Sonic Heroes FAQ

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Sonic Heroes FAQ
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- Where can I find more information about the tricks and glitches?
Here's the wiki: http://sonicheroesspeedruns.wikia.com/wiki/Tricks_%26_Glitches
Most of the tricks and glitches are explained there. If you don't know the name of the glitch or have further questions, just ask.

- What is Super Hard Mode?
Super Hard Mode is a mode in the game that can be unlocked by getting all 141 A Ranks. It is Team Sonic exclusive and features difficult versions of all the stages. There are no bosses in this mode.

- What just happened in Bingo Highway? (Team Sonic/Dark/Super Hard Mode)
A lot of AI manipulation basically. I first throw my teammates off the stage and prevent the flight character from respawning so he gets stored outside of draw distance untill they can return. I then manipulate their position while bouncing on the spring for about 30 seconds, manipulate their position further while on solid ground, get back on the table so I can switch to flight which puts me at the flight character's position and make my way to the end of the level from there. For a more indepth explanation, watch this tutorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAp5S1WQM0c

- How did you blast through the air in flight formation?
Bop Boosting is a trick that can send me through the air at a ridiculously high speed, making me skip significant parts of certain stages. It is activated by getting the speed character knocked out of the flight formation totem right as the power character lands on the ground (the power character must not be knocked down himself). This will make the game think the speed character is still part of the totem and he will be tracking the movement of the flight character. When you start a flight in this state you will get pulled towards the speed character at a high velocity, this is because the game thinks the totem is complete, so the power character is programmed to grab onto the speed character. However, if you put a wall in between the flight and the speed character you'll get pushed away at the same velocity instead. The direction is always perpendicular from the wall, the speed is determined by the distance between the speed character and the wall and the effect lasts for 3 seconds starting when the speed character gets hit out of the totem.

- Is... is Big/Vector flying through the air?!
Yes, yes he is. It's a trick called Power Formation Flying that abuses the altered gravity that's keeping you on slopes/loops, the buffer period untill your gravity normalizes, the fact that certain actions like ground pounds reset this buffer period and the ability to chain these ground pounds together by alternating them with instantly cancelled glides (gliding while holding the action button). If you want to try it out yourself I suggest looking up DsS' tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6zRPpQdVbY

- You just said your PB is a lot lower time than the splits, what's up with that?
I was probably talking about Game Time. We track records in Sonic Heroes using the time displayed on the file instead of real time to eliminate loading time differences between versions as a factor. The file timer only tracks things that make use of in-game assets like gameplay, unskippable cutscenes and score screens. Loading screens, credits and the skippable cinematic cutscenes do not count towards the final time. An added benefit to this is that my bad habit of not skipping cutscenes right away doesn't matter anymore. This does not apply to Super Hard Mode or All A Ranks, those are tricked with real time.

- What version are you playing and why?
I'm playing the Gamecube version, because alongside the Xbox version it is the best running version in terms of stability and glitchiness of the game mechanics. For Super Hard Mode I use the PAL60 version specifically as it runs 20% faster. More info below.

- What's wrong with the other versions?
The Playstation 2 version of the game is extremely unstable. It has framerate issues, sound issues, the score screens load slowly and the game mechanics are a lot more glitchy (and not in the good way) This is most likely due to the game engine being a single file that is larger than the PS2 can handle. The playstation 3 version on European and Japanese PSN is bad emulation of the PS2 version and doesn't really fix these issues. TL;DR they're a bad port and a bad emulation of a bad port respectively.

The PC version is so different we've decided to make it a different category alltogether. After comparing it to the available prototype builds, signs point towards it being a les finished build of the game than the console versions. This results in various game mechanics as well as the AI being significantly different (read: unpolished) making both the game and the speedrun feel very different. Prime examples are being unable to stun speed characters making team battles significantly harder, Bop Boost being impossible for this same reason and an exclusive glitch called the Ultra Glide that allows you to skip big chunks of a good number of levels.

- Have you done any runs of the PC version?
I've done a few individual level runs on my youtube channel, but I have never done serious full story runs and odds are I never will. The version differences and the Ultra Glide glitch make gameplay feel a lot less smooth compared to the console versions and the Ultra Glide glitch is pretty damn jank, so this is not something I have an interest in doing.

- Any other version differences of interest?
The biggest thing I can think of is PAL60 running at 120% speed. Since the file timer is also affected by this it doesn't bring any issues to the table and it's purely personal preference for the 4 teams. If anything it makes the game harder since you have less time to react. Since All A Ranks is tracked by real time, PAL60 is faster for that category. Other than that there's some loading time as well as framerate differences between versions and regions and there's the odd exclusive glitch that make little difference in full story runs, so nothing major.