Top Gear 2 is an arcade simulation racing game made and developed by the company Kemco for the Super Nintendo and was released on September 15th, 1993.
The TAS will play through 16 countries … but only do 47 out of the 64 required races to reach the credits sequence.
This TAS will not just be racing … but also will be breaking the fabric of reality, and create parallel universes, as the ground suddenly disappears from existence. Prepare to watch as the car magically slams into objects and walls, and what you think is real, is actually just a simulation of the time-space continuum in and of itself.
Game Objectives
Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.3.2
Uses Wall Glitches to Finish Certain *Races Faster
Skips Naming File to Save Time
Plays on Hardest Difficulty
Starts from a New Game File "(Start)"
Setup
This TAS was created using BizHawk 2.3.2 (the current newest version released).
Upgrades:
Stock V-6 = I keep this same engine for quite some time, but later in the run allows me to upgrade 4 races earlier than normal.
5-Speed Overdrive = I buy this gearbox upgrade in Australasia: Ayers Rock - This will allow me to maintain enough speed to get into to first place, while as maintain it throughout the race.
Kemco Rain Slicks = I buy the best-wet tires in Australasia: Sydney, however, I still keep the money earned and don't buy the nitro upgrade quite yet. The best-wet tires will not make your car slip as often, even at higher speeds.
Total Boost 600-R = I finally buy the best nitro upgrade in Britain: London - This was a good purchase because I wanted to go just long enough to rack up money, and buy something better than if I were to get the third best nitro: "Super Boost-400" @ Sydney.
5-speed Close Ratio = I buy the third-best Gearbox in Britain: Stonehenge - This upgrade allows for more speed, but, at the same time also allows to maintain the speed given after using a nitro, it's not the best gearbox, as I will get that a little later in the run, but, this does the job for time being.
Screamin' V-12 = I finally buy the best engine in France: Bordeaux. This engine allows me to get a lot of speed rather quickly, and also will allow me to maintain the speed gotten overall.
Kemco Racing Slicks + 6-speed Race Tranny = I buy the last two "required" upgrades of run in France: Paris - Now that the car is completely upgraded with "required" upgrades, The races will now just fly by in a jiffy.
_
About the Run
100% New Game Glitched is a category for Top Gear 2. This categories main intent is to allow the player to play all tracks with the given exception of using glitches to either skip laps or finish races 30 seconds after they start. This TAS run I have created goes through 47/64 tracks located in the game. The TAS skips laps and also skips entire races. When I created this TAS I wasn't sure where to begin, because I was limited, and I had limited options to work with. I persevered and stuck with it all the way through. This TAS completes 100% New Game, Hard, Glitched with a time of 2:23:40.99 | 32 Minutes and 16 Seconds faster than an RTA run.
About the Category
100% New Game, Hard, Glitched Rules State: The 100% New Game Glitched Category *requires* the player to go through the entire game with the exception of being able to use wall glitches, no restrictions. Timing starts from Console on, Press start on the upgrade screen of Australasia - Auckland with $0 and no upgrades purchased. (changing car color is fine as it is not a purchase).
100% requires these upgrades:
- Best Engine
- Best Wet and Dry Tires
- Best Gearbox
- Best Nitro
-Armor - Front and Side (Optional)
Stop the timer when you have successfully crossed the finish line on the 3rd lap of the United States - San Francisco (or in this case with the TAS the last meaningful input) which is the last Money screen after San Francisco.
Wall Glitches
During this run, you will notice I will be exploiting the game in unintended ways, to either skip laps or just finish the race outright. This is known as Wall Glitches. Wall Glitches have a weird property to them, and not all walls work the same way. Some walls require really precise inputs to execute the correct action. For example: If you are holding the X button the entire time, then press B for 1 frame, etc the wall might skip laps or finish the race right away. This is certainly a game exploit and should be treated as such.
Why Manual?
In Top Gear 2 you have the choice of choosing between two types of transmissions. You can choose either Automatic or Manual transmission. In this TAS and for every TAS that I or others make of this game, will likely always have a manual transmission. With the use of a manual, the run is a lot quicker. Why? The reason is faster acceleration, along-side faster startups. Overall, manual will typically save anywhere between 6 and 9 seconds respectively per track.
Countries:
Australasia - Auckland, Ayers Rock, Canterbury Plains, Sydney
Egypt - Abu Sunbul, Aswan, Cairo, Hugh Sitton(Giza Pyramids)
France - Bordeaux, Monaco, Nice, Paris
Germany - Bavaria, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich
Greece - Athens, Meteora, Mykonos, Santorini
India - Amber Port, Bombay, Delhi, Taj Mahal
Ireland - Dublin, Galway, Killarney, Limerick
Italy - Florence, Pisa, Rome, Sicily
Japan - Hiroshima, Kyoto, Toyko, Yokohama
Scandinavia - Copenhagen, Helsinki, Reykjavik, Stockholm
South America - Chile, Mexico, Peru, Rio De Janeiro
Spain - Andalusia, Barcelona, Madrid, Seville
Switzerland - Geneva, Grunwald, Lucerne, Zurich
The United States - Los Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco
Races Skipped Via Laps or Entirely
London
Banff
Hugh Sitton
Bordeaux
Meteora
Santorini
Bombay
Taj Mahal
Dublin
Galway
Pisa
Hiroshima
Mexico
Peru
Seville
Geneva
Los Angeles
Improvements that can be made for this TAS
Figuring out Left-side merge barrier wall glitches
Things left for this game for TAS'ing
Possibly a Low% Hard New Game TAS (Which is kinda interesting, because Low% is not really Low% as you can upgrade so you don't lose)
My Experience as a TASer
Like my previous TAS'es I have made, none of them actually were great, to be honest. With this TAS, however, it's a different experience, especially having to actually navigate using what is given and when it is obtainable. This not only makes the glitches A LOT more difficult, but gives me a good challenge overall, and I managed to overcome in the end.
When I first started TAS'ing I, of course, chose Top Gear 2 for SNES, as I have been speedrunning the game for almost 5 1/2 years. Another runner of the username: RallyFTW, was the first person who actually left an impression towards me and this game, which then inspired me to start all of this process.
My Future TAS Plans
Top Gear 3000 AKA The Planets Champ (JP)
I have been dabbling in Top Gear 3000 as of late. Currently, I have two TAS'es going right now: Top Gear 3000 New Game Hard,| Top Gear 3000 Low% Hard (which is almost impossible to do without upgrading).
feos: It was a really long ride, both literally and figuratively.
The first subject I questioned was optimality, and just like with #6148: jmosx36's SNES Top Gear in 1:27:34.66, the key in this game is routing and resource management. So I gained some frames by shifting gears and using initial nitro more optimally, but it was quite hard to beat this movie on the scale of entire tracks. I didn't originally arrive sooner on the first track, it required several attempts to beat this movie's time. And on the last track, I only did the first loop 50 frames sooner, but couldn't finish the race sooner overall. So yes, this run can be optimized quite a bit, but it'd still be non-trivial to improve the overall times. So I think the technical quality is acceptable.
The goal is trickier than I believed a year ago. The password glitch can be considered a major skip glitch, and avoiding it doesn't mean the movie completes anything internally defined by the game as optional. Here's what the rules say:
Full completion can only consist of optional one-time, irreversible, or otherwise strictly limited accomplishments that can be objectively measured and maximized.
Conditions that are imposed unofficially by players are only eligible if they originate from fundamental game-play features.
Avoiding a glitch is clearly a self-imposed condition. However the result is quite clearly a full game completion, because all tracks are played, and that's indeed a fundamental gameplay feature. You can use passwords to play from a given country, or you can play the whole thing in one go. We don't allow skipping ahead via passwords. But we allow game breaking glitches, and in this game, the password glitch doesn't involve entering anything as a code, so 1) it's a legitimate glitch, and 2) it effectively simulates in-game password behavior but allowing you to skip ahead via glitch abuse. So we end up having the same options as the game officially has.
A similar thing happened with [962] N64 Glover "all stages" by adelikat in 37:15.28, which is in Vault and doesn't use internally defined options to complete maximum of the game: that movie just existed as an any% branch before the major glitch skip was found by Nahoc. And the decision was to leave that movie as a full game completion, which is fundamentally a vaultable category.
To be sure, I asked other judges and no one minded using the same logic for this submission. On the other hand, we shouldn't add the "100% completion" class to the publication. Yet I think the current branch makes more sense than having this as a blank label and the potential "USA%" run as a "password glitch" movie: to emphasize that this movie contains full game completion.
Probably not, even if you could start with every upgrade. Just the fact that one player is always going to be ahead at the start means that another is going to be behind. And even though your position placement is dependent on how well you did, the only way you could exploit that would be to wait for CPUs to pass you up. You can't bump CPUs to move ahead of you, as getting bumped by CPUs tanks your maximum top speed, which in turn ruins any nitro routing you're attempting to do. The only way 2-player could be just as fast as 1-player is if both players cross the finish line when the game graphically updates positions, which is dependent on how much lag there is when it happens. As far as I know from TASing the game, it's like frame rules in SMB, but more volatile.
Spikestuff wrote:
Again I'm not a person who does racing games, so I'm not going to go over Auckland and do all 5 laps to see if more can be skinned off but it is something worth noting that the TAS isn't using racing lines efficiently.
feos wrote:
What I think about turning in this game is that it may be generally losing time (notice the sound), so one might need to travel in straight lines that are chosen carefully. But this hasn't been tested.
From my experience, racing lines aren't a thing in this game. Any noticable difference between turning, I think, might be due in part by how much lag you might have received when the game visually updates. This games feels just like Outrun or Slipstream, in that it's 2D made to look 3D.
feos wrote:
I tried improving the last level and couldn't. Sure there are some frames lost on starting up: when you initially hit X, A, when you shift gears. But the bigger problem with this game is nitro management on slopes, and it's really hard to get right. And it loses tons of time too. I saved 50 frames on the first lap and lost almost 200 at the finish. I even admit that improving the first level wasn't exactly easy, for the same reason.
...I couldn't have said it better myself. Nitro management in this game is tricky business, especially when you're trying to figure out how to stay above that mark where you barely decelerate for as long as you can.
Washed up Top Gear 2 player, here. Message me on Discord if you have any questions related to speedrunning or TASing the game.
Discord: Rally#0001.
