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Here is a speedrun with new and unique goals. It shows many parts of each level not visible in any other type of run. We practically see everything in the game.
For those not familiar with PERFECT BONUS, here’s a brief explanation.

PERFECT BONUS: This level bonus is obtained by collecting all free-floating rings in a level, so ring TVs aren’t necessary. Losing rings by taking damage doesn’t matter. The bonus is worth 50,000 points, which is useful for high scores, but it takes a lot of time.

  • Goals:
    • Priority: Collect all the rings as fast as possible.
    • Don’t take any TV monitor worth 10 rings.
    • No deaths.
    • Don’t take damage or lose rings.
    • Show PERFECT BONUS! On each level’s score tally screen.
    • 1 Player controls 2 Characters.
  • Time table:
ZoneTimeRings Collected
Emerald Hill Zone 11:11::59225
Emerald Hill Zone 21:29::42226
Chemical Plant Zone 11:49::51195
Chemical Plant Zone 22:09::24152
Aquatic Ruin Zone 11:06::12176
Aquatic Ruin Zone 22:01::25217
Casino Night Zone 12:11::53232
Casino Night Zone 2Skipped---
Hill Top Zone 11:07::55146
Hill Top Zone 23:04::34199
Mystic Cave Zone 11:16::56183
Mystic Cave Zone 2Skipped---
Oil Ocean Zone 12:02::19207
Oil Ocean Zone 2Skipped---
Metropolis Zone 11:41::47218
Metropolis Zone 2Skipped---
Metropolis Zone 32:25::08153
Sky Chase Zone2:05::5867
Wing Fortress Zone2:17::05196
Death Egg Zone0:41::130
Total28:43::352795

  • Author comments:
Start
At the beginning, I used the level-select code because there are areas where unreachable (inside solid objects, too high, etc.) rings made PERFECT BONUS impossible. I used both controllers to speed up the song selection: 19, 65, 9, 17.
Emerald Hill Zone 1
In the early levels, Tails was a big help getting rings in nearby alternate routes to avoid backtracking.
Emerald Hill Zone 2
Here the situation is similar to the previous level and we had to sacrifice tails so Sonic could power through the level. Especially when 2 nearby routes with rings diverged.
Chemical Plant Zone 1
These zones were more complex due to the various possible paths. I had a good chance to improve this zone's route with practice. Tails does again a good job with the rings left in the zone.
Chemical Plant Zone 2
There was an unfortunate desync here when I edited the movie to have the level select code. While redoing the level, even though I found some improvements, the final time was around 3 seconds slower.
Aquatic Ruin Zone 1
The hard parts here were the underwater segments, because of slower movements, so I had to really take advantage of the spindash’s acceleration. I was also able to improve some things during the do-over, like the final jump which propelled me to the end quicker.
Aquatic Ruin Zone 2
Here was the first area with an unreachable ring. It’s in the second-to-last column underwater. However, we overcame that by abusing sprite collisions with Tails off-screen, and achieved our goal successfully.
Casino Night Zone 1
This zone’s design was a tough opponent. Something strange happens here: the music tempo speeds up when I collect 2 lives while I still have the speed-shoes on. I found a quick jump in the narrow passages that saved 1.4 seconds in each one.
Casino Night Zone 2
Level skipped. My only choice was to skip due to a group of rings that are way out of reach. Apologies for not playing.
Hill Top Zone 1
This zone was very simple: it only has 1 route which is easy to run through, and it has very few rings.
Hill Top Zone 2
This was a tough one, and thanks go to FuzZerd for finding a video demonstrating a strategy for backtracking so we can take both (normally exclusive) routes. Here, Tails plays an important role, since without him, PERFECT BONUS is impossible. Near the end of the lower path, I need to jump off the elevator early for sonic to bounce high enough on the extra life TV monitor to start backtracking. The height required means we would miss 3 rings, but Tails can take care of that. To go through the locked gates, Sonic must spindash in a precise location so he passes under it while it closes. Tails can also keep them open.
Mystic Cave Zone 1
Tails collects out-of-the-way rings, sometimes sacrificing himself. Tails was a big help and I would like to give special thanks to him for his work in this zone.
Mystic Cave Zone 2
Level skipped. There are out-of-the-way rings that only Knuckles can collect. Apologies for not playing this level.
Oil Ocean Zone 1
There were groups of rings that, when collected by both characters, saved time. Also, the ability to go under the oil helped with backtracking and advancing where necessary.
Oil Ocean Zone 2
Level skipped. It’s a shame to skip this level since we found some pretty good glitches to help with the unreachable rings.
  • First, SkyChase found a glitch that causes antigravity and gives Super Sonic physics. It’s like a double glitch.
  • Second, marzojr found how to get 2 of the 6 groups of unreachable rings (each group is 3 rings). The first and the last.
  • We couldn’t figure out how to get to the other 4 groups, and for that reason, we had no choice but to skip this level.
Metropolis Zone 1
Since this is a zone that "loops" we can use a glitch that lets use go through some obstacles and terrain. The route-planning involved consideration of this fact so we could backtrack through points of no return.
Metropolis Zone 2
Level skipped. Also because of unreachable rings. Apologies for not playing this level.
Metropolis Zone 3
Route-planning here was a little more complex. I found a way to go through closed doors similar to the method used in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but here we need to do 3 quick spindashes with a single rev instead of 6. The screen moves back enough during the first 2 spindashes that the 3rd allows us to clip through, albeit with low speed. However, this is still much faster than waiting for the door to open normally.
Also on the last three spinning gears, we pause to waste 1 frame because there’s an frame-rule that doesn’t allow the jump to make it otherwise (the pause avoids this), so that’s why you hear a strange sound. And a little later we use the same trick as in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Any%. And finally, the boss fight is a little slower than usual because we don’t want Sonic to take damage. The only way to break through the egg barrier that spins around Eggman is with damaged and invincible Tails.
Sky Chase Zone
These last 3 zones don’t show PERFECT BONUS when finished, but the goal is still met. Here, the only things to are get rings and destroy enemies. Initially I didn’t know there were rings hidden behind some clouds, but that problem was easily fixed.
Wing Fortress Zone
Eggman’s great flying fortress’ route was quite simple and didn’t require much planning. Just run through the fortress and pick up the rings you pass. I stop at the motors in the ship in order to advance when the path opens. Then, keep advancing in the normal route.
Death Egg Zone
Finally, the last zone. Here, the battle with Metal Sonic was easy. The hard thing to do was hitting the final boss the first 3 times. Afterwards, keep attacking with the same pattern and run away with a spindash at max speed.
Special Thanks
  • Thanks to marzojr for his file sonic_hud.lua and to all involved in the development of this LUA file and for finding this helpful RAM value.
Memory AddressDescription
word @ FFFF40 (unsigned)Shows the rings left to collect in a level for a PERFECT BONUS
  • Thanks to FuzZerd for finding the helpful Hill Top Zone 2 PERFECT BONUS strategy video. If not for that video, the level would have been skipped.
  • Thanks to this team: bkDJ, marzojr, FuzZerd, DDRKhat, skychase and boct1584. They supported me and motivated me to finish this project.
  • Thanks to bkDJ (mainly) and Hepburn (a little) for translating this submission.
  • Also thanks to Tails, for speeding things up on many occasions.

Suggested Screenshot
I leave it to you to choose a good image.

Nach: While this run is pretty good for what it tries to do, it has a number of flaws. It uses a cheat code. It arbitrarily avoids some items and wastes time. It doesn't complete the whole game.
TASs are supposed to look practically perfect. When many people actually notice a flaw in the play, the perfect image is shattered, those sections need to be redone.
A TAS which aims to collect all rings should go through the game and beat it collecting all rings. The other objectives don't really work in this game.
Maybe you can just redo the sections/levels which need work, and copy+paste the input into a full run. I hope you don't get discouraged, this was a very good first time run other than the aforementioned problems. But in any case, I have no choice but to reject this. I hope you will submit a better run which fixes the issues with this one in the future.


Banned User
Joined: 12/14/2009
Posts: 386
Location: Santiago, Chile
RaijinXBlade wrote:
And about the 10 ring monitors, if the goal is ring attack, it kind of defeats the point of the goal to ignore those.
RaijinXBlade, this is not a run "Rings Attack" is a run "PERFECT BONUS". I do not judge you by voting NO. But you must know the objectives of the run. Also, to everyone, with respect to the levels omitted. It would be nice I could play them without being able to take all the rings, but one of the objectives had not been achieved.
creaothceann
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Editor
Joined: 4/7/2005
Posts: 1874
Location: Germany
Link to video 480p YT encode; TASBlend used for 60->30fps reduction as Deblink looked a bit off with Sonic's collectible shield.
Joined: 1/19/2010
Posts: 146
Felipe wrote:
RaijinXBlade wrote:
And about the 10 ring monitors, if the goal is ring attack, it kind of defeats the point of the goal to ignore those.
RaijinXBlade, this is not a run "Rings Attack" is a run "PERFECT BONUS". I do not judge you by voting NO. But you must know the objectives of the run. Also, to everyone, with respect to the levels omitted. It would be nice I could play them without being able to take all the rings, but one of the objectives had not been achieved.
Right, but I stand by my no vote. This run still looks sloppy and the route really looks like it could be better. Plus you still skipped stages. Not only that though, but it looks like you made it a point to skip the 10 ring monitors. It shouldn't matter if you collect any.
BigBoct
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Editor, Former player
Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
Location: Tiffin/Republic, OH
The goal of the run is to achieve the Perfect Bonus in as many levels as possible. Since the ring monitors don't count, why should more time be taken getting them?
Previous Name: boct1584
Joined: 1/19/2010
Posts: 146
boct1584 wrote:
The goal of the run is to achieve the Perfect Bonus in as many levels as possible. Since the ring monitors don't count, why should more time be taken getting them?
Then why stop just to avoid them and waste time instead of trucking through them if they are in the way?
Banned User
Joined: 12/14/2009
Posts: 386
Location: Santiago, Chile
boct1584 wrote:
The goal of the run is to achieve the Perfect Bonus in as many levels as possible. Since the ring monitors don't count, why should more time be taken getting them?
If you are referring to those who are not rings monitors. For example, speed boots are taken in Aquatic Ruin Zone 2, it is better to run with speed controllable. Also, some was best be taken, that try to avoid them, because it was causing delays.
RachelB
She/Her
Player (129)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
at 1:05 in the first level, you jump over a ring monitor, and then immediately spin dash. Was actually faster than just spin dashing through the monitor?
Banned User
Joined: 12/14/2009
Posts: 386
Location: Santiago, Chile
rog wrote:
at 1:05 in the first level, you jump over a ring monitor, and then immediately spin dash. Was actually faster than just spin dashing through the monitor?
Remember that a goal is not to take any of these monitors, so I use a jump.
Experienced player (520)
Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359
Felipe wrote:
rog wrote:
at 1:05 in the first level, you jump over a ring monitor, and then immediately spin dash. Was actually faster than just spin dashing through the monitor?
Remember that a goal is not to take any of these monitors, so I use a jump.
They are questioning why that is a goal since you could potentially finish the primary goal (getting the perfect bonus on the levels) faster if you sometimes broke the coin monitors.
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
I've waited for this run a long time, I'll drop a yes vote right now in b4 this runs gets rejected due to nitpicking also, I see a lot of complains, but I didn't see anyone of these critics caring enough with the site's movie production to actually help doing this TAS 3 months ago,when this project started.
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
This is honestly one of the best TASes I have ever seen. This game is just so well designed for TASing. Seeing a unique goal like this just shows off all that this game has to offer. Easy yes vote. On a side note - Has anyone thought why on earth the game developers would create a "perfect bonus" reward, with the knowledge that it would be unobtainable in some of the levels? Seems kinda stupid to me.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Experienced player (520)
Joined: 11/2/2010
Posts: 359
Just finished watching the final product and this is definitely a yes vote. I had sort of been following this run on the forum and seeing it all together is really impressive. It is too bad that those last few groups of rings can't be found. Hopefully some point in the future someone will be able to figure them out. Regardless this run is impressive.
hero of the day wrote:
On a side note - Has anyone thought why on earth the game developers would create a "perfect bonus" reward, with the knowledge that it would be unobtainable in some of the levels? Seems kinda stupid to me.
marzojr wrote:
And regarding the level layouts: it is possible that the impossible-to-grab rings were once possible to grab in an earlier version of the levels; but after the layout changes, the devs forgot to remove the rings (which is not all that unreasonable, given how hard is to see most of the unreachable rings in the first place).
Though it is not known for sure.
Active player (434)
Joined: 9/27/2004
Posts: 650
Location: Canada
Cool run, I like the concept. As some people have pointed out, maybe not perfect but I still really dig it. Adding a yes vote.
Player (51)
Joined: 4/10/2009
Posts: 226
if your goal was just to get perfect bonus, why did you collect all the rings in wing fortress zone? also, I'm not sure how I feel about the no breaking ring monitors, and no taking damage rules. and do you even need the no death rule? the route planning seemed good as far as I can tell. while there are definitely some small improvements. I don't think the play quality was THAT bad. especially for such a long and complicated run. me and sonikk spent 4 months optimizing the any%. I wouldn't want you to go crazy working on this. It's possible that some rings were intentionally placed where it would be impossible to get, so that time would be more important for score. but I think that the theory of forgetting there were rings there is more likely.
Joined: 5/8/2010
Posts: 177
Location: Entropy
Nice run, I'd like to see this run with 100% complition with getting all the rings in the special stages as well! More fun!
Banned User
Joined: 12/14/2009
Posts: 386
Location: Santiago, Chile
FuzZerd wrote:
if your goal was just to get perfect bonus, why did you collect all the rings in wing fortress zone?
I known that someone would ask that. But that THIS LEVEL does not show PERFECT BONUS at the end, does not mean that I not must also take all the rings. It's like if you will ask me about SkyChase. Although there have not a bonus as reward, the goal is to reach "PERFECT BONUS".
Banned User
Joined: 12/14/2009
Posts: 386
Location: Santiago, Chile
Bamahut wrote:
Nice run, I'd like to see this run with 100% complition with getting all the rings in the special stages as well! More fun!
That would be fun. However, I dont know if all the rings in special stages can be take, sometimes found 3 groups of rings that are separate rings at once.
RachelB
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Posts: 1579
Finally got around to watching the whole run. It's excellent, and i voted yes, but i do think that if anyone ever decides to improve this, some of the goals should be reconsidered.
Active player (406)
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708
This had the potential to be really boring, but it was actually pretty good. I guess there's something strangely appealing about getting ALL the rings and you manage to do it all rather quickly. Unfortunately, I think the fact that you skip some of the levels totally defeats the purpose of this run. I really think it needs to be all or nothing. If you need to be Knuckles to get all of the rings, play as Knuckles. If some of the rings really are totally impossible no matter what, that kind of makes the run impossible. If that's the case, I'd suggest playing through the levels anyway and getting every ring that you can, and change the name of this from "PERFECT BONUS" to "Maximum ring" where you collect as many rings as is possible in the game.
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Felipe wrote:
I known that someone would ask that. But that THIS LEVEL does not show PERFECT BONUS at the end, does not mean that I not must also take all the rings.
Sure it does! If your goal is "PERFECT BONUS", then you can skip anything that doesn't give "PERFECT BONUS". If your goal is just to get as many rings as possible, why did you skip the four stages that don't give "PERFECT BONUS"?
Joined: 6/7/2008
Posts: 124
Location: Portugal
Well I sure liked that run. But will the guidelines like it?
I'm Espyo from the SRB2 Forums. Current project: A Pikmin fan engine, Pikifen
BigBoct
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Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
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I halfway agree with Heisanevilgenius; I think you should have played through the levels you skipped, but I also think that getting as many rings as possible in those levels is an acceptable substitute for the Perfect Bonus.
Previous Name: boct1584
Banned User
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Mmm! True, it was better to play as many rings as possible, but I have warned before haverla over. However, I see no reason for this movie is being criticized so not be goal.
BigBoct
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Posts: 1692
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My post from earlier in the topic still stands. "This should be published, but a run that does play the levels you skipped should obsolete it, if submitted."
Previous Name: boct1584
Joined: 7/26/2006
Posts: 1215
Heisanevilgenius wrote:
I really think it needs to be all or nothing. If you need to be Knuckles to get all of the rings, play as Knuckles.
unfortunately there is no way (determined in the run's discussion thread) to collect every ring as knuckles either. The ring in Aquatic Ruin Zone 2 depends on having tails offscreen colliding with ring hit boxes but not sprites. There is no Knuckles+Tails mode. Plus a few levels would be much slower with Knuckles instead of Sonic+Tails.
Heisanevilgenius wrote:
If some of the rings really are totally impossible no matter what, that kind of makes the run impossible.
In the run's discussion thread I put forth a compromise goal, "All free floating rings known to be collectible in each zone". In a future version of this run, that would allow all the things people have suggested here, including: - powering through in-the-way ring TV monitors (though that might have been avoided for aesthetic reasons, so the ring counter at the end is X, the number of free floating rings in the level, not X+K*10, if that makes sense... Same reason damage was avoided) - playing levels where some rings are unreachable - getting all the rings even when you aren't rewarded by a tally like wing fortress zone (but in the game's code, there is still a countdown value in those levels!) But "Perfect Bonus" would still be a descriptive and short branch name...