SadisticMystic | Sonic Adventure 2 - Cannon's Core - m1 (A button challenge) - 11 @sadisticmystic | Uploaded October 2008 | Updated October 2024, 20 hours ago.
Upon being presented with the idea of low-A'ing Cannon's Core, my initial guess was somewhere around 21. As I found more ways to gain height, this number gradually dropped until I finally decided to go for the 11 you see here.
By character, the As break down 4-2-4-0-1:
-With Tails it's mainly just a matter of getting stuck in the balancing act against the second dynamite door, without using A button, and then just not botching the hover jump at the end. (The laser barriers simply don't seem to be able to knock you in the right direction, and unlike many of the weights in the game, the ones in the final room cannot lift you up through them by taking a hit.)
-Eggman's part is a lesson in being resourceful with damage. The large acid block room actually gets cleared A-less, leaving just enough health to get down to the long chute and pop the balloon so that I have some health to cross the next room over to the blocks.
-Rouge's part is quite easily the most random. There's no dependable way to slip through the waterfall except by mass spamming of A until you get there, and no telling how many As exactly that can take. I haven't been able to do it on fewer than 4 (by comparison, a traditional time switch path will take at least 5 and that only gets you to the acid room, not the room with the activation switch), and this time I managed a 4 with the fourth held down to create a delayed glide. Getting the return trip down in 0 has a very narrow window for success, and if you can't get to the Kool-Aid ring fast enough to do a Screw Kick before it starts flowing again, there's no returning without more As.
-Knuckles can get a 0 just using a variation of the usual speedrun path, but the rise through the ceiling is somewhat inconsistent without A. Instead, I decided to debut some new tricks in this run. In my last video, Eternal Engine chao MM-less and in under a minute, you may have learned about the 2-button cascade to do things 1 frame separated from a pause. If you hold B down to a floor, spin the stick, pause, release B, and cascade Start-B, you can actually do a Spiral Upper from underwater, which I believe to be the only way to get up to the top floor of Knuckles' part without using A. So what do we do now that we're up here? That's the other big trick. You'll notice that the "pool" is surrounded by a red barrier circle. Notice, as well, that part of this circle gets cut off by the side walls! In fact, by running around in various ways where they intersect, you can just drop through the floor, floating on the pool of Kool-Aid from out of bounds, and from here...it's cake. And no, this time it's not a lie.
-Sonic needs an A to cross the opening gap (it's hard enough to get a light attack to hit the enemies there rather than the time switch, and even if you do that, you don't get enough distance after the last enemy). Might as well get the permanent time stop in that case, and then there's only one more major obstacle: the step up after the somersault barrier. The solution here is to charge a Light Attack, then throw it out not aimed at the gold beetle, but actually at the timestop switch above the ceiling! You can even restart time from underneath the switch, and with exact timing on a bounce aimed at the wall, turn it into an A-less superbounce as time restarts and the rest is simple, but that's highly inconsistent. Instead I choose to aim at the switch at such an angle (achieved by launching from the very edge of light attack range) that I get thrown into the wall first, and then fly straight up, high enough to fall down on the upper step with time remaining stopped at 3:09.
Upon being presented with the idea of low-A'ing Cannon's Core, my initial guess was somewhere around 21. As I found more ways to gain height, this number gradually dropped until I finally decided to go for the 11 you see here.
By character, the As break down 4-2-4-0-1:
-With Tails it's mainly just a matter of getting stuck in the balancing act against the second dynamite door, without using A button, and then just not botching the hover jump at the end. (The laser barriers simply don't seem to be able to knock you in the right direction, and unlike many of the weights in the game, the ones in the final room cannot lift you up through them by taking a hit.)
-Eggman's part is a lesson in being resourceful with damage. The large acid block room actually gets cleared A-less, leaving just enough health to get down to the long chute and pop the balloon so that I have some health to cross the next room over to the blocks.
-Rouge's part is quite easily the most random. There's no dependable way to slip through the waterfall except by mass spamming of A until you get there, and no telling how many As exactly that can take. I haven't been able to do it on fewer than 4 (by comparison, a traditional time switch path will take at least 5 and that only gets you to the acid room, not the room with the activation switch), and this time I managed a 4 with the fourth held down to create a delayed glide. Getting the return trip down in 0 has a very narrow window for success, and if you can't get to the Kool-Aid ring fast enough to do a Screw Kick before it starts flowing again, there's no returning without more As.
-Knuckles can get a 0 just using a variation of the usual speedrun path, but the rise through the ceiling is somewhat inconsistent without A. Instead, I decided to debut some new tricks in this run. In my last video, Eternal Engine chao MM-less and in under a minute, you may have learned about the 2-button cascade to do things 1 frame separated from a pause. If you hold B down to a floor, spin the stick, pause, release B, and cascade Start-B, you can actually do a Spiral Upper from underwater, which I believe to be the only way to get up to the top floor of Knuckles' part without using A. So what do we do now that we're up here? That's the other big trick. You'll notice that the "pool" is surrounded by a red barrier circle. Notice, as well, that part of this circle gets cut off by the side walls! In fact, by running around in various ways where they intersect, you can just drop through the floor, floating on the pool of Kool-Aid from out of bounds, and from here...it's cake. And no, this time it's not a lie.
-Sonic needs an A to cross the opening gap (it's hard enough to get a light attack to hit the enemies there rather than the time switch, and even if you do that, you don't get enough distance after the last enemy). Might as well get the permanent time stop in that case, and then there's only one more major obstacle: the step up after the somersault barrier. The solution here is to charge a Light Attack, then throw it out not aimed at the gold beetle, but actually at the timestop switch above the ceiling! You can even restart time from underneath the switch, and with exact timing on a bounce aimed at the wall, turn it into an A-less superbounce as time restarts and the rest is simple, but that's highly inconsistent. Instead I choose to aim at the switch at such an angle (achieved by launching from the very edge of light attack range) that I get thrown into the wall first, and then fly straight up, high enough to fall down on the upper step with time remaining stopped at 3:09.
