This run aims to beat the game as fast as possible, through any means possible within the game. This also improves
the current published run by 24.50 seconds.
Game Objectives
- Complete the game as fast as possible
- Optimize for In-Game Time (IGT)
This run has a lot of stuff going on in it, so I'm going to give a very brief explanation of some game mechanics.
Knuckles' Chaotix is a very unique game, mostly due to the infamous "rubber-band" physics, and the lack of Sonic and Tails in gameplay (aside from a teaser in the good ending). The game has five playable characters: Mighty the Armadillo, Knuckles the Echidna, Espio the Chameleon, Vector the Crocodile, and Charmy the Bee. The primary character is also tethered to a partner, which can include the previous five characters, along with two others: Heavy, and Bomb. For this run, I chose Knuckles for the main character and Mighty as the partner.
The way the game works is after completing the introduction level, you are sent to a character select screen. After selecting a main character, you are then taken to the hub world. This hub world has two important things here:
- A claw machine, with which you have to choose your partner. You can also change your partner with the "Combi Catcher" again if you want to.
- A roulette, which you have to use to play the many stages the game has to offer.
The game has 5 total attractions, which each have 5 levels, totaling to 25 levels that need to be completed, excluding the introduction level Isolated Island. Levels 1-4 are normal levels that end with a signpost. At the end of level 5, a cutscene of Robotnik showing up will play, and a boss fight will ensue. After completing all 25 levels, Metal Sonic will show up at the roulette, and the first phase of the final boss will begin.
All of the characters have their own unique traits, which range from different abilities to different weights. Knuckles has the ability to glide and climb, Espio can run up walls and ceilings, Vector can perform an air dash and climb walls, Mighty can wall jump, and Charmy can fly through the levels, making the game a cakewalk to complete. The other two partners, Heavy and Bomb, are not particularly partners you would want. Bomb is... well, a bomb. He explodes whenever he takes damage, and he can even hurt the main character if he enters the bomb hitbox. Heavy is just a giant heavy hunk of junk, and he slows the game down considerably.
The rubber band physics are very... interesting. It's a simple concept:
- Holding B will make your partner stand in place and scream "HOLD" at you. You can run either left or right away from your partner to build up speed, then let go and go super fast in the other direction.
- Alternatively, you can come up to your partner, and press and hold B. This will make your character pick up your partner, and by holding a direction (i.e. up and right, or just left) and letting go of B, your character will throw your partner in the appropriate direction. This is useful, as letting go of directional input and holding B after throwing your partner up into the air can allow you to get a lot of height and a ton of speed.
- There's a certain mechanic to the rubber band physics that I like to call the "leader system." Basically, if you're holding B, your partner will become the leader, and you will go wherever your partner goes, regardless if you try going to the right or going down, etc. If you're holding a directional input while in the air, your main character will become the leader, and your partner will behave the same way. Going completely neutral (not holding B or any d-pad input) will make neither of you the leader, and you will both fly around like crazy, but you won't actually go anywhere. The same principle applies to if you hold B and a d-pad direction. It will make both of you the leader, and you will both stay as far away as possible from each other until you let go of either B or the d-pad. Understanding the way the rubber band physics work is key to abusing it to fly around the levels at insane speeds.
- If you press A, your partner can be called back to you, which is helpful if your partner gets stuck somewhere. The downside is this action costs 10 rings to use, and this opens up the ability to go into having "negative rings" if you have less than 10 rings on you.
If you are going fast enough in the air, it's possible to throw your partner and regrab him in midair, which has some benefits. You can throw your partner down if you need to go down to get to the goal, or if you're fast enough, you can repeatedly regrab and throw your partner. This will also decrease your gravity to about 10%, which will allow you to glide to the end of some stages.
Knuckles' Chaotix has a sort of "day/night" cycle that is running throughout the game. These times of day are: Morning, Day, Sunset, and Evening. Everytime you beat a stage, the clock will advance by 3 hours (or more, depending on how long you took to beat the previous stage), and usually in a speedrun, once you've beaten two stages, it will switch over to the next time of day, and will loop after 24 hours have advanced. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Anyways, this is not just to show off some cool color palettes. The time of day ALSO affects level object layouts, badnik placement, and boss difficulty. This can be both a blessing and a curse, as in some levels, certain objects that would slow you down at Evening are not in the level at Morning, so the optimal route would be to enter the level at Morning and not Evening. Or you can find an alternative route that doesn't rely on the day/night cycle AND the roulette.
Now that I've cleared up some of the game mechanics, let's talk about the glitches and tricks I abuse in the run.
Glitches/Tricks Used
Zips
The main glitch that I abuse in the run is what's commonly called a "zip." A zip usually refers to being ejected in a certain direction out of a wall if a player somehow managed to get inside one. You've most likely seen this in other classic Sonic runs, like Sonic 2, or Sonic 3 & Knuckles. You clip into a wall, and hold a direction opposite to where you want to go horizontally. So say, you were inside of a wall and wanted to go left. You would have to hold right since the wall is trying to eject you backwards out of the wall. However, in Knuckles' Chaotix, the zip mechanics are very different. In this game, if you clip into a wall far enough, the game will automatically drag the player up and to the right through the wall. Otherwise the game will know to push you up and left out of the wall and you'll get nowhere. In a speedrun, runners will usually use Knuckles' glide ability to clip into walls, which is done by starting a glide one frame before you would hit a wall, but then letting go of C to cancel the glide, which will make Knuckles stand inside the wall and be shot either up and left out of the wall, or up and right through to the other side. In some cases, this can be a frame perfect, one frame C press, and in some cases you have a little leeway to hold it for longer. This is also commonly done by clipping into the top right corner of a wall, but it also can be done with straight walls and even slopes, although it is much more difficult. Certain actions can also temporarily cancel a zip, such as jumping, gliding, or spindashing. This is mostly abused in Amazing Arena, since it is a very vertical level.
Negative Ring Trick
There is also another glitch I do in the run, called the Negative Ring Trick. Basically, if you have negative rings when the score tally shows up (meaning you have time to call back your partner after hitting the signpost to reach negative rings without losing time), then the score tally will tick once, giving you 0 points and effectively skipping it altogether. However, this trick only works if you don't get any score from your Secret Bonus, which you get for finding secret monitors, finding the Bonus Game big rings scattered throughout the levels, or for finishing the level with 00 milliseconds on the timer. I made sure to go out of my way to ensure I did not get the secret bonus to avoid waiting out the score tally. Normally, the tally ticks down by 100 points for each statistic every frame until they all hit 0 (save for the Secret Bonus which ticks down by 200 every frame), then the next stage (or in this case, the cutscene of going to the hub) will begin. Since I mostly get 50,000 point bonuses for finishing the levels in under 30 seconds, I want to skip every single one of those score tallies, otherwise I would have to wait 500 frames (a little over 8 seconds) for the timer bonus to finish counting down each time.
Throw Cancel & Call Cancel
Two other tricks I do are what are called "throw cancels" and "call cancels." Throw cancels are performed by throwing your partner, and jumping during the throwing animation. This allows you to regrab your partner immediately, in case you tried to throw him at a bad angle or something like that. Call cancels are done by pressing A to call your partner on the same frame that you throw him. This will not play the long animation of your partner flying towards the camera and back, but it will still take 10 rings from your ring counter. This is useful, especially if you are setting up for the Negative Ring Trick after hitting the signpost. I mostly do these at the end of levels after hitting the signpost just as a showoff, but I also do this during the levels at certain points just so I can show off at the end. :)
Noteworthy Moments
Amazing Arena
Amazing Arena is the only level in the game with a sort of "requirement" to beat the stage. You need to find a switch within the level to turn the lights on, and only then can you beat the level. If you make it to the signpost without turning on the lights, the level will be marked as "Failed" and you will have to redo the stage. There is also usually a miniboss in every stage (except for stage 5) that you would have to kill normally in order to progress to the end. In realtime runs, speedrunners will usually use their partner to fly over the boss trigger and skip having to fight it, which can save around 5-15 seconds, depending on the time of day. I opt for a different route through the level. After finding the switch in each level (except for stages 3 and 5), I make my way to the very left edge of the level, and clip into the wall. Now typically, you would be softlocked if you clipped into the wall at the very far right of the level, since you can't get momentum to get out, eventually being stuck against the top right edge of the level. However, by abusing the zip cancelling methods I mentioned earlier, I am able to get out of the wall and throw my partner towards the signpost! If I don't pick up my partner, after being sent up and right for a while, my partner and I will become seperated, and then I'll be softlocked as I won't be able to grab him to get out of the wall.
Botanic Base 5
I developed a new route to complete BB5, which didn't involve having to do the level in the morning. Instead of taking the path to the elevator, you simply perform two very quick and very precise wall clips, then take a path towards where the elevator would be if you had taken it, then follow the same route as the old one. This ended up being a LOT faster than taking the elevator.
In-Game Completion Times vs. Old Times
| Stage | Act | New Time | Old Time | Improvement |
|---|
| Isolated Island | Intro | 0'50"73 | 0'51"93 | 0'01"20 improvement |
| Techno Tower | Act 1 | 0'09"30 | 0'09"35 | 0'00"05 improvement |
| Techno Tower | Act 2 | 0'05"66 | 0'06"77 | 0'01'11 improvement |
| Techno Tower | Act 3 | 0'09"73 | 0'10"85 | 0'01"12 improvement |
| Techno Tower | Act 4 | 0'10"20 | 0'10"83 | 0'00"63 improvement |
| Techno Tower | Act 5 | 0'38"44 | 0'40"10 | 0'01"66 improvement |
| Botanic Base | Act 1 | 0'06"55 | 0'06"60 | 0'00"05 improvement |
| Botanic Base | Act 2 | 0'06"10 | 0'06"10 | No improvement |
| Botanic Base | Act 3 | 0'15"50 | 0'16"73 | 0'01"23 improvement |
| Botanic Base | Act 4 | 0'09"43 | 0'10"38 | 0'00"95 improvement |
| Botanic Base | Act 5 | 0'49"48 | 0'56"33 | 0'06"85 improvement |
| Amazing Arena | Act 1 | 0'07"71 | 0'07"95 | 0'00'24 improvement |
| Amazing Arena | Act 2 | 0'09"01 | 0'09"08 | 0'00"07 improvement |
| Amazing Arena | Act 3 | 0'07"08 | 0'07"80 | 0'00"72 improvement |
| Amazing Arena | Act 4 | 0'07"61 | 0'09"22 | 0'01"61 improvement |
| Amazing Arena | Act 5 | 0'42"60 | 0'42"60 | No improvement |
| Marina Madness | Act 1 | 0'06"03 | 0'06"58 | 0'00"55 improvement |
| Marina Madness | Act 2 | 0'06"22 | 0'06"51 | 0'00"29 improvement |
| Marina Madness | Act 3 | 0'05"90 | 0'06"05 | 0'00"15 improvement |
| Marina Madness | Act 4 | 0'06"33 | 0'06"55 | 0'00"22 improvement |
| Marina Madness | Act 5 | 1'04"93 | 1'05"20 | 0'00"27 improvement |
| Speed Slider | Act 1 | 0'08"81 | 0'08"99 | 0'00"18 improvement |
| Speed Slider | Act 2 | 0'09"28 | 0'09"55 | 0'00"27 improvement |
| Speed Slider | Act 3 | 0'09"26 | 0'09"40 | 0'00"14 improvement |
| Speed Slider | Act 4 | 0'06"77 | 0'06"80 | 0'00"03 improvement |
| Speed Slider | Act 5 | 0'42"95 | 0'44"35 | 0'01"40 improvement |
| Final Boss | Phase 2 | 0'59"38 | 0'59"43 | 0'00"05 improvement |
Total Time: 8'30"99
Total Time Saved: 0'21"04
Like last time, I want to thank Hagenburg and upthorn for their runs that were used as references for the first version of this.
I probably would have not been improved if I hadn't found a 2 frame improvement in just the first part of the intro level. And it turned into saving 24 seconds. Dang, dude. There may still be improvements to be found with better optimization, but I probably won't go back and find them.
Emulator Used:
ROM Checksum
- SHA1: 0c2fff7bc79ed26507c08ac47464c3af19f7ced7
BIOS Used:
- 32X M68000 (USA).bin (CRC32: 5C12EAE8)
- Sega 32X BIOS (1994)(Sega)(Master SH2).bin (CRC32: DD9C46B8)
- Sega 32X BIOS (1994)(Sega)(Slave SH2).bin (CRC32: BFDA1FE5)
feos: Claiming for judging.
