STT Tidal Plant 2 in 0:46 RussianBlue 2023-09-22 | You can save some time if you snag the sub's nose on the corner going up the last column on the right but it doesn't save enough to get a 45 even with an optimal start, so I'm not gonna worry about it.The skip was found by MTP as shown in youtube.com/watch?v=CL1fc7G6_6o inspired by the camera glitch found by ThatOneAmerican and applied by Nim in youtube.com/watch?v=IItLEqGMKbA. You should follow them all, they seem to play this game more than I do.
1:02 TP2 Tails Tutorial RussianBlue 2022-12-25 | For any prospective STT runner out there I figured it was worth it to explain all of the minutiae going into what I think is the most technical and unique stage in it. Hopefully this will lead someone out there to really take this game to its limit!
Time Attack Tails 15.55 Sonic Triple Trouble RussianBlue 2022-12-25 | "Good enough" is good enough. This exact route got a 15.43 with a failed recording within 5 minutes of starting attempts and I've no idea how, couldn't replicate it.
SA2B Tutorial: Hint Clip RussianBlue 2018-09-19 | This tutorial shows one of the more technically difficult pieces of Knuckles/Rouge tech. By using a hint monitor, you can force the character out of bounds in some helpful places. The inputs to get it right can be difficult, so this shows off some simple tricks you can use to get it reliably and quickly.
SA2B Tutorial: Glide Extending RussianBlue 2018-09-19 | This simple tech looks confusing until you understand what it's doing. By using a drill dive to reset the glide, you can ward off losing height to glide to areas that you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Suitable for runners of all experience levels.
SA2B Tutorial: Death Chamber Molotov Cocktail RussianBlue 2018-09-15 | This is a fun little route I discovered trying something dumb, but it works! You can get into red-blue hallway from out of bounds very easily. This route fills a major gap that otherwise had to be done with Booty Clip, a time consuming detour. This takes some good glide extending, but with practice you can really make some hay. This strat is insanely fast compared to booty clip, saving double-digit seconds getting from Green Room into Red-Blue, and will probably be a major factor in improving those pieces' average times.
SA2B Tutorial: Death Chamber Piece 2 Death Strats RussianBlue 2018-09-09 | Death Strats have been around for a while, and I probably should have done one of these a long time ago. There's a lot of voodoo magic surrounding death strats, and a lot of bad information floating around, so hopefully this will help clear up the concepts of death strats and why it works. This can be (and is) applied to other stages, but Death Chamber is the easiest place to show the immediate effects that the strat can have.
SA2B Tutorial: Eggman 2 RussianBlue 2018-08-30 | This fight often kills new players because Eggman has some pretty deadly weapons at his disposal. Thankfully, his AI is easily manipulated with some very simple techniques to get a reliably fast time with very little chance of failure.
SA2B Tutorial: King Boom Boo Fireball Skip RussianBlue 2018-08-30 | This little skip is a variation on an old IL strat. It was found by ASINISTERTACO and saves about 5 seconds in Hero Story runs. It's got a lot of moving parts, but it's really not that difficult once you get used to doing it. Highly recommended for intermediate runners.
SA2B Theorycrafting: Arbitrary Wall Clips RussianBlue 2018-08-11 | Here's a long, talky video about some theory I had played around with and seems to hold water. The crux is that if you have an area of a level with an acute angle, you can probably get out because the game doesn't seem to consider collision with things you are facing away from. I provide some evidence to support it directly, some indirect evidence, and then some food for thought. It would be interesting, thought not entirely surprising, if clipouts in this game were all tied together by a simple limitation in the collision system. Programming tends to have a couple simple rules that, when put together, result in complex behaviour. Finding out that one of those simple rules has a vulnerability has often broken games completely apart in the past, so it's interesting to consider whether this might be one for SA2B.
SA2B Tutorial: Boneless SA2B Edition RussianBlue 2018-08-08 | I've been strapped for time lately, but I accidentally ran across this and thought it'd be fun to quickly post. It may not be the first time someone's seen it, but it's funny so deal with it.
Metal Harbour Pulley Skip Pansy Strat RussianBlue 2018-04-17 | Wastes a couple tenths, but there's almost no chance of not having enough distance. Good if people are very afraid of the usual position for the spindash jump. Make sure you let go of the control stick before touching the red box.
SA2B Tutorial: Metal Harbour Underloop RussianBlue 2016-09-29 | This loop skip at the very start of Metal Harbour adds some swag to the start in addition to a healthy half-second timesave. It's a bit touchy to learn, but once the muscle memory is down it becomes second nature. If you spindash with not enough angle you'll get a really big Mock Superbounce which is hilarious and loses a bit of time, but won't kill the run. Recommended for intermediate runners looking to improve their MH.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Looprun RussianBlue 2016-09-29 | This relatively simple trick is great for a runner looking to improve their Green Forest swag score. It combines a camera trick with a funky light dash to get just the right positioning for Fun to occur. The trick will either make the loop work nicely, or toss you into a cool wallrun, both of which save time. You can even add a risky jump for extra speed and gamble against the potential for salt. Highly recommended for intermediate runners.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest TASrun RussianBlue 2016-09-29 | This advanced variant of the Green Forest Wallrun is for runners who really want their times to shine. It saves two seconds at the cost of taking the free part of wallrun and making it depend on player skill. It's fairly difficult to learn as it relies on already having mastery of prior wallrun techniques, but the reward is well worth it. Used in the SA2B TAS, perfected by Era. Recommended for only the swoggiest runners.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Loop Speed RussianBlue 2016-09-29 | This is another very simple trick for Green Forest that takes advantage of the mechanics of loop speed at the end of the level. It adds a twist to an easy loop skip for a relatively free second of timesave. Recommend for any intermediate runners.
SA2B Tutorial: Shadow 2 RussianBlue 2016-06-17 | Shadow 2 is a fight that can really end a run. It tends to either go really well, or really terribly. The key is to get the fight started off in a way that makes your life as easy as possible. This demo shows off a repeatable setup to get Shadow in a favourable position as well as my horrendous homing attack skills. Easy setups are good setups.
SA2B Tutorial: Ringless Rouge RussianBlue 2016-06-17 | This tutorial shows the technique behind defeating Rouge without grabbing a safety ring. If you know what you're doing, the ring is unnecessary and so you can save yourself some free time. This tech is surprisingly easy to do, even for beginners. Highly recommend for all runners.
SA2B DC M4 Route RussianBlue 2016-05-29 | Companion video to the time I posted earlier showing off the route. Can't set the pieces for this M4 so I just showed off the general route. Not really a difficult route to do as long as you don't get overzealous and break the stupid box.twitter.com/Darkpr0_Gaming/status/736789684911624192
SA2B Demonstration: Rogue Pieces 2 RussianBlue 2016-05-20 | This is another demonstration video showing the strange nature of "Blue in Yellow" in Mad Space. Not much is currently known about the nature of this little mystery, but I felt that it was worth making a little bit of documentation video. Originally found by Emerua to the best of my knowledge.
SA2B Demonstration: Rogue Pieces 1 RussianBlue 2016-05-20 | This is a demo of causing the game to spawn additional pieces that will persist through resets and deaths using enemy pieces. It's not useful in speedruns, but it is an interesting insight into how the game manages pieces. It suggests the possibility of pieces the game which are always spawned but only useful if the piece which is expected matches the code tied to the key when it is spawned.
SA2B Tutorial: Death Chamber Booty Clip RussianBlue 2016-04-23 | This clip started out as a funny swag strat thanks to cottonandy several years ago, but it turns out there's more to it than previously thought. By cleverly pushing buttons, we can cause an Echidna to appear mysteriously through the walls of any room in Death Chamber. Hilarity ensues.
SA2B Science: Gravity-Less Fast Final Rush RussianBlue 2016-04-10 | This video shows off some of the stuff that I stumbled on at AGDQ, but haven't released. The key here is that you can get out of bounds with the Fast Final Rush skip without a gravity bounce and, done properly, gain about a second over the typical one. A discussion of the nature of Fast Final Rush also follows, though it's necessarily incomplete because the science behind it hasn't totally finished. Sonic's interaction with the death plane is still being investigated.Shoutouts specifically to the Japanese player Era for independently finding this as well. Although my findings date from January, his discoveries in March were totally independent (twitter.com/eeera_/status/707882308955541504). Go follow his twitter for more of his science.
SA2B Tutorial: Death Chamber Door Clips RussianBlue 2016-04-10 | Now with 100% more sound! The core-green clip in Death Chamber is a very valuable trick to know as it turns some potentially bad pieces into quite decent ones. It's also very easy once you know how it works, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their Death Chamber times. Alternative door clips and out-of-bounds strats are shown which have speciality use.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Dirty Moon Shot RussianBlue 2016-04-07 | This variation of moon shot is a backup strat for when the Green Forest Wallrun ends up a little low and left. The best solution for this is to train yourself to set up as high as you can go on the loop, and ride up a ways before getting the loop speed, but sometimes junk just happens. If that's the case, this variation of moon shot can save an otherwise hairy trick. It's not that much different from regular moon shot, but it makes cleverer use of wallrun mechanics to maintain the gravity long enough to get a spindash when, before, this wasn't possible. Recommended for advanced players looking to improve Green Forest Wallrun/Moon Shot consistency. Also includes a backup strat for when Moon Shot distance isn't as good as you wanted.
Death Chamber Fun RussianBlue 2016-03-03 | These pieces were forced using cheat engine. They are possible only in Mission 5 because the enemies which they spawn in are not present in Mission 1. The Piece IDs forced are 0x010A (Black Eyes), 0x080A (Can't get out of the room...), and 0x050A (Angry Guy). There are two other broken pieces 0x040A (Can't get out of the room) and 0x0B0A (Black Eyes) which do not seem to be possible even in Mission 5, but it is very interesting that these pieces were enabled in Mission 1 and yet, seemingly, the enemies were removed. The game does a good job of accounting for this fact and disallowing their spawn. Interestingly, the picture of Death Chamber during the Hero Story credits slideshow shows a red room ghost... This ghost does not exist in Mission 1 as we currently know it, so either the picture was taken in Mission 5, or these ghosts were originally part of Mission 1.
SA2B Tutorial: Aquatic Mine Wallrun RussianBlue 2015-12-20 | This is an advanced trick that earns much swog in Aquatic Mine. Rather than taking the springs to upper levels you can use the signs creatively to scale walls as Spiderknuckes. It requires a somewhat precise jump and can end up losing more time that it saves, but done properly it can save you some time and impress all of your fans. Recommended for people who are really into Knuckles stages, or people who like swog.
SA2B Tutorial: Aquatic Mine Pulley Jump RussianBlue 2015-12-20 | This tutorial shows how to get the pulley jump in Aquatic Mine without setting the switch to 1. This saves a touch of time, and earns you many swag points. It's a very easy trick to do as long as you understand how not to make it harder on yourself and well worth learning for someone who is interested in improving their Knuckles movement.
SA2B Tutorial: Aquatic Mine Sign Clipout RussianBlue 2015-12-17 | This trick is used to get out of bounds in Aquatic Mine by using the signs littered across the map. This gives the player access to a lot of areas very quickly that would otherwise be very time costly. The clipout is relatively easy to do, and worth learning for people who are interested in improving their Knuckles level times. It is of particular interest for single-segment runners as it can take potentially catastrophic pieces and make some very good times out of them.
SA2B Tutorial: Crazy Gadget M3 Skip Skip RussianBlue 2015-11-30 | This is a variant of CGSS that works for Mission 3, Find the Lost Chao. It is substantially easier because the distance to get to the end is much smaller, and so you have less stuff to worry about to make the trick work. This trick has some challenges, but I've done my best to help unravel them. This is a really good way to practice and learn for the M1 strat which requires more care when falling to the end, and has bigger restrictions on how much momentum you need when getting out of bounds.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Wallrun Moon Shot RussianBlue 2015-06-22 | This is yet another variation of the GF Wallrun that takes advantage of the camera to tell us when we can do a spindash, and then use a launch from the spindash to skip the Bungee Skip section entirely. This isn't nearly as hard as just getting the good wallrun, so if you can do that, then this trick is for you. Saves a couple seconds.
SA2B Tutorial: Pause Interrupting and Pause Advancing RussianBlue 2015-06-22 | This tutorial shows off the applications for the pause menu. It has more applications than this that I'll probably do a tutorial on later, but the basic uses that are most commonly seen are here. Using the pause menu to trick the game into thinking you can mash faster than is possible, and using it as a form of TAS-style frame advance are both covered.
SA2B Tutorial: City Escape Skip RussianBlue 2015-04-26 | This infamous skip is present in most of the very high level SA2B speedruns. It is an inconsistent trick, but saves a lot of time and as such a lot of runners will reset for it. I don't personally find it fun to grind out just for the chance of a run, but if you want to learn it this is how it's done. It's not terribly difficult, but the requirement of being lucky to make it work is sort of its hallmark. Recommended only for high-level runners targeting sub-40 Hero Story or people who have a lot more patience than I do.
SA2B Tutorial: Lowball Bungee Skip RussianBlue 2015-02-27 | This is a different iteration of the Green Forest Bungee skip. By going underneath the green halfpipe instead of over you can save yourself some time by applying a bit more skill to a trick that pretty much everyone who runs this game knows. By using the mechanics of spindash versus spindash jumping we can still make it to the area past the bungee jump but avoid the time loss caused by jumping. This one takes some practice but isn't really all that bad. I also show a backup strat which is well known in SADX but pretty much unused in SA2B called a Spindash Hover which can be used if you're ever hurting for distance off of a jump.
SA2B Tutorial: Crazy Gadget New Strat RussianBlue 2015-01-29 | This video is a tutorial on a strat that was cooked up by ItsPersonnal, fooled around with at AGDQ, and refined over the last couple of weeks. It's still under some development, but it has gotten to a place where it's a trick you can start to feel confident in and practice out. It is still very difficult and requires very precise control of Sonic due to a spindash jump at an odd angle through death planes, blind maneuvering, and a very, very tight distance requirement. If you can pull it off, though, it is reasonable to get times extending into the mid- to low- 40s for Crazy Gadget, a huge improvement over an already broken stage. I do my best to explain as much of this skip as possible and why I do what I do the way that I do it, but there are a lot of moving parts to keep in mind while you are attempting this. It is not for the faint of heart.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Wallrun Bulletproof Setup RussianBlue 2015-01-27 | This tutorial shows off a simple change to the setup of Green Forest Wallrun to save everyone doing it a lot of grief. By using the camera to aim Sonic in the direction we want, we can take the guesswork out of the trick and improve its consistency substantially. In this demonstration you may notice that I say to hold straight up on the control stick, but then XInputView clearly shows that I still hold slightly to the right. This happens to be the angle that I am most comfortable with, but you can sling the camera around to whatever angle fits your hand best. Usually that's gonna be left enough that you can hold straight up, and the visual cue is that the side of the loop will be slightly to the left of the center of the upper edge of your screen.
SA2B Tutorial: Pyramid Cave Snake Skip RussianBlue 2014-11-17 | This is a tutorial on how to do the Pyramid Cave Snake Skip. This is another gravity bounce that works along the same lines as the more common on at the end of the level, but it has a couple of twists to it. It saves some time if it can be set up quickly, and it does look pretty cool. It's a good trick for advanced runners to have a look at, but it demands consistency in getting the gravity bounce right, and getting the setup fast.
SA2B Tutorial: Pyramid Cave Gravity Bounce RussianBlue 2014-11-17 | This is a tutorial on the Pyramid Cave Gravity Bounce way at the end of the level. It's a fairly easy gravity bounce to actually do, it's just a little tricky to set up quickly and not fall off. I recommend that intermediate runners have a look at this because it's worth some time and pretty cool. It also is a good introduction into how gravity bounces can work for you.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Wallrun Part 3 RussianBlue 2014-11-03 | Once again, we revisit the Green Forest Wallrun to make another change. Instead of jumping off the side of the tree, we do a spindash and skip straight to the end of the bungee skip which saves us yet another 2-3 seconds over the previous version. Be very afraid.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Wallrun Part 2 RussianBlue 2014-11-03 | This builds upon the first Green Forest Wallrun video to fine-tune the results you can get from it. By exerting a bit more precise control with the loop physics you can chop off a small portion of time and save yourself 1-2 seconds over the first version of the skip. Again, not for the faint of heart.
SA2B Tutorial: Green Forest Wallrun Part 1 RussianBlue 2014-11-03 | This skip is a difficult one, but it saves about 5-8 seconds on Green Forest depending on your performance in the section skipped. It's quite difficult and uses some loop mechanics to latch Sonic onto the side of a giant tree, skipping a section filled with springs. This skip is only for people who are well advanced in their speedrunning techniques, and not for the faint of heart.
SA2B Tutorial: Final Rush Skip (Bounce Variation) RussianBlue 2014-10-14 | This is another video showing a new version of this skip that I've been working on lately. It's very similar to the previous Bounce Strategy I've showed in a video, but alters the bounce angle and left turn to significantly improve the skip. It makes the skip faster, more forgiving, and reduces the time cost if you fail it. All in all, an improvement I'm pretty happy with.
SA2B Tutorial: 99 Lives Glitch RussianBlue 2014-10-11 | This is a very easy glitch to perform, and very useful. While it's not good within a single-segment speedrun of the game, if you run individual levels this can be a real lifesaver. We use underflow of the lives counter and back ring abuse to get ourselves 99 lives in a pretty efficient way. You'll need Rouge's treasure scope and possibly her Mystic Melody. You can destroy the metal boxes with a correctly placed drill dive, though.
SA2B Tutorial: FR Skip with Bounce RussianBlue 2014-10-11 | This skip was a recent discovery by a_moustache on FR. This is a variation on the FR skip that was already known and used in the world record run at the time of this video. It works in a similar manner in that it uses a gravity bounce to navigate to the end of the level, but does so at a much easier place. This skip is much less risky than the original FR skip and it is totally reasonable to get this every time. I recommend this skip to anyone looking to break into the Mid-40 bracket for Hero Story as it can net you a Final Rush time in the neighbourhood of 1:20.
SA2B Knuckles/Rouge Quickclimb & Glitchiness RussianBlue 2014-10-06 | This is a weird behaviour within Sonic Adventure 2 Battle where Knuckles (and Rouge) will climb 1.414 times their usual speed up or down. It has something to do with the corner physics, and it can result in some strange collision behaviour. This glitch hasn't been explored much yet as far as I know, but given some of the early results I think it has potential to yield larger things.
SA2B Tutorial: Cannons Core Infinite Time Stop RussianBlue 2014-05-21 | Here's a quick tutorial about the Cannon's Core Infinite Time Stop trick. This applies to any time button if you can get out of range fast enough, but the two most common applications are for Sonic's section and Rouge's section. It sees the most use for when you're trying to get A ranks, particularly in Mission 3: Find The Lost Chao.
SA2B Tutorial: Cannons Core Knuckles Clip RussianBlue 2014-05-21 | This is a tutorial about how to pull off the Knuckles Clip in Cannon's Core. It allows you to skip both a long, nasty section, and having to get the Air Necklace. It's a little bit wiggy and takes some finagling, but mess with it long enough and you'll get the feel for it. It a relatively riskless skip for people looking to get into All or Last story runs, and so it's something that's pretty good to learn.
Tutorial: SA2B Eternal Engine Skip Version 2 RussianBlue 2014-05-16 | This is a follow-up to my original Eternal Engine tutorial that has a significant improvement to the set-up for getting the clip. Everything else about the skip remains the same, this is just a more consistent way to get the clip to work.
