Annotated Guide to "Sonic Adventure 2 Tricks and Glitches: The Unnamed Sequel"
by Russell "SadisticMystic" Jones

This video is even longer than the last, so there may be more tricks you don't understand.  Hopefully, you'll know how to do them after reading the relevant sections here.

"Rolling Around Without a Board"
I've heard of a few ways to do the opening section boardless.  Unfortunately, some require the trial version, and at least one works only on multiplayer mode in SA2B.  Thanks to the super bounce, there's now an easy way to do this that's accessible to everyone (as long as they have the bounce bracelet).  Remember, to do a super bounce, back up from a wall, spindash into it, and press A and B once you hit the wall to get a bounce that should go much higher than normal.  You can get enough height to get to street level in one bounce, but there's an invisible wall blocking your path above a certain point, so you'll need to use two.  Note that the mission-1 record of 482 rings requires that you take this path to go back up to the board section, as you're required to leave some rings behind and pick them back up later.

"Saved at the Last Minute"
I came across this oddity as I was looking for a way to complete the level without using the A button.  Getting caught by the Hawk's gumball causes it to start charging Sonic, then...it spontaneously blows up right before impact?  How could this happen?  Actually, you'll notice I push a construction helmet over, and get behind it.  You can throw the helmet at an enemy, as a weapon, but it's implemented so that an enemy that runs into even a free-standing helmet still gets destroyed.

"Missile Multiplicity"
In the previous video, you saw that Sonic can put on the board on demand.  Now you see the one practical use I've found for that.  Putting on the board requires that you have Dreamcast, and that you press the Y button on controller 2.  Here I get the board right after grabbing the missile.  Sonic jumps off the missile, and...just falls straight down, missing the shaft?  That's what happens with board physics.  But you fall...right back to the launch pad.  From here, you can land and guide yourself back up, and score points for boarding the missile...as many times as you want!  Note that landing on the top platform and hitting the spring doesn't do anything, as the missile handles aren't considered grabbable until the countdown starts, and you have to go further down to make that happen.  Grabbing the missile takes away the board, so you have to put it back on for more points, but at least you can choose not to, and go on to complete the level instead.

"Airwalking on the Hollow Tree"
For this path through the tree, there's a surface underneath the tunnel that's solid.  A simple jump through fake surfaces can get you there, at which point...you get to enjoy something that's amazingly non-useful.

"Three Ways to Fly High"
Sonic likes exploitable physics, and Pyramid Cave has plenty of that.  The first flight is well-known as a shortcut: running into the hourglass in midair causes you to be pushed up, high enough to skip the hourglass door.  Escaping the pit without that hourglass is also used as a speedrun method.  The second flight, a simple ramp jump onto the arches, isn't useful for anything.  You may have noticed something strange as Sonic attempted to get onto the fourth arch--more on that later.

"Falling Up with Nowhere to Go"
I was a bit reluctant about including endless falls, as it's not obvious that they really are endless, and in most cases they rely on random, undependable wall clips (and most of those that don't are too similar to the tricks included in the original compilation).  But I found this, and it looked good enough to include.  Clearly the starting room isn't right below anything of interest, and the method is easy.  Just super bounce in order to backtrack, and then start falling up.  You'll never cross a kill plane, and won't die except by pausing and choosing Restart.

"Massive Shortcut Gets Cut Short"
It seems to be random, but sometimes you can pass through the void on the left side of the inverted multi-switch room without dying.  When that happens, you get to view strange things while falling sideways, and then you end up in the final block area...could it be a huge shortcut?  It could, actually, except that the edges of that area are set to kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

"Flaming Grind...Too Late!"
This short segment just points out the overprotective use of kill planes here.  The one below the ground at the end of the long spiral rail is higher than surrounding kill planes, to the point that you can pass through it, start buring up in the death animation, and still make it to the rail at right--you would have survived if the kill plane was given a more even location considering its surroundings.

"Long Jump to the Chao Rails"
You can start this trick further ahead, but it doesn't look as interesting from there.  You can super bounce to the angled platform (actually you don't even need to bounce if you can time a jump from the vertical rail properly, just before you would hit the spring).  Yes, that is Big the Cat up there; it appears in every level except Route 101, Route 280, and Green Hill, but only on Dreamcast (in some levels on GameCube, you'll find a ring where Big used to be).  Anyway, thanks to the angle, you can use ramp physics to get a huge jump, through the fake ceiling, to the point where you can look at incomplete scenery, and finally land right where you take a series of rails to the Chao.  This skips both mystic shrines, and Sonic doesn't need Mystic Melody to get through any level.

"Attacking Animals for Fun and Profit"
I knew I wanted something to show the Light Attack's ability to home in on small animals, which limited me to Pyramid Cave or Green Hill.  Green Hill was lacking a trick, so I settled on this.  Sonic jumps off the edge after luring the animals there...and saves himself by shooting up into them!  The "profit" is rather lacking, but that save sure beats death.

"Pushed Through a Solid Floor"
If you somersault through a barrier in such a way that you push up against the edge of its extent, you end up doing a series of somersaults that doesn't end.  To escape that, you can press A.  But in Radical Highway, with the spinning drums, pressing A right as a corner of the drum comes over you will send you through the floor instead.

"I Am Quickly Going Crazy"
Those juts from the floor are solid to the player, but objects can pass right through them.  In particular, here I drop a purple mushroom through it, so that it can't be reached.  Then I jump off the edge, but a light attack tries to home in on the mushroom and saves me from the water temporarily.  The approaching spike tank gives me a new target, and that lets me go up through the floor for a more permanent save.  Then Shadow gets stuck.  Because my TV card records in 30Hz, you see Shadow stuck in place on one frame of movement; in the game's true 60Hz you'd see that he actually alternates between two frames of movement.  Once Shadow gets stuck like this from a light attack, the only way out is to press B and cancel the attack.

"Falling Forever...Without Moving"
Have you ever noticed that sometimes after you land from a jump (usually from a rail or vine) you'll immediately do a somersault even if you're not pressing B?  That has to do with the buttons you were pushing prior to the rail.  If you can store a B push this way, but land up against a wall instead of the ground, the result is that you can hold up against the wall to fall in place as long as you want.  Holding away from the wall lets you fall normally.  This is the more complete version of the phenomenon from the fourth arch in Pyramid Cave.

"Soaring Up the Cliff's Edge"
Nothing fancy here.  Stopping on the slope at the edge of a cliff here can be tricky, but this is just ramp physics in action.

"Floating Over a Spring"
The spring at the start of Final Chase has a unique placement (up against a wall, with part of it hanging directly beneath another surface) that allows for this trick.  With a homing attack right after bouncing off the spring, you can float slightly over it by holding forweard, without actually bouncing.

"Wrong Side of the Lift"
This is well-known.  You're not supposed to be able to stand on the diagonal surface the lift rides up, but by triggering the lift and then getting on the other side, it'll push you up, and you can stand and even jump.  This gets you a bit of a head start in being able to get off, and also makes it easier to shoot some of the enemies in the following hallway through the wall, saving time from waiting at a locked door.

"Standing at the Point of No Return"
Now why would there be an invisible floor there?  No idea.  There isn't one on the other side, and you can't make it back to the blast panel from here, so there's little to do but wait for Tails to die.

"Riding Walls to Ride in Reverse"
My original plan here was just to see how long and high I could hold a wall ride.  On one of my dismounts, though, I managed to get turned around and continue riding backwards, so I threw that in as a bonus that developed into the majority of the segment.  You don't go any faster when riding backwards, and using a boost just causes you to face the right direction again, so it's pure novelty.

"Tails' Rightful Place On Top"
As I mentioned before, Tails wasn't supposed to have much mobility in his mech, so some of the walls were skimped out on as far as solidity was concerned.  That and you don't have to destroy many dynamite packs here.  There's no need for a damage boost to get up on that block; a well-timed hover jump can do it unassisted, but that's what came to me while I was recording so I took it.

"Free-Standing Dynamite Pack"
On the road to the Chao, there's a dynamite pack inside an enemy.  Normally, they're supposed to be tied to each other's health: when one goes down, so does the other--and destroying the dynamite causes 9 hatches to open in that hallway so that it's nearly impossible to get through safely.  But there's a trick you can use to separate the two: Lock on to one, then turn around without firing.  When you get far enough away that the enemy is almost out of draw distance (you'll have to experiment to find out just how far this distance extends), fire and keep going back.  When it leaves draw distance with a shot headed for it, that shot is considered to have hit, but you don't get points for it.  Return to that spot and the dynamite is still there, independent of the enemy!  Then I go ahead and destroy it, showing how close you can get to an open hatch and still walk away safely.

"Holding Off the Weight Drop"
You're supposed to have the weight fall down, hit the switch, then take it back up.  But it's possible to just have it suspended all the time, without dealing with any drop at all!  The weight only drops if you're close enough to the shadow...while you're on the ground.  Shoot out the tank for 4 hits, then hover over the shadow and land on the switch, and the weight never gets a chance to fall.  This saves a few seconds.

"Suicidal Thoughts of a Mad Scientist"
I don't know if this was intended or not, so I was a bit hesitant to put it in.  The missile that blows up the final series of doors is also capable of hitting you, and here it does so from red health, taking away what should have been a clear run.

"Laying the Smack...Up?"
Normally if a huge pillar falls on your head, you'd expect to be shot down into the sand pit, right?  But instead, most of the time you'll actually be boosted up through the falling pillar so you can walk on it.  There are a few places where this is used to save time, though the fastest path doesn't deal with any falling pillars until after time is stopped (see the first video) and it doesn't matter.

"Walking Over Everything"
If you jump and hit the blast panel at the highest point that it still blasts you from (be careful--you can appear to hit the very top, but pass right through it instead), then hold a hover, you should be able to go soaring much higher than normal.  Guide yourself off to the left, and you'll be able to walk on an invisible floor high in the air (and you won't even hear any footsteps!)  Going over the top of the ending room allows Sand Ocean to become the 11th level known to be completable start to finish without a single point, and it allows you to reach Big the Cat (or, on GameCube, the ring in his place).

"I Don't Need No Stinkin' Missile"
You're supposed to find a way up to the second floor in this square room, then find your way around to the missile, which breaks a set of cages.  Alternately, you can just hop up to the side of the second floor (you don't need to destroy that enemy, but I do so in order to make this dark level a bit more visible for the video), then time a hover jump.  Normally, Tails and Eggman can jump high enough to clear one block.  But with a jump immediately followed by a hover, the hover gives a boost that allows them to clear a stack that's 2 high--and conveniently, that's just what you need to go over the top of the cages.  It might save a bit of time if you do it exactly right; it's definitely useful if you're doing a low score run.

"Clearing the Wall Without Shooting"
Normally you need to shoot the metal boxes to form a staircase so that you can jump up over the wall.  This requires the Large Cannon upgrade.  But instead, you can go left to the Chao box and reach the wall from there.  A bomb boost makes it fairly easy to get there; afterwards it was found that a well-timed hover jump can get you there without taking damage.  It's useful for a low-score run as well as a minimal-upgrade run (you don't need the Large Cannon in the story, only for Iron Gate and Lost Colony hard mode).

"Stuck On a Stick"
Eggman and cramped quarters isn't a good sign, to the point where you can actually get stuck in place by having your machine impaled on a pole.  I originally thought it required taking a hit to fall onto the pole, but after a few tries of recording, I found a much easier way that just entails jumping into the pole.  You can spin around and jump, but once you're stuck on the stick, I don't know of any way out aside from restart or quit.

"Going Crazy Over Nothing at All"
For something as interesting as this, it's amazing how non-useful it is.  You can squeeze between the pyramid and the wall such that Eggman runs partway through the wall.  You can also get him to do a 30Hz jitter, though the effects of that aren't be visible with my recording equipment.  You might end up passing through the floor, or through the separator wall in front of you, but amazingly enough, I haven't found a way to get through the left wall with this trick, which is a shame because it would make for a large shortcut.

"I Won't Be Crushed"
This is a neat little trick that's possible with any moving weight in the game.  Wild Canyon gets to serve as the backdrop for the trick by virtue of not having anything else.  If you punch as a weight would come crashing down on your head, you end up standing on top of the weight, and without taking a hit (note that 0 rings are kept throughout this segment).  Spiral Upper under a falling weight just lets you pass right through it as you shoot up.

"I'm Hiding in a Box!"
Anything else in Pumpkin Hill is going to pale in comparison to the rising start, so I just went for something silly.  The slope at the top of Pumpkin Mountain doesn't give Knuckles a chance to show off ramp physics as it does for Shadow, but the fact that a box sticks out against it allows Knuckles to slide off and into the box.  The punch shows that yes, Knuckles was really in the box and not in the wall or anything similar.

"Through a Frame Like a Magician"
In the quest for an easier way to get out of Aquatic Mine, I found this, which doesn't help do anything, but just give it the right context...One A+B while standing on the frame near the wall sends Knuckles free-floating halfway inside the frame.  Another A+B and he's diving in place, able to be moved left or right.  Pressing A from the dive lets you break through the frame and grab the wall.  It's no more useful than anything David Copperfield does, but it looks about as cool, especially in conjunction with the rest of what Knuckles can do.

"Breathless Victory"
The mechanics of Aquatic Mine made this trick a natural for inclusion.  You need to keep trying the level until you get piece 3 that's on a moving trajectory (only piece 3 can be moving, not 1 or 2), and position yourself so that the piece runs into you after you drown.  I count 5 out of 27 possible locations that meet the requirement.  I was actually looking for a different end result from this trick, but having Knuckles drown on the level complete screen and still get credit for the completion--not even a life lost--must count for something.

"Underwater Gliding"
Knuckles' swimming is slow.  Don't you wish it could be sped up?  At least in Death Chamber, you can glide rather than swim over short distances.  Hold B to dive onto an hourglass, and once you hit it, start holding A+B.  Knuckles bounces off, and after a while, if you're still holding A+B, he breaks into a glide (you can also do this by holding A+B at the entrance to the water, and then walking--not jumping--into the hole).  It takes a while to initiate the glide, so you don't get to hold it for long before hitting the ground, and it doesn't even cancel your drown timer.  But you can at least use it to break 1:00 (or have enough time to resurface and still get through the door without Air Necklace) even without taking that massive out-of-bounds glide shown in the last video.

"An Inescapable Blackness"
The edges of most Knuckles or Rouge levels are set to turn you around automatically (provided you can get there; some levels are bounded to prevent you from reaching the true edge unless you can break out of the walls; and Aquatic Mine has no such boundaries).  Sometimes, I believe when you hit the edge right at the intersection of two sides of the boundary polygon, you get stuck in a position that prevents you from escaping, as you're constantly turned around and back.  In Meteor Herd it has the additional side effect of taking away all of the background, and all visible scenery except for Knuckles himself.  Pumpkin Hill allows you to do something similar by holding against the edge of the level and gliding right as you would be pushed back up at the bottom.

"Who Needs a Turtle?"
You don't actually have to destroy any enemies to get to the huge oasis!  The dig panel that leads to the Chao is the key.  Basically, you want to get hit right after you start digging (on hard mode you'll get hit by a laser, though it's hard to see in this video; other missions make you wait for a bomb to explode).  Having your dig-warp interrupted by a hit results in you resurfacing not in the room with the mystic shrine, but above that room, where you can glide out of bounds!  You can glide to the third room down for the Chao, or you can glide all the way back to the oasis to do whatever you need to do there, such as get hard mode's piece 3.  Note that this is essentially the reverse of the route shown for Dry Lagoon in the first video, but with a different setup.  It's not Dreamcast-only this time.

"Swiping the Caged Reward"
The 2-high stacks of boxes in the room with the Pick Nails allow Rouge to get out of bounds using what's become known as a "Death Chamber dive".  The problem is, Egg Quarters is a rather flat level, and you're low down when you break out.  So what is it useful for?  Not much, actually.  You can glide under the shrine room, but I haven't found anything you can do from there.  Eventually I found that you can get key 1 on hard mode, and after almost 200 tries, managed to record it.  The sides of the cage shouldn't be permeable, but it appears that there's a "Player is coming from out of bounds--let them in!" check that's overriding that for a brief moment, so Rouge gets the key then falls back down.  Fortunately there's a patch of water under the blue room that you can use to resurface.  It doesn't save any time to get the key this way, it doesn't skip any upgrades, and it's not really easier in any case.  It just looks...more "thievish," I guess, to have Rouge get a key this way.  What would really be useful is if there were a similar way to obtain key 3, which as it stands is the only reason Rouge ever needs to get Iron Boots or Treasure Scope.

"Clearing a Path Without Footholds"
The path to the Treasure Scope is supposed to require both Iron Boots and Mystic Melody.  Iron Boots have yet to be bypassed (though I've theorized based on an out-of-bounds trick in Aquatic Mine, that you can get the Treasure Scope without any other upgrades, though I'd assume it's just about as hard to do).  Bypassing the Mystic Melody, which is supposed to give you some platforms so that you have somewhere to stand and kick out the boxes, is fairly easy.  You have to grab on to the small jut that extends past the boxes.  If Rouge pulls herself up, you've done it correctly.  You'll get up onto the small ledge, and immediately fall back down because there isn't enough room to stand.  In that time, though, you can fire off one kick, which breaks a box.  Then you can climb back up to the gap left by that box, and the rest of the way is trivial.

"Obligatory Level Clear in 1 Second"
This was what I was trying to do with Aquatic Mine in "Breathless Victory".  At least I knew it worked here, so I could show 41 clips instead of 40!  I dive down for an intentional kill, then I get 2.9 seconds to do things before the screen fades out.  Fortunately, in Security Hall, that's enough time to glide into the fans and get blown back up into emerald 1 for the clear.  It happens in such a way that level clear is acknowledged, but the level is restarted.  The timer starts up again, and...what's this?  The pause screen works!  You can select Restart to stay on the level complete track, but reset the time to 0!  You can even move around while your stats are tabulated, and restarting several times keeps the clock low.  This run went on record as 0:00.25, and 0:00.02 or possibly even 0:00.00 could be possible with the right timing. 

"Solid Ground in a Sea of Illusion"
As you saw last time, jumping track isn't likely to take you anywhere but to a fake floor.  In Route 280, though, the lap 2/3 marker is within reach of a track jump.  The track isn't solid, but the separator structure is, so I briefly bounce off it long enough to get credit for a time extension.  The pauses are there to make it easier to observe the bounce.  Apparently there's been at least one claim of someone making this track jump and surviving to continue on, but the details of that are sketchy.

"Finding Another Entrance"
In Mad Space, finding the Chao is supposed to be tedious, climbing up and around the ARK tothe mystic shrine, at which point you go through 3 warps before you're in the right container to reach the Chao.  But you can skip all that, and glide through the intersection of two polygons to get into the right container quickly.  I don't know if this is possible with GameCube; even with Dreamcast I only get it right about 2% of the time (as opposed to about a 30% success rate at the corresponding trick in Meteor Herd), so disproving it isn't exactly easy.

"A Completely Arbitrary Warp"
I knowingly left it out of the last video, but once I decided there would be a sequel, this had to go in.  It's just fitting to close the video out with this 95-second clip.  To start it off, you need to be in Cannon's Core m2.  You get the greatest effect when you hold off the clear until Knuckles' section, so I start at the beginning of that section with 99 rings.  The 100th ring makes for a clear.  Due to level numbers and the "What is this level's successor?" function getting mixed up, if you immediately follow up a completion on Cannon's Core m2 using a character other than Sonic, with a trip to Chao World, you come out of Chao World with the game thinking you're in Cannon's Core m1, using the character that's next in line after whoever you completed m2 with, and with a timer reflecting how long you spent in Chao World.  This will normally be under 10 seconds, and can go less than 2 if you've specially prepared your memory card by clogging it so that there's no Chao file and not enough space to create one.  It doesn't matter how you get to Chao World: you can take a Chao key from Cannon's Core with you to completion, you can level select there, or you can go to Emblem Results and enter via the Chao race section.  I believe that using Emblem Results can get your time about 0.1 seconds faster, so that's what I do.  After exiting immediately, Sonic appears in his section to a clock of 0:01.57.  I took longer than I wanted to get to the switch, so time doesn't stop until 6.94 (it could definitely go to 6.87, and possibly faster than that), then a spindash jump through the timestop switch and over the gap causes Sonic to get far enough away that the switch leaves draw distance before it stops shaking, and that's the formula for having time stopped forever (or until you go back close enough to that switch, or hit another one).  Additionally, using Route 101 or Route 280 in place of Chao World lets you set the Cannon's Core mission number to things other than 1.  This doesn't help on 3, 4, or 5, except if you're trying to get all-ring As, as those missions can be completed normally in a faster time than Route 101 alone.  It does help on mission 2, if used in conjunction with the Route 280 trick seen in the first video.

If you have any further questions or comments, you can leave them at the video site where you got the video, or you can send them to questiondesk@gmail.com.  For credits information, see time 20:58 in the video.