patterns. This one is more directly comparable to existing material, anyway.

Special thanks

sgrunt - Was the first to attempt a run on this game, and got me started on it when his first WIP left plenty of room for improvement. So, for being suboptimal, I salute you!
Sprint - Creator of all the real time videos on which I based my strategies. In particular the whole Scrambled Egg 2 strat is down to him, which is amazing when you consider the amount of frame-perfect tricks there.
Anyone else that watched my WIPs... anyone?
Enjoy!
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Oh! I also corrected the ROM name.
  • You indicated Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (UE) (V1.0) [!].sms
  • I updated it to Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (UE) (V1.0) [!].sms
Bisqwit: Seems proper and good. Accepting and encoding. Congratulations. :)

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Posted: 12/6/2007 3:05 AM
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plusminus
Player (64)
Joined: 11/2/2007
Posts: 100
Location: Toronto, Canada
shallow wrote:
I would like to watch and rate this movie. I really would. Unfortunately, there must be something wrong with the link provided for the Dega emulator. There are no .exe files (or anything similar) that I can see to even start the emulator. Just a lot of folders filled with .txt files.
If there's a lot of files ending in .cpp and other extensions, you downloaded the uncompiled source instead of the compiled program. This is the link you want: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~pcc03/dega/downloads/dega-1.14a-win32.zip
Posted: 12/6/2007 3:46 AM
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alden
Player (121)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
I give it a big old honking yes vote. And the lord willing someday we may see a sonic 1 run, though it probably won't be this interesting :) Nice work, hope to see more SMS runs from you soon...
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Posted: 12/6/2007 8:22 PM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
plusminus wrote:
Raiscan wrote:
The only thing I did not like was the piercing sound of the time being added to your score at the end.
Would it be a reasonable request that, should this movie be published, the sound in the AVI is lowered/muted when the score is being tallied?
While this is a perfectly reasonable request, I doubt it will be done as the user can easily mute the sound or lower it with their media player. That, and it will probably be taken as decreasing the integrity of the run or something.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Posted: 12/6/2007 9:28 PM
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plusminus
Player (64)
Joined: 11/2/2007
Posts: 100
Location: Toronto, Canada
Raiscan wrote:
While this is a perfectly reasonable request, I doubt it will be done as the user can easily mute the sound or lower it with their media player. That, and it will probably be taken as decreasing the integrity of the run or something.
I don't see why it would decrease the integrity of the run, as long as mike89 didn't object to it. Some videos have similar and more extreme changes (the solid magnet beam in the Rockman video) and I doubt anyone is going to miss the noise. As far as muting sound manually, you're right that it's not that hard for the viewer to do but it requires a degree of interactivity which normal viewing typically shouldn't. It's not really a big deal, I think it would just be a nice tweak.
Posted: 12/6/2007 10:12 PM
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mmbossman
Experienced player (828)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
GBx TAS of 2008
Most often, the avi that is encoded tries to be as true to the emulated movie as possible, to avoid the "DAT'S NOT HOW 1T L00KZ IN MY COMPUTERZ, ITZ FAKE!!" type of comment. The more we can keep the encoded movies exactly like they are emulated, the more "integrity" the site has. I believe the rockman glitch is "enhanced" in the avi to make it easier to see for the viewer, due to movie compression technology making it hard to see in the original. I for one hardly ever listen to runs with the music on, but I'm of the opinion that if it bugs you, just hit the mute button for 6 or 7 seconds.
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Posted: 12/6/2007 10:36 PM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
plusminus wrote:
Raiscan wrote:
The only thing I did not like was the piercing sound of the time being added to your score at the end.
Would it be a reasonable request that, should this movie be published, the sound in the AVI is lowered/muted when the score is being tallied?
One can easily skip the score tallying moments (or mute them, if one really wants to watch numbers roll), avoiding the noise problem.
Posted: 12/8/2007 7:59 PM
Post subject: Movie published
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TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15585
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1019] SMS Sonic the Hedgehog 2 "best ending" by mike89 in 18:44.28
Posted: 10/12/2008 10:45 AM
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Bezman
Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185
It was really fun watching this - I, like others, never got past the first boss. This makes me want to go back and try again... I applaud the decision to get the emeralds - whilst watching, I didn't actually realise what those were and was confused as to why you were retracing your steps. If a slightly slower in-game time would make for a faster play-record time, I wouldn't be opposed to some slowing down - maybe showing us some of the secret rooms or something. That might have been marginally more entertaining than the few more seconds of the timere count-down. Although then I'd probably have wondered why you weren't just going straight to the end until I read the comments. A hard choice, certainly. It's kinda funny the first few times we see the score take so long to count down, anyway.
I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.
Posted: 12/21/2009 5:02 AM
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MarbleousDave
He/Him
Player (13)
Joined: 9/12/2009
Posts: 1559
I was watching this with 1.16 but it desynched. It was recorded with 1.14, i think the version matters.
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