Sonic 2 Tips

**Work in progress, feel free to add and edit it yourself.**

This video explains most of the basics you'll need to know before starting to speedrun Sonic. The most important part is the beginning section on spin dash mechanics. Alternatively, you can read the text explanation on these mechanics as well as a host of other categories below.

## How to Use This Guide

This Guide covers all the mechanics, tricks and glitches in Sonic 2. As well as advice on your set-up, speedrun rules, how to time your runs and more.

New runners looking to get into the game don't need to digest everything here before starting out. I'd simply advise you to learn about the spin dashing and to consider the emulator and its settings you are using so everything feels responsive as possible. Emulators also allow you to save your progress anywhere during the level, allowing you to practise tricky sections over and over until you get the hang of it. You can also make multiple saves of all tricky sections thru the game, allowing you to quickly brush up on your skills before doing a full run. (Saves can also be made on console using special rom carts discussed later)

### Learning the Levels

Jump into the individual level guides and start learning the safe routes thru the levels, this will take some time and memorisation and it's advised that you learn the safe route for the full game, and once you have that under your belt you can move onto advanced strategies and optimisations.

At first, you should break the levels down into sections and individual tricks. Once you have mastered these replay the level over and over trying to get the perfect run. This will take time to achieve and become consistent at, but it's important to really solidify everything you have learned before moving on to the next level.

You'll repeat this for the next act and once you're happy then it's time to start practising both levels one after the other until the whole zone is feeling solid and you're feeling like a superstar. We all learn at different rates and I'd suggest you learn the game zone by zone. perfecting each zone and doing a run-through of all the zones you have learnt so far. There are a lot of zones in the game and by the time you get to the later zones you may feel like you have gotten rusty at earlier levels, in which case revisit that levels guide and spend some time remastering the stage before moving on.

The later stages, especially Metropolis zone are pretty long. In fact each act can feel as long as a whole zone. In truth they are not too scary once you have learnt the route thru them, it's just that they take more learning, so don't try and learn them all in one day and take your time over them. It's also worth mentioning here that if you are intending on using glitches then you don't need to learn much of the Metropolis zones as the first glitches you'll be looking to learn will skip over most of these levels.

Depending on how much you play it's going to take some time to learn the whole game, and it's important not to rush yourself and to make sure to replay earlier levels to make what you have learned stick. You might also want to set up some speed run timing software so you can record your progress and visualize your improvements. **Remember - Rome was not built in a day, but pretty soon you'll be blazing thru the game in under 30 mins and looking to take big chunks off that time!**

### Perfecting the levels

Once you feel you have mastered the save routes you can start speedruning for real, setting and beating your personal bests and making your mark on speedrun.com . Every level guide here contains advanced, optimal, glitched and even TAS tips and guides to take your game further, master them all and the skys the limit.

### Back-Up-Strats

Sometimes you'll fall off a ledge and will have to take another route thru the level. Sometimes the time loss will be enough to end the run, other times there may be back-up-starts to get back on route and minimize damage. Back-up-stats can be found on some levels such as Casino Night, but often you'll have to figure out your own routes. So when learning a section in which you might fall down in, be mindful of how you might continue if you were to make that mistake in a full run.

**Now you're ready to start!**

You can always come back here later to learn more about the game's quirky mechanics as well as advanced tips and things other things for your consideration.

## Game Mechanics

### Spin Dash

The spin dash is used to give sonic a speed boost which also starts him spinning and is used constantly throughout the run. There are few difrent types of spin dash we'll go over that give varius boosts in speed.

First we'll look at the diffrent spin dashes and then we'll look at the diffrent styles players used to execute them.

It's also posible for sonic to hold a spin dash while airborne, such as in the Wing Fortress stage, you can find details covering this further in the individul level guides when they come up.

### The 1 tap

A quick boost to execute, but does not offer much speed.

* Start with Sonic at a stand still
* Press and hold the [down] button
* Tap a jump button
* Release the down button and you'll zoom forwards

### The 3 tap

This offers more speed, not as fast as the 6 tap but sometimes it fills a happy medium between the time to execute the dash and the speed we're looking for.

* Start with Sonic at a stand still
* Press and hold the [down] button
* Tap a jump button 3 times. -You'll need to make sure the previously pushed jump button is released before moving onto the next jump input
* Release the down button and you'll zoom forwards

### The 6 tap

This gives the most speed, it takes slightly longer to execute and is the primary weapon in our speed running arsenal.

* Start with Sonic at a stand still
* Press and hold the [down] button
* Tap a jump button 6 times. -As with the 3 tap you need a gap of 1 frame between button presses. also this means we'll be pushing those jump buttons more than once (details of how are below)
* Release the down button and you'll zoom forwards

## Spin Dash Execution Styles and Tips

### Extra spin dash advice

You can do 4 tap dashes and other combinations if it suits your needs. While doing a 4 tap it's advised to only use 2 of the jump bottons twice

Sonic's speed will go down by 6 subpixels every frame regardless whether you hold the direction he's going or not.

blah blah blah

## Input Lag

Input lag is the basically the time between you pressing the jump button and sonic jumping on screen and can be effected by a whole lot of things. It's really importaint to get this as low as posible and we'll be looking at a few ways to optimise your set up. What's also worth noteing is that throughout these guides you'll be told to jump right here on such and such a pixel. Depending on how much input lag you're experienceing you will want to adjust and make the jump a little early which might take a little trial and error to figure out.

Here are some tips to reduce input lag and up your game. That said many great players play without fully optimied systems just fine. Too much input lag can be a real issue tho.

* Playing on an original Mega Drive/Genesis system [the Mega SG console is another good option for those that want the true 'High Definition' experience.
* Emulators genrally come with input lag, tho on a high tech system useing the proper software and settings you can eliminate this, more details on this below.
* Unless you are playing on an old CRT TV your screen is probably giving you a fair bit of lag, most screens have a 'low latence/gaming' mode. It's worth googleing your screen and how to reduce lag by turning off certain settings. CRT is the best and would probably mean playing on an origenal system.
* Video converters and capture cards can add lag, if you're using a capture card you will want to use a second screen using the pass thru on the capture card.
* Controllers can also be problematic, wired is better than wireless. Some controllers and controller adapters give major lag. New controllers can be updated and thats been known to help with lag.

## Making the Swith to Console

Great choice! Consoles are reletivly cheap to get hold of, but you have to also consider the cost of connecting the old cables up to a modern screen (or better a old CRT), a capture card to record runs, a rom cart for save states and decent controler. This can be done on a budget, you'll find details of what you'll need [Here] including options, what to ovoid, priceing, and where you can order them from today.

## Rolling vs Running

This will go over all the diffrences ect blah blah blah

## Play the Correct Verson of the Game

You should play using either the USA revision 0 version of the game, or prefrably the USA revision 2 version (which is a compelation cart) it includes some changes so you cant fall off the plane and helps with glitches [EDIT?]

## Emulator Optimisation

This is a big and important subject, and therefore has its own page [Here]. If you're emulating without using frame run ahead then you're speedrunning with your shoes tied.

## Jumping

Sonic has 13 different jump heights. Ranging from pressing the jump button for 1 frame up to 13+ frames (full jump). If you jump while spining you wont be able to control sonics movement in the air.

## Glitches

Every glitch explained including their posiblities and limits

## Avoid European Consoles

European systems run sonic slower than their american and japanese counsons. While this does not actually effect the in game time or most speedrunning leader boards, you wanna go fast right? I'd advise you avoid the european versions of the game.

## Sonic Communities

This is going to be a list of communities over the web, discord, twitch ect.