It Took Sonic 2 Speedrunners 30 Years to Break The Game

over the last two years a revolution has happened in sonic 2 speedrunning previous strategies that were thought to be tas exclusive have not only been performed by humans but have been made consistent enough to be included in runs today we'll be looking at the event that led to all of these tool-assisted strats being adapted for runs diving deep on the most fantastic ones and seeing just how far the rabbit hole goes i hope you enjoy today's video [Music] [Music] [Music] before we see why speedrunners are losing sleep trying to break sonic let's keep you from losing your hair with this video sponsor keeps keeps is an online subscription service that helps men keep their hair they offer clinically proven treatments that fight the symptoms of hair loss and keep your hairline looking great let's face it two out of three men will face hair loss by the time they're 35 and keeps offers doctor recommended treatment plans that their physicians will help you select to meet your hair needs if you're not sure on what product best fits your needs don't worry because keeps team of medical professionals are available 24 7 to help support you on keeping your hair permanent and each treatment plan comes with a full year of unlimited messaging so you can talk with your prescribing doctor anytime hair loss stops with keeps to get 50 off your first order go to keeps.com abisoft or click the link in the description that's k-e-e-p-s dot com slash abisoft and with that let's get into the video before we jump into how these task strats became possible there are a few glitch mechanics we need to go over zips level wraps and screen wraps zips are the most famous trick in the classic sonic series and are quite easy to understand walls in sonic 2 push against sonic with a force in the opposite direction from which he is pushing against them this is designed to keep sonic out but in certain circumstances it has the opposite effect if sonic manages to clip into a wall and presses the opposite direction of where he is entering the game gets tricked into thinking you're entering the wall from that new direction so when it applies the force to keep you out it actually sends you deeper into the wall achieving what is known as a zip level wraps are made possible by zips and they are unique glitches that send you to the end of the level hence the name they work by having sonic go past the leftmost boundary of the stage which in the game's memory is stored as a number less than zero but due to how it stores sonic's position coordinates it ends up being a very large positive number this positive number is correlated to the far right of the stage so if you're able to go past the leftmost bounds you'll typically be ported near the end of whatever area you're at these aren't possible on all levels for technical reasons but when they are it's one of the coolest tricks to see executed screen wraps are a sister trick to level wraps except instead of using the x coordinates and moving left to right they work with the y coordinates and go up and down screen wraps are more particular than level wraps in that the vertical coordinates they use are tied to the camera instead of the overall level the concept is the same just above the camera are coordinates smaller than zero which for sonic's position are again treated as large positive numbers so if you manage to get above the camera it will teleport sonic to the positive number coordinates and then scroll the screen down to that position one of the intended features of the camera is that only objects in its view are loaded into the game meaning that any object off-screen isn't loaded so while the camera is scrolling to catch up with sonic you can move through objects until it arrives which can lead to sequence breaking screen wraps do have one condition they are only possible on levels that wrap around infinitely vertically which means that you can fall infinitely without dying so they are limited in application to just a few levels and with that out of the way we're ready to look at our first strat there was one event that preceded the tas strat revolution that we need to look at because it was a catalyst event that motivated runners to look into setups for strategies that were thought to be tas only and that's the summer haze metropolis 1 setup found by summer hayes in december of 2020 the summer hayes setup saved seven seconds over the old strat that use zips to get through a couple doors so let's break that down first so we can come to an understanding of why the summer hay setup was so revolutionary metropolis is full of buttons that open doors and pistons that act as springs to help sonic navigate the level but two of the larger pistons act as a death hazard if you're caught between them and the ceiling which is perfect for speed running if you get below the pistons there is a two frame window when they are descending where you can jump to get pushed into the wall if you are in a wall and not pressing a direction there won't be any expulsion force applied to sonic but there's still the issue of the door to our right since if we try to zip while it's closed sonic will die but this is where tails comes in the door requires a character to be to the left of it and within a certain distance for it to open and unfortunately for tails this puts him in the crush zone of the pistons with tails noble sacrifice we're able to zip to the right but we're not out of the woods just yet since there is a chance the game can soft lock if things aren't executed properly while zipping you normally maintain your speed when you exit the wall but this wall is an exception and requires you to do something called a zip jump to avoid soft locking which is a pause buffered jump to maintain zip speed when exiting the wall if the zip jump and the inputs that follow it are incorrect you'll get stuck inside of the wall and soft lock but if you get through there's one thing left nut clip nut clip is a screen wrap that unloads the nut on the screw in front of you once it's unloaded you have a four frame window to perform a jump and if everything is correct you'll clip through the ground if you can perform the piston zip and nut clip it's possible to finish the level in 41 seconds with this being considered one of the hardest strats due to all of the small frame windows you needed to hit along with tails being in the right spot using the summer haze setup it's possible to save as much as 7 seconds over the old method and that's because it drastically improves the frame windows and eliminates the chance of soft locking in the old strat you had a two frame window to jump once you were below the piston but the new setup takes advantage of something called ram storage it's quite complicated to explain what's going on with ram storage under the hood but all we need to know is that the game thinks we should be walking so it plays the walk animation but we're actually spin dashing while in this state you need to wait for three walk cycle animations to pass then pause on a specific animation frame which lasts for 9 frames itself so it's quite forgiving out of the pause you need to release the spin dash then hold left when you get to the middle of the pistons this gets you to clip into the ground allowing you to perform the zip the other great thing about this setup is that because the spin dash happens so fast the screen shifts and causes the door to deload which saves time since you no longer need to wait for tails to get into position the rest of the level proceeds the same as before but it can't be understated how rare it is to find an easier setup for a trick that saves as much time as this does and with summer hay showing that it was possible the community got to work a lot of the strats we're going to be looking at originated from a 2017 tas by zergriff and aglar at the time they were thought to be beyond the limit of what was achievable rta but as we're about to see that couldn't have been further from the truth so let's start with the first strat to be assimilated the hilltop one tas zip [Music] hilltop zone occurs just before the midpoint of the run and is relatively straightforward with some tight platforming and a couple teeter-totter tricks the old route made use of a zip that had you use invincibility frames from touching the lava to clip into the wall and zip to the area of the level with the rising floor this strat was quite fast and was known as the extended zip since it bypassed an extra wall compared to the previous strat known as the fast zip but the method adapted from the task saved 4 seconds over the extended zip so let's break it down the level starts off similarly get to the section with the descending lift and get i-frames from touching the lava we never covered how you clip into the wall once you have iframes and it's pretty cool the lift that you jumped off of falls from above and pushes you into the lava the reason you don't die is because the collision detection for the lava doesn't extend very far below the top of the lava sprite so when you're inside sonic won't keep getting hit for damage once you're good and warm you'll stand one pixel from the wall and charge a one tap spin dash which has a speed value of zero percent this keeps sonic in place and if it's released on a certain frame while holding left sonic will bypass two walls and maintain zip speed which is just the amount of speed needed to jump over the rising wall while it's off screen which saves getting hit by it and having to charge another spin dash this can save 5 seconds over the old strat if done correctly which is huge since the entire level was barely over 30 seconds long using the previous method the time that saved would end up being a fraction of the combined time from all of the other improvements that followed because the floodgates were now opened and more task strats were becoming a reality between the hilltop tassif being found in march of 2021 and this video's uploading a total of four strats were realized from the zergriff and aglar task with a further five being found because of those developments some of these are variations over tech we've already looked at so in the interest of time let's look at some of the more unique ones and what better place to start than the new hardest strat in the run the casino night 2 level wrap [Music] prior to a setup for level wrap being found the strat for casino night 2 was almost entirely glitchless consisting of precise platforming and well-managed speed except for two instances of flipper clips the first is possible because sonic is moving so fast that his sprite doesn't register as colliding with the flipper and the second is because the flippers aren't aligned to block sonic if you approach the gap from a pixel precise position the fastest completion with this strat clocked in at 50 seconds by joey baby 69 but the level wrap from the task could potentially cut 12 seconds so let's dive in there was so much interest in making the level wrap viable that three different setups were found for it the first saves eight seconds and requires four frame perfect inputs the second takes seven frame perfect inputs and saves 11 seconds but the third saves 12 seconds and takes only six frame perfect inputs easily the hardest strat in the game the six frame perfect level wrap has two criteria for it to work clip into the ground at the first blue block you encounter and zip to the left until you're overlapping with a speed shoes monitor then clip into the wall at the monitor to achieve the level wrap the reason you can't go to the monitor in the beginning is because there's no way to use it to clip into the ground if you're not zipping but with zip speed the camera lags behind your position so the monitor isn't loaded and when it catches up it loads when you're inside of it so you get pushed into the wall this seems easy enough but unfortunately for runners the setup for both clips are sub pixel dependent meaning that the precision to execute them is normally beyond what a human is capable of so what are subpixels and how is this possible every pixel on the screen consists of 256 subpixels which are a variable value that helps smooth out movement pressing left or right on the controller adds or subtracts a set amount from your subpixels and if they go below zero you will move one pixel to the left with sonic moving to the right if they go over 255 it is possible to get an estimate of your x sub pixels by tapping a direction for a few frames and seeing how long it takes you to move with the same being true for y sub pixels except that they are affected by anything that changes your height so getting a read on them is effectively impossible if your sub pixels are off any number of things could happen from the blue block zip failing to soft locking inside the wall and even getting something known as a half zip so you're probably thinking how did something this precise get implemented and the answer is that the community brute forced it zachsen eondis and joey baby would painstakingly find frame perfect pause buffers and inputs that had your subpixels be in the correct position for the level wrap to work but finding the setup is only half the battle executing it is another matter entirely this is a chart for a setup that joey found runners are required to memorize all of these frame windows and inputs to pull off the strat by looking at the visual cues it depicts then trying to replicate what they see in game if all this is done correctly you'll execute a level wrap and as i mentioned in the explanation you're teleported to a specific location and it just so happens to be the boss room for casino night 2. there are a lot of other strats that were realized in this time period the first act of casino night also involved subpixel manipulation originally it was thought to be task only but one of the authors of the 2017 task pulled it off in 2016 for an il record and when the floodgates were opened runners found an rta setup once again making the impossible possible looking at aqua ruin 2 it had a similar task sip to hilltop 1 made rta viable and both chemical plant acts were caught up in the tass revolution as well all of these strats use tech we've already covered but if we look at the level that started this all we'll see that it had further developments this is the metro one level wrap [Music] the summer hayes setup eliminated a lot of the risk of the old zip strategy and made it possible to finish the level in 40 seconds but motivated by all the work on the other tracks joey found a strat that saved an additional 13 seconds and it's possible due to a trick called slope glitch slope glitch allows you to get zip speed which can enable level wraps and it's activated by having an object that sonic is standing on get deloaded when this happens the game gets confused and doesn't know what to do since sonic is standing on an object that no longer exists this allows him to stand in midair but more importantly if he's on a downward slope he's able to walk through the ground while it's active to activate slope glitch in metropolis act 1 you need to go to the same pistons the previous clip was performed on and have sonic duck which makes the camera move down with the camera adjusted you'll ride the piston up which pushes sonic and the piston off screen which achieves two things it deloads the piston putting sonic into slope glitch and it pushes him above the top of the screen which triggers a screen wrap with the screen wrap active the wooden floor gets deloaded since it's off screen and sonic starts to fall until the camera catches back up when it does you're conveniently near a slope which means slope glitch finally comes into play enabling sonic to clip into the ground and zip to the left once you're zipping all that's left is to do a zip jump to push sonic beyond the left screen boundary this triggers the level wrap for an appropriately glitched ending clocking in at 27 seconds and saving a whopping 13 over the summer hay strat since 2020 sonic 2 went from being moderately broken to a heaping mess of glitches and tricks that demand absolute perfection in execution with only a handful of runners being crazy enough to go for all of them in a run it just goes to show that in speedrunning you should never say never and that the impossible is constantly made possible through sheer determination and pure willpower there are still strats that are considered tasks only and only time will tell if they come to be rta viable as well thanks for watching and i hope to see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Abyssoft

Views: 173,428

Keywords: abyssoft, sonic 2, sonic, sega, zip, level wrap, screen wrap, chrezm, zaxon, joeybaby, speedrun, world record, speedrunning, sonic the hedgehog

Id: 2Fsz8Dc9feo

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022