SA1 is a pretty badly made game. Which is what makes it so great for speed running. And since the story's are pretty stupid short, that's even better. I don't really need to go into much detail about any of the strats I pulled off in this run, as many of them are just cool hammer vaults, basic wall clips and RNG related shenanigans. It's Sonic Adventure. I'm pretty sure everybody knows how busted this game is by now, so I'll leave it at that.

-Twinkle Park - 0:54.88-
-Hot Shelter - 2:53.61-
-Final Egg -1:30.61-
-Zero -0:21.08-

Introduction:

Ok, so this actually started quite a while back when there was a discussion about the state of SDA as well as leaderboards and stuff. I kept hearing about how SDA times are "old" and how the strats are "obsolete" is. There's just one thing about that argument...

If runs are outdated...then perhaps you should update them.

Seriously, why would you complain about something being old and then not do anything about it? I dunno, I guess I'm getting off track here. The point is I set out to start updating these so called "obsolete" runs and what better to start than with Sonic Adventure, one of the first speed games I've ever done!

At this point in time, there are still runs from 2005-2006 up on the site, and since then the community has found many improvements as well as gotten a lot more support over the past few years, I guess I felt it was about time more of these runs got updated to reflect that. I decided to go with Gamma's story because most of the tricks seem to be the most straightforward out of all the stories, at least for me.

With that out of the way, let's get started!

Stages:

Final Egg

I could maybe save half a second from optimized movement. Other than that, this was pretty much spot on. Getting a 2:56:XX on the E-101 fight requires that I shoot almost all my shots frame-perfectly, So I'm amazed that I got a 2:56:03 in a single-segment run though.

Emerald Coast

I can probably save a second by jumping off the poles faster. The only problem is that the poles are not necessarily all flat. This can cause you to have your jump eaten. The stage itself went fine; nothing here to really talk about.

Hot Shelter

The clip into Hot Shelter was a little slow because I jumped too high onto the ledge. You're supposed to do a low jump onto the platform in order to do a mode change. The mode change makes your hitbox smaller, allowing you to fit into the little corner and jump OOB into the stage. This is probably where you can save the most time since I had to readjust. The stage itself went great though. I got the first clip instantly and the second clip up the ceiling was not too bad either. When on the ceiling, you can go to the right instead of the left to save some time, but it is much riskier and overall not very consistent because there is a chance the game can soft lock and kill your run. So I don't go for it.

Red Mountain

This stage was practically perfect. The clip was fast and E-104 didn't decide to jump or get out of my line of sight. Overall, I got no qualms here.

Windy Valley

So you can actually jump off the little ledge before hovering to the spring. The only thing is that the same problem with the poles in Emerald Coast in that the ledge can eat your inputs due to the uneven geometry of the grass patch. So I try to avoid it altogether. After that, it's just as simple as hitting the spring and flying to E-103.

Beta mk.ii

The shot that you see me do at the beginning of the fight is a trick that can happen because Gamma falls onto the area facing the boss. By shooting on a specific frame, you can skip the first hit of the fight and save around 11 seconds. Usually, you just mash though and hope for the best. :P

I got a decent pattern here. I could possibly save time with better RNG, but the boss shooting another round of missiles doesn't cost much time. I also don't jump over the boss to shoot him on the final hit as sometimes you can get hit by the oncoming missiles and not even shoot him, killing the run.

Final Thoughts & Special Thanks:

I'll just say this right now. I was not expecting to get a run that's like this for a long time. I've been running SADX for around 4 years and seeing all that has happened; I never thought I could get a run that would at the very least be decent. My original goal was around 13:30, but that was completely demolished when I got the early shot on Beta mk.ii. The final time should be around 13:18 SDA Timing.

I want to first give special thanks to the entire SADX Community. Over the past few years they have pushed this game to absolutely insane limits and it's always great to see more people tackle this game. Big shout outs to cjbqulix for his WR run of the game on PC. His run showed me a lot of new tricks that I've never seen before in Gamma's story. However, since this is GameCube were talking about here, I couldn't really compare my times to his due to loading differences and different framerates. Still, it was a great resource and my time definitely wouldn't have gone down without it

I'd like to give a big shoutout to itsPersonnal for his 14:27 and theultimategamer95 for his 13:35. Unlike cjb's time, these were times off the GameCube version that I used as reference for a good time. They helped me push my time further and further down and really inspired me to optimize my playing.

I'd also like to give a shoutout to all my stream viewers, especially Drakodan and electra13x7777, for continuously showing your support throughout all my attempts. You guys were awesome and it was great to finally be able to record attempts and stream without having my laptop lag.

And of course, I can't thank enough all of the folks at SDA for giving me the drive to become a better player. If there's one thing this run has taught me, it's patience...and a whole lot of "OH NO".

This run is improvable, but I don't expect to be getting another run like this in a long time.

¡Gracias por viendo y espero que disfrutas!

Well, here is the much needed speedrun improvement that this game needed. Thanks go especially to NintenDan for telling me to do this and pointing my attention to this site; I wouldn't have done it without him and would have sticked to seperate level competition elsewhere. Also thanks to nate for taking the time to rip this for everyone to see it, as he does for so many other runs.

This speedrun is probably my 15th attempt. It went quite well compared to previous ones and despise a few deaths, I couldn't quite do better so I decided this would be the one.

Chaos 0 was done in 27 seconds, I couldn't find what exactly triggers him to jump off the pole earlier at the time, so I went with that. Kinda unfortunate, because I know how to get 18 seconds and lower now.

My first early death was at the beginning of Emerald Coast, wasting about 6 seconds. Except that, the stage went alright, with just a few minor flaws.

Egg Hornet and Windy Valley went well.

I didn't quite get enough rings in the Casinopolis pinball machine, so I had to get some from the slot machines at the end, the run could also have been optimized to allow a 10 seconds improvement at the least.

Ice Cap was good, I passed through the wooden bridge on first try with no restart, but unfortunately, I didn't manage to do the huge snowboard jump by jumping from one ramp at a certain speed (allowing to get all the way to the other end in a few seconds).

Chaos 4 decided to do his attack where he splits into balls, wasting 9 seconds.

Sky Deck Act 1 was very notable because of my high score ranging in the 15 thousands. I had never seen such a high score for it anywhere before.

Twinkle Park, Speed Highway and Red Mountain went really well, especially Speed Highway (sub 1:10!). Red Mountain only had a very minor death at the very beginning.

Sky Deck is the only level that really prevented this run from being absolutely spectacular. I died at 29 seconds and had to restart at the beginning. Then, when doing a long jump, I accidently moved the camera around so I missed where I was aiming for, having to go back up and to the left to reach my shortcut. I also didn't manage to spindash jump directly from a small ramp to the capsule at the end, not even to the platform where the capsule was, so I had to improvise. It is notable that I didn't manage to land on the capsule on any of my speedrun attempts.

Lost World and Final Egg were acceptable. I intentionally killed myself twice in Final Egg to go to farther points faster. The second death could have been avoided by doing a light speed attack, but I forgot, and Sonic would have stayed frozen there until the elevator stopped anyway.

To finish, Egg Viper went well, with just one minor flaw.

When enough new shortcuts get found (and it will happen, they just never stop on coming!!), I might try speedrunning this game again, maybe on DVD this time. ;D

OH NO!

Introduction:

Well, this is unexpected. I noticed that there was never a run for Knuckles story on the SDA page…And with good reason. This category is literally straight up random from the emerald pieces, boss patterns, and enemy placements. Even certain switches that I have to get can either not spawn or clip through the floor. So I can understand why there hasn’t been a submission for this yet.

There have been several discussions on the forums about routing this story, but people have usually quit after not achieving either their desired goals or are put off by the massive RNG needed to be taken into account. Years later, Knuckles story has now had several routes and tricks found by the SADX community. So I might as well at least bring some of these to light for you all today!

Knuckles is interesting in that almost the entire run is dependent on RNG that you have to take into account on each stage. The emerald piece locations are determined by what frame you enter the stage. So if I enter the stage at a somewhat later time, there is a chance that I could gain time in the stage due to good locations. On the other hand, entering the stage fast could cause the run to be over due to bad locations. Because of this, obtaining an optimal time for every stage is almost impossible. Instead, there is a set route that lets me go over set areas the emerald pieces usually appear in. If you see me going to specific places where there’s no emerald pieces, that’s mostly due to the route that I take.

Stages:

Speed Highway

I had some really good luck here. I misread where the second emerald piece was, but it was only a second or so worth of mistakes. I go to the top piece before the last because it is generally faster to go from top to bottom with Knuckles as he tends to fall down faster than he climbs up.

Casinopolis

Again I had really good luck here. I had some trouble getting into the shoe for the first piece, but the other two pieces were really good. Nothing else to say here.

Chaos 2

The basic strategy here is to hit Chaos with a glide, jump away and to do a single hop before gliding into him to attack him again. By jumping, Chaos will instantly rise back up without going into ball form. If I’m too close, then I could get stuck in his hitbox and won’t be able to hurt him. Ideally, you want to aim for a low-11/mid-10, so the fact that I got 11.10 is generally good.

Red Mountain

After the first emerald piece, you’ll see me take a detour behind the mountain. This is only a minor detour for safety as sometimes runs have ended due to an emerald piece being back there. I mistook where the last piece was but luckily caught it before I lost a substantial amount of time. ~5 seconds could probably be saved here.

Chaos 4

Chaos 4 is probably the worst boss to ever deal with in a run if you don’t know how to manipulate him.

Every 3 times he moves, he will either do an attack or rise up from the water. If he does an attack, then he will move again 3 more times before he will rise out of the water. The only exception to this is the last hit where he will attack 3 times between movements before rising up. The attack that Chaos 4 does depends on what angle you are facing him as well as how far you are from him.

A time that you should usually get is ~1:31, so 1:32.48 is alright.

Lost World

I lost a few seconds from not getting the clip right away. Other than that, this stage was fairly solid.

Sky Deck

I glide straight ahead after pulling the lever for safety as sometimes I find an emerald piece near the ceiling. Thankfully, I had some fairly decent pieces.

Chaos 6

Alright! This boss is simple. Just grab the capsules and throw them at Chaos. After the second capsule is thrown, I hit the third capsule before I do another hit. This is because once I hit Chaos, the capsule will fly straight up and I won’t be able to grab it in time. This also goes for the third capsule.

Sometimes, the capsule will go through Chaos or will explode without freezing him when you throw it. So I was being a little cautious during this fight. Other than that, 32.45 is not bad.

Final Thoughts & Special Thanks:

Now if you thought that I was surprised by having a time for Gamma, this run is in a whole new level if surprises. For as long as I could remember running this game, I thought that this story was completely off limits in terms of obtaining a good time. And yet here I am submitting a run of this story to SDA. I just hope that it’s of an acceptable quality for you guys. ;)

Over the course of doing attempts, I realized that this run is less about being able to obtain a great time and became more of a battle with my patience as I try not to go insane from having to deal with awful RNG. Is this run improvable? Yes, definitely. But if it’s for just a few seconds from a 14 minute run, I do not believe it’s really worth it. Unless there are significant changes that occur for this category, I am willing to settle for this 14:38.

I’d first like to give a huge shoutout to the entire SADX community. These guys have put a lot of effort into finding tricks and strategies for this category as well as making them consistent enough to make this run at least somewhat manageable. Gpro’s and THC’s runs on PC were especially useful as they helped how me optimal routes and strategies for stages that I used in this run.

I’d also like to give a shoutout to the GameCube runners theultimategamer95 for his 19:59 and Sonicspeedrunner for his 15:28. These runs helped me gauge for a time to aim for since I was also doing this run on GameCube. Once I beat the 19:59, the 15:28 helped me set a much more optimal goal to shoot for. I want to say that without that run, I would have stopped after ~15:30. These runs helped me push much harder than I originally intended and I am incredibly thankful.

And finally, I would like to give a big special thanks to all of my stream viewers and friends that stuck through my pain for this run. You guys are truly very supportive and I couldn’t have gone through with this without you support.

And that’s about it! This is perhaps the last time you’ll see me tackle a run of SADX for a while. So with everything else being said, Thank you guys for taking the time to look at this run and the comments and I hope you enjoy!

OH NO!

♪IT’S A WINDY AND SUNNY DAY ♪

And here we are again, back with some more SADX! This time it’s an improvement to the current Big run by I would guess to be ~1:08. This run was deceptively more difficult than I thought. While it doesn’t have as much randomness as Knuckles Story it more than makes up for it with the unwieldy nature of Big’s lure. Because Froggy has limited visibility when it comes to recognizing the lure, a lot of times I ended up resetting even before I finish Twinkle Park. Other than that there is not really much to talk about for this run, so let’s jump right in!

Stages:

Twinkle Park

There isn’t anything too radically different that I do when compared to what Mad Andy does here. I throw my lure at the same spot as him; however I slightly angle my throw to the left rather than to the right. This puts the lure much more directly into Froggy’s sights, making him spot me much quicker. From there I utilize the B button when reeling in as despite it not being as powerful as the A button, it still slowly reels Froggy in. Doing it this way also has another significant advantage in that it doesn’t cause the bar to the right to fill up nearly as fast, thus allowing me to avoid having to stop reeling for a split second.

If you press Y when you catch Froggy, you can skip the little animation of the grams floating to the Weight. It’s a small time save, but it adds up.

Ice Cap

Breaking the hole in the ice with the rock is somewhat slower than breaking it with Big’s weight, however you avoid having to get out of the water and back onto the ice. It helps when casting the lure as you are guaranteed to catch Froggy in a good position. I also found throwing from the left side to be a little bit more consistent when compared to throwing on the right. It probably isn’t faster, but this stage is kind of inconsistent so I believe it was for the best.

Emerald Coast

Instead of throwing from the center of the pond area and moving the lure to the right, I get much closer to the lighthouse and throw my lure from the right. Froggy ends up catching my lure in roughly the same spot, but because I am slightly further it takes less time for me to reel him in.

Hot Shelter

The only piece of tech that is really noteworthy is the jump off the raft, which from what I have heard is apparently a 2-frame window trick? That sounds incredibly wrong but it’s a fairly tight jump to make in general as missing it forces you to use the ladder to climb out of the water, wasting a few seconds. This combined with some better speed management allowed me to shave some seconds on my way to the switch.

I throw MUCH close to Froggy’s general area as the water is rising from hitting the switch, allowing me to catch him almost immediately. Because I was much closer to him when casting my lure, I also reeled him in much sooner.

All in all, I am probably the most happy with this stage in the run.

Chaos 6

This is the one bit of the run that I was not too happy with, hence my hesitance to submit it. This boss is extremely simple; just get Big to him and reel out Froggy. The problem is that there is a chance of Chaos leaping up into the air and doing a smash attack along the ground. This tends to happen less if you go at him in an angle, which is what I do here. Unfortunately that didn’t stop him from jumping twice in the air, losing me 10 seconds.

Final Thoughts & Special Thanks:

Admittedly this run ended up being far more volatile than I thought it would be. Granted, there have been some more consistent setups to throw the lure, but that didn’t stop the RNG nightmare from ensuing when doing attempts. There is a slight chance that Froggy will spawn in a completely different location, messing up the run and forcing me to reset. Granted, the amount of runs I’ve done for Big is far lower than I expected for one that involves unpredictability and is somewhat lower than what I’ve done for the other stories. That mainly is due to what I suppose I’ll say as a much less “involved” run. There isn’t really much to the run in terms of difficult tricks or precise strategies. It’s mainly “go to this spot, wiggle the stick around, and hope for the best.” Regardless, it was certainly a nice change of pace to say the least.

Of course I probably wouldn’t have done this without the plethora of knowledge for strategies and other tidbits with regards to mitigating RNG found by the SADX community at large. Mainly Gpro and JerKro for their persistence with this category and doing many runs on PC. Also, shout outs to Sonicspeedrunner for his 9:30 that I used to compare with. It was definitely helpful when it came to motivation as I don’t think I would have pushed for a run this low without it. Another shout out goes to Mad Andy for his run that is still on the site as of this submission. I don’t think this run would have come to fruition without his run still being up. Seeing that run still on the site finally motivated me to run this category myself and boy was it an interesting experience.

Finally, I would like to thank the folks that tuned in to watch my stream as well as SDA in general. Thank you guys for supporting me and continuing to make the speedrunning scene an inviting place for me to meet new people and also improve myself as a person.

That about does it! This run clocks in at roughly 9:20 from my end. I am glad to be able to do this run and share it with you guys. Not sure what run I plan to do next, but hopefully it can bring upon more exciting and unique adventures. Till then, I’ll see you guys around!