Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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After not beating any ring records before, this is now 3 stages in a row with a new record. This beats the previous record by 14, and with 514 now collects every ring in the stage. This run does still miss a large ring, but as far as I can know, it is obtainable. More on that later.

There aren't any massive combos in this stage, but still some tricky ones to bring this up to a new record.

Start off with some screenwrap, but this is actually for a combo. The first skorp popped at 0:13 is combo'd all the way down to the 2 sandworms at 0:40

Then comes the second combo, at 1:15. Obviouly avoiding 50 rings to still be able to glide at this point, these three enemies While having reasonable proximity to each other require some fancy moves to keep them in a combo. You can't glide out of the sand falls, and since you have to go through one to reach the third enemy here, that one has to be last, meaning the detour to the bottom to pop that skorp with a super glide.

Following this is a bunch of backtracking, and then going over 50 rings. At that point, without the ability to glide anymore, there are no further combos of note, and it's more about the time crunch to get all the rings. So lets talk about the extra 14 rings I got.

The first three are at 5:31 - inside the wall. An easy screenwrap here deloads the objects while off screen, and a timed jump so they reload at the right time sees Knuckles put inside the wall with relative ease. This has been a very well known trick for over 15 years, I have no idea why they weren't getting these rings before.

The next five are at 7:15 - normally going down this slide would render you unable to backtrack and force you onto this path, but I used the sand climb here to force my way back up. Much like in Act 1, to get momentum from jumps to go back up is frame perfect, and if you go a frame early you turn into Hyper Knux and the run is over, so it's a very stressful part of the run.

The final six are right at the end, the final six rings obtained from 9:00 onwards. Getting these 6 is easy, but getting out much more troublesome. The level design wants you to glide, but actually by using a screenwrap you can use the pillar that moves back and forth to push you further down into the wall to zip out of the area. This requires a jump right at the moment you would otherwise be crushed and die, so it's another very difficult trick!

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Finally the Large Ring worth 50 that is not obtained is at 8:01, just above the top of the screen there, out of reach with a single jump. It is normally obtainable with Tails or Knuckles by flying/climbing respectively, but given they don't have the ability to do so without going Hyper, only Sonic can claim it with a Lightning Shield in these type of runs. I spent a long, long time trying to get it - there are glitches you can use to end up on top of the Large Ring and fall down from above... but the Large Ring hasn't spawned yet as it is slightly off camera. So you end up falling down too quickly, unable to top and watch the Large Ring spawn above you.

Another option I strongly considered and routed out was going all the way to this point in the stage with 0 rings, get the 50 rings from the large ring and then backtrack. You can't backtrack all the way to the start with 50 rings though as you need to glide, so I would then deliberately take damage, and pick up as many of the rings that spill as possible and then backtrack with those and still have a net total higher.

Sadly though, when I tried this, the sand would not rise in the middle part of the stage, leaving Knuckles stranded. I was very disappointed that strat didn't work out, because the idea was so unique, it would've been fantastic to show off.

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All in all, this one isn't actually as hard as some of the score attacks before it, owing to not having too many crazy combos. Disappointed I couldn't get anything out of the ring route though. That being said, with the combos being as small as they are, there's a chance this one might actually be perfect.

This beats the previous record of 53,800 by 2300 points.

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