World Record Progression: Sonic 2

sonic the hedgehog is a game about speed ever since the original advertisements from the early 90s sega has made it clear that in this game they want you to go fast wow sonic's fast too no overheating i like genesis so of all games it would make sense that people would try to speedrun it beat the game as fast as humanly possible but in a game already built for so much speed what can you do to go faster [Music] for over a decade gamers have been battling each other to see who can beat sonic the hedgehog 2 for the sega genesis more quickly there's been tricks glitches and a lot of speed this is the story of those runners this is the world record progression for sonic 2. the first thing i need to explain is the way that this game is timed for most speed runs the game is timed with a simple timer from start to finish it's easy and probably the most straightforward way of timing a run but for sonic 2 instead of using a timer the players time it by adding up the in-game times that they get on the end of every level why is this well when you beat a stage you get points based on how quickly you beat the level these points have to count down which takes a significant amount of time and instead of decreasing gradually as you beat the stage more slowly they decrease periodically for example here's a clip that happened at agdq 2013. mike 89 the runner on the right side beat the stage in 24 seconds and got a 50 000 point bonus those 50 000 points were taking forever to count down worster the runner on the left side knew that he was on pace to beat the stage in about 27 seconds if he had finished any time under 30 seconds he too would have gotten that 50 000 point bonus so instead he waits 3 seconds to finish at 30 seconds and collects his 10 000 point bonus which counts down way faster so much faster that even though he was significantly behind mike 89 they exit the stage just about time [Applause] so in order to avoid intentionally losing time to gain time or going slow to go fast runners decided that it made the most sense to time the run with in-game time the origins of sonic 2 speed running can be traced back to 2005. in november of that year mike 89 beat the game in 23 minutes and 14 seconds but the video no longer exists so let's instead examine a 24 minute and 23 seconds run that came about a month later by suzaku suzaku admitted that he did not have a large amount of experience with sonic games but still pulled off a run he was quite proud of it featured him flying through stages building up as much speed as he possibly could as he went through such well-known stages as chemical plant zone and casino night zone it was always fun to go fast casually but suzaku was making a fool out of the game he didn't have any huge tricks or glitches but the movement through the levels was good enough to be the first video recorded run of sonic 2. now speedrunning wasn't too big when suzaku did his run but as the months passed the concept of speedrunning was increasing in popularity people were looking for more games that could be ran and naturally the sonic games were seen as some top contenders a year later in late 2006 one man proved that he was the top dog in sonic 2 stansky incredibly he didn't just beat suzaku's 24 minute run but rather made it look completely obsolete stansky beat the game in 20 minutes and 2 seconds he had a few tricks up his sleeve to help him out in chemical plant zone 2 he did a trick that involved tails getting hit at the start intentionally and then running to the door tails then goes towards the door off screen from the other side tricking the game into thinking that sonic came from up above and letting him go down the ramp to skip half the stage and in hilltop 1 stansky realized that only the top portion of the lava has collision detection by standing on the top of the lava and colliding with the platform he fell straight through the lava and triggered a zip that sipped him through the stage combining those tricks with beautiful gameplay in other stages stansky finished on top of the world by a large margin he played beautifully very few mistakes very good execution but stansky wasn't done yet he knew there was still more he could do to sonic 2 so he got back to grinding and he showed undeniably that he was the best in the world at sonic 2. by 2007 stansky took the record down all the way to 1812 he's using tricks such as being pushed into the ground by the bolt in metropolis 1-3 making him skip to the end of the stage and when combined with his skill on the other stages he was able to put out times way ahead of anybody else that ever played the game he was so confident that he even said in the description of his video that he doubted anybody other than himself would ever beat it now if you've ever seen any of my videos before you know that this is something that nobody should ever ever claim it doesn't matter if you have a runner as dominant as andrew g yes yes [Music] yes if somebody gets to run so far ahead is hoe to ruby or if someone lowers their own record over and over as darkwing duck did nobody ever holds a record forever times change and people with different skills come up so for stansky to claim that nobody would ever beat him was a little bit ridiculous but here's the thing stansky god is 1812 in 2007. five years later it was still the world record he was right nobody is able to beat him it seemed his run truly was the ultimate run but in early 2012 an australian man wanted to challenge the notion that stansky was the ultimate player his name mike 89 the same player who originally got a 23 minute run without a surviving video recording way back in 2005 well it turns out he had gotten a bit better since then he began to grind the game again in early 2012 and three months later that march he did it but he didn't just edge out stansky's 1812 run mike 89 got 16-13 how is this possible nobody could beat stansky's run for five years then mike suddenly beats it by two whole minutes what was he doing differently well the truth was even though nobody had put together a run faster than sanski in five years there had still been some major developments in the game during those five years in metropolis ii for example he did another lava zip similar to the one that he did in hilltop one where the game zipped him to the end of the stage because he got stuck in the wall in the metropolis 3 he was able to use tails to do yet another zip he inched towards the edge of the drop in platform at the start and made tails fall off while having sonic remain on causing the game to freak out and launch him around the stage after getting this run stansky had been proven wrong mike 89 was the new champion but just like most speedrunners do mike realized that he was close to a number barrier he was just 13 seconds away from beating the game in 15 minutes so mike 89 and a couple of other runners tnt 314 and tympsy were determined to become the first runner to beat the game in under 16 minutes each one had the skill to do it but nobody knew who would be first they each set off on their quest and over the course of a few months these runners battled it out [Music] wow [ __ ] [Music] 1609 [Music] i don't know how good that spinach is 51. goddammit 1601 it is still the record each of these three runners had close calls that probably should have been the first sub 16 minute run had it not been for mishaps in the later stages but since they didn't save them on their twitch page they can't be seen today ultimately though it would once again be mike89 who got the first sub 16 minute run achieving it on november 15th 2013. the curse is broken 1548 the game had been destroyed sub 16 had been completed mike 89 won the race to get the first 15 minute run and man did he get a great one 12 seconds under 16 minutes think about this though if you're a competitor and your opponent accomplishes a goal you're both going towards first what do you do in other words if you were tnt 314 or tipsy would you have kept going to try to a 15 minute run of your own well later the same day that mike 89 got his sub 16 minute run timpsy started doing some temps of his own and he got on a run a very very good run all of a sudden he was five minutes away from beating the game and exiting the metropolis stages he was nine seconds ahead of the world record that mike 89 had set just hours before dude my heart is pounding it was all going so well all he had to do was hold it down for two more stages and then no no i my finger slipped my finger slipped on the controller because my hands are [ __ ] sweaty that death would wind up costing him 24 seconds ending his chance at the world record but he still closed out a new pb that clocked in at 1608 had he avoided the death and played the rest of the game as in the pb he would have gotten 15 44 a new world record by four seconds tim z would later go on to get his own sub 16 about a month later although he still missed world record by about 10 seconds meanwhile while these other runners were attempting to get their own 15 minute run mike 89 was hard at work trying to lower the world record down farther and farther into the 15 minute void he began using a new trick he broke the collision detection in wing fortress zone and he did stuff like this [Music] and he worked to optimize every other trick in the game as well that he could possibly do and in december 2013 mike 89 beat sonic 2 in 15 minutes and 18 seconds this run was the result of years of optimization and grinding mike 89 had gotten so good at the tricks and it completely mastered the movement they decided the 1518 was by far the best run that had ever been done he thought that it was so good that he would never have to come back to beat it because neither he nor anybody else will be able to top it people all over the internet wondered how long the run would last for a couple of years maybe three four or five years how about six months here's the thing mike 89's brother wurster was also really really good at sonic games and he wanted the record in sonic the hedgehog too after grinding in the middle of 2014 he got a 15 40. an excellent time for sure but one that was still 22 seconds behind the world record worcester needed something more to help him push his time down so he looked into the world of strats that were known but were considered to be too risky and dangerous for a single segment run and plan to use them in his own single segment run because why not he was trying to beat a run that was so good anyway he needed every edge over it that he could possibly get now these particular strats didn't necessarily end up saving him much time by comparison he only ended up saving a few seconds each in casino night 2 and the death egg fight with him but wurster's execution everywhere else had gotten a lot better over the months that he was playing the game he was ultimately able to get a 1508 with the hope of new strats on june 3rd 2014. this run was celebrated all over the official sonic leaderboards so quickly someone had been able to beat a run that was thought to be nearly unbeatable but after months of being on top of the leaderboards the run was completely removed the problem was wurster did his run on an emulator known as jens when he did the run he was considered completely fine to do speedruns with it but in 2015 runners decided that doing runs on that particular emulator would no longer be allowed because it was sometimes inaccurate it had testing capabilities and sonic 1 runners were even using this emulator to claim times under false pretenses the only thing that they could really do was ban the emulator completely and then had to include all past runs done on it too to keep everything fair so the 1508 which had been viewed tens of thousands of times by then was removed from the leaderboards and mike 89 was back on the top with 15 18. complications over the true number one spot caused much confusion as time passed by 2017 neither record had been beaten by anybody so mike 89 wanted to clear the air once and for all beat both his 1518 and wurster's 1508 we were now in 2017 the last time mike 89 broke the record was in 2013. over the course of four years the skill of a speedrunner goes up so when he started doing attempts against wurster splits he's able to keep up with them and he got on a run on april 20th that was keeping pace one thing that helped was getting the tail zip in metropolis three on his first try okay it's first go it's not a quick first go that's still first guy so he saved some time there and while he did lose some time on wing fortress he still closed out the run a second ahead of worcester yes yes i know it's only one second okay but since he was so close he might as well get a run under 15 minutes as well right and two months later he had a really nice run gain the time back that he lost in wing fortress and finish the game 14 baby yes and that is where the world record stands for sonic 2. for over a decade sonic 2 has introduced many to the concept of speedrunning while the timing mechanism doesn't seem straightforward at first it's led to some of the craziest world record pushes in speedrunning history people foolishly claimed that their runs would never be beaten but of course they were runs always get beaten but whoever wants to beat mike 89's 1458 will have a mountain to climb that run was a product of him running the game for 12 years off and on whoever tops it will permanently have their name etched into speedrunning history thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 2,387,253

Keywords:

Id: MvY8GEOCRdY

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/dlm891]

I love this series because it treats speedruns like a sporting event, focusing more on the history of the world records rather than the techniques behind speedruns. You can always learn about speedrunning strategies through other videos and websites, but it's really hard to find the historical context behind them.

[u/kebab4you]

It's weird that they still allow emulators to be used for Sonic 2, nearly all other speedruns I've seen only allow for official consoles to be used.

[u/CountMecha]

This guy's videos just keep getting better and better. The polish has gotten really nice. If ever there's a speedrunning documentary made for Netflix or whatever, it'd be foolish not to consult him.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/Clbull]

On a less related note, I really want to understand out how runners figure out how to pull off zips like in Sonic 2 speedruns.

I once inadvertently pulled one off in Press Garden Act 1 when doing a Knuckles run in Sonic Mania. Ultimately, this led to the collision detection being glitched when I emerged into another part of the stage and me dying.

I don't remember exactly how I triggered it; just that I climbed up to a higher part of the stage about 2 mins into the level.

[u/BakaDango]

Awesome and interesting as always. I appreciate how far SS has come with the audio quality too, the mixing is far better than previous videos; the whole presentation has been refined well. I'm curious why he doesn't render the videos at 1080p though, although I suppose it wouldn't matter much with the low-res videos being used within it. Hoping for a Pokemon Speedrun Progression video next!

[u/thewoodendesk]

I think what needs to be stressed is that whenever new strats get discovered, they fundamentally change how the game gets run. There's a ~10 year old TAS that's only 19:55, and it's basically because outside of some minor stage clipping, the game was more or less being played like how you would play it casually except with optimized jumps. I don't think Joe Stanski was being arrogant when he thought no one would top his run. He just didn't anticipate new strats being discovered. I doubt he would know how a subpixel is relevant even though subpixel zips are a fundamental part of Sonic 2 runs (and all Genesis Sonic runs really).

I remember comparing another old TAS of Sonic 2 with Werster's Sonic 2 run. What winded up happening was that if you just compare the times of each zone separately, Werster would always be slightly behind due to suboptimal play, but whenever he was going to be noticeably behind the TAS, Werster would pull off a zip that was discovered after the TAS was made, which made up for lost time. In the end, Werster's run was actually faster than that TAS due to new strats.