How to get under 17 seconds with all Teams

This is a guide to getting under 17 seconds for the Egg Emperor with all Teams. There are a lot of videos of Egg Emperor and how to beat him around 16.5-17.5 seconds with all Teams, but most of them don't go into detail about how the strategies work. This guide will tell you how and why the strategies work. I suggest you watch the videos by numerous people along with this guide to help you.

The main thing you want to do is get the flight character leveled up to level 2. This will allow you to damage the Egg Emperor. Now, with Team Sonic and Team Dark, a consistent way to get the first level up and go through the Egg Emperor's legs is to light dash the rings at the start. This will get you past him and a good amount of the time will have Tails/Rouge untouched and running with you, which is what you want. If you have both characters running with Sonic/Shadow, good. If only Knuckles/Omega is there, you have to retry again. The necessary character availability applies to all Teams. The next step is to do one rocket accel (only have one character boost you) so you accelerate ahead a bit, and this will allow you to destroy those airplanes with Team Dark without getting damaged.

With Team Rose and Team Chaotix, you want to do a rocket accel from both characters to get past the Egg Emperor at the start. Have Espio use his shuriken attack after that which will let you get past the Egg Emperor more easily without your teammates getting hit. Team Rose just needs a full (double boost) rocket accel to get past him. Run normally to get the level up and position yourself for the left dash pad.

Now, with all Teams, your goal is to get into Power Formation, hit the left dash pad on the middle or slight right side, and have your flight character be next to you on the right so they can go through the dash ring. This allows you to land on the next platform, and they get the second flight level up. Better switch to Power Formation early to ensure you do the strategy correctly.

Now the thing is that the Egg Emperor will only charge you at a certain time, and if you go too fast and get to the lower platform too soon, he will take longer to charge you, so it doesn't matter if you go slower getting to the dash pads or faster. I highly recommend going a bit slower by running in Power Formation when you are close to the dash pad (but not too slow) so you can ensure you can set yourself up correctly for the final part, and you will still have time to prepare and not lose any overall time at all. However, Team Rose runs slower than the other Teams so you have to get to the dash pad more quickly than the other teams.

The next part is when you land on the lower platform. You must attack him then in order to defeat him. Switch to Flight Formation. You want to jump backward a bit off of the platform so you can have him hit you as early as possible, but don't jump too far off backwards. Jump to the left and backwards, essentially diagonal down-left. You then want to turn in mid air and face direct right while in the back left area, and move a bit right. You should do these moves seamlessly. Right before he hits you, you should be facing right, positioned in the air a little behind the platform, about 1/4 of the way to the right between the left edge and the middle of the long straight ahead platform. Again, if you don't understand these instructions well, watch the videos. This guide is meant to help you along with those videos.

The second to last part is the tricky part. I thought that you have to time your boost upward right as the Egg Emperor hits you, but that is not correct. Let him hit you in mid-air, and immediately AFTER you get hit by his charge, boost up, turn straight + thundershoot both teammates at him. The reason why you are facing right and on the left side is because it lets you get around his shield easier, so you can hit it and have the first character stick immediately more often instead of them flying around him for a bit before sticking to him. You have to keep trying and if you practice, you can get both characters to stick to him almost instantly after you shoot them. Make sure to fly forward back above the platform while your teammates are attacking so you are not floating above the death zone. You have to do this because if you are in empty space and defeat him, you can still fall and die while he is exploding and your time will not count. You don't really need to move the control stick that much at all while they are sticking to him, they will still damage him normally. I found that rotating the control stick will cause you to die more often than not, because you forget where you are, and end up above the death zone instead of the platform. Again, this causes you to fall and die even if you beat him and your time doesn't count. You have to practice so you can defeat him within 17 seconds for all Teams.

The fundamentals of these strategies work for all Teams, but make sure you vary the strategy as I said for each Team because each Team is different and needs a little change to make the strategies work for them. Practice and work hard as it takes time to do the strategies correctly. Some times you may do it right away, others it might take a lot longer to just beat them in a decent time of 18 seconds or less. Have fun!