Honourable mention time!
This time around, it's epic discoveries that only applied to a single level. Including some of these may have made for a better main list, but a dodgy and dissociated honourable mention section. Which of the two is preferable is for you to decide.
Sonic 1 - Two recent tricks here:
Marble 2 - Jumping into the bottom of the shield on the platform and enabling a skip. This and the next one discovered by carrotero on TASvideos.
Scrap Brain 3 - Falling into the wall at the start of the act and skipping straight to the end.
Sonic 2Hill Top 1 - While invincible (temporarily or otherwise), standing on a platform and falling through the lava. Discovered by Rolken
Death Egg - The 12-0. Not much more needs to be said.
Sonic CDCollision Chaos 1 - Using the peelout with Speed Shoes against the left edge of the stage to initiate a level wrap. Discovered by Upthorn
Collision Chaos 3 - Peelout off a small ramp to clear the entire level, rather than playing the annoying boss. This is one of my very few finds
Metallic Madness 2 - After testing a similar strategy to what worked in CC3, Sprint found you could merely jump straight through the wall, saving approximately a minute.
Sonic 3Marble Garden 2 - Home to a couple of strange glitches. On Sonic 3 alone, SDM discovered that you could take the spinning top up above the level, take it all the way to the end, and jump into Knuckles' boss area, which would make the screen turn black and you would reappear with
tons of points
(because it's actually executing the Special Stage completion code, possibly as a relic from Sonic 2). Later, smizzla went the other way and was able to simply fall into a wall, resulting in a simple level wrap to Knuckles' boss.
Sonic 3DRusty Ruin 3 - One of the most ingenious strats I have seen. SDM made the video of it, but I think others had the strat first. Basically, the boss is out of reach at the start, but jumping into it and taking a hit gets you just enough height to reach the hands in their high position! From here you can attack the boss easily, assuming you can stay on the hands from the rebound.
Sonic AdventureCasinopolis - Already mentioned at #8, but it would never have been relevant if the original trick weren't found: with Sonic, you can spindash through certain walls on Dreamcast, which makes it possible to complete the level without collecting any rings at all. On Gamecube more walls are solid, which led to the discovery of the double spindash.
With Tails, there's a hole in the roof at the start of the level on Gamecube - and you can fly a straight line to the end of the level. Like Sonic, the level now falls under 15 seconds.
Ice Cap - The time stops when you exit act 2. Big mistake! You can simply fall out of the area where time is stopped without grabbing the snowboard, which means your time goes roughly to - you guessed it - 15 seconds.
In the snowboard section, there's one trick which was mentioned in the Third Anniversary Top Ten (for videos) - jumping onto a ramp before using it, which is surprisingly quicker through the air. Plus it looks awesome.
Twinkle Park - A glitch with Amy which cuts about 25 seconds. Not entirely sure on the specifics because it's a Dreamcast only trick.
E-101 mkII - A slight trick here, shooting Beta during the opening cutscene. This is basically a case of restarting until it falls your way.
Sonic Adventure 2City Escape 3 - I remember seeing a Cybrax video of manipulating the loop and falling through the top of the building straight down to the Chao. Despite the fact that it's on video, it seems nobody knows how to recreate it.
Metal Harbor - Getting on the rocket in a couple of seconds. I mean seriously that looks totally awesome when it's done right.
Pumpkin Hill - Rayku's rising start. Took mission 3 down a bit, and the ideal 1 uses it too
as does 2. The concept also helps in 5 to grab a shard, but it's not quite the same.
Aquatic Mine - Breaking out of bounds with the underwater
glide wall grab, on a surface that's only grabbable on DC. This saves time in 3 and 5
(and, of course, 2).
Hidden Base - A recent trick allows you to skip doing things you would normally do, such as shooting out the dynamite blocks at the start of the level, and saves a few seconds on all missions.
For once, it's a fake wall trick that's GC only.Death Chamber - Breaking out of the level boundaries (traditionally through the same room that holds key 1 in mission 5, but there
's a are three new breakout spot
s, two of which save considerable time on m3). This is obviously much quicker than the traditional water path.
Eternal Engine - Everyone knows this one. On Dreamcast you can skip the blowing-up-the-generator requirement at the end of the level and save about 15 seconds.
Meteor Herd 3 - Clipping the box with the Chao in it, saving much time on DC. This also applies to Mad Space 3.
Crazy Gadget - Abusing the few seconds it takes you to die once you move outside the kill plane to enter the goal ring. This has now been done in at least two different ways.
Dry Lagoon - The Mystic Melody-less methods to 3 and
Treasure-Scope-less methods to 5,
one of which has you mysteriously appear well above the room you would normally appear in after digging through a certain picture.
The other just involves climbing into the underside of a wall on Dreamcast so that you actually go through the wall, from which it's easy to see the method for 5, but 3 requires a good imagination and precise aim. Time wise, it's not useful on either, but it still looks awesome.
Sand Ocean - The time freeze glitch. Time stops when you die, but in Sand Ocean you're not quite dead when the time stops. If in between those two moments you use a spring to get yourself out, then time is stopped for the remainder of the level. And doing this is quicker than any of the mission objectives, so the time is the same for all missions.
Lost Colony - Same as Eternal Engine, but not nearly as useful, or well-known. Still saves a few seconds, enough to make the difference at the top.
Additionally, a hover jump can take you over the first barricade of cages without using the missile, saving a small amount of time.Weapons Bed 3 - Breaking into the Chao area through the back door.
Security Hall 5 - On Dreamcast, Screw Kick actually attacks through the safes. On Gamecube, you have to undertake two additional tasks for the blue emerald: opening the lower level of safes (which can be done on a previous life) and stopping the weight (which cannot).
Route 280 2 - Discovered pre-TSC, this allows you to complete a 100 ring mission in, quite literally, no time at all. Collect 99 rings, and boost into a 100th which sends you into a pit. There's a few more intricacies to get it down to 0 seconds, which SM has detailed in his
guide.
Cosmic Wall - One new find has enabled at least
three new results: an infinite score sequence
that's faster than any other in the game (earning 6000 points every second), an addition of 10 rings to the maximum for missions 1 and 5, and a massive shortcut taking mission 1 under four minutes.
Cannon's Core 1 - My original choice for #1 before we changed to glitches that were useful across a game. You need to manipulate your save file, play mission 2, finish as Knuckles, enter Chao World as Robotnik, then reappear in CC1 Sonic and do a permanent time stop for a total time of seven seconds. This method is condemned to freestyle, but there's plenty of other tricks in the legitimate run which deserve mention.
The permanent stop is one such thing. As Sonic, you have to spindash-jump out of the way. As Rouge, you have to quickly Drill Dive out of the way.
Knuckles' section is also cut considerably thanks to clipping your way out of Rouge's section and gliding around to the finish.
Egg Golem - Hero is covered under Superbounce, at #2. Dark has recently gone to 12 seconds courtesy of yoshifan, and nobody really knows how yet. Hopefully he'll tell us >_>
Biolizard - My brother discovered you could make your way up Biolizard's body while it was still, and I extended this to being able to attack while it was moving. This took the time down two minutes all at once.
Sonic HeroesCasino Park CE - Da1AndOnlySonic discovered Thunder Shooting into a small slot, which paid rings for every single icon on the reel in quick time as a reliable way to 500. Slightly too slow to be the record time, but a reliable red time.
Egg Emperor - A Thunder Shoot can get stuck in EE's weak spot, ending the fight in as little as 20 seconds. Shoot both your teammates at it for double the fun!
ShadowLethal Highway Hero - I still don't agree that this should be legal, but the ingenuity of the strat should not be called into question. Basically the... thing... you have to destroy requires 175 hits from a certain gun. The strat involves getting 174 of them, dying (multiple times), and launching into a homing attack as soon as it comes within range on the next life. 8"44 is currently believed to be perfect here.
Sonic 1 GGBridge 1 - S1GG's physics dictate that while Sonic is not on the ground, rolling greatly increases his speed. Sprint used this to great advantage off the seesaws.
Sky Base 2 - Two separate finds here, one of which took the time to 12, the other to 8. First, you were able to jump straight up to the last section with the guns. Then, you worked through the level normally, until jumping onto the top of the building you enter at the end of the level, then drop down and walk in.
Sonic Pocket AdventureAerobase - RPG found out that you could use the small pods that the chicken enemies pop out of as steep ramps, enabling massive vertical moves through the level. He's been bugging me to put this in, but I think he's overestimated its usefulness >_>
And that's it for this iteration of the Top Tens! Join us in April for the next edition!
~yse and RPG
