Knuckles in Sonic 2 FAQ

 Knuckles in Sonic 2 FAQ

Q: What are you playing on, it is emulator?
A: Yeah. I play much better on a keyboard, so emulator is the go for me. Luckily because game time is used for this game emulator makes no difference.

Q: Why are you showing the whole emulator?
A: As per the new rules for this game, this is required for emulator runs, to prevent cheating (and is also why my times for Sonic/Knuckles aren't on speedrun.com) They read: "For runs using emulators the entire screen of the emulator used must be captured and the game must be visibly hard resetted before a run. Any use of a savestate after boot voids the run." [Note that this does not apply to every video game, it's a rule in place specifically for the classic sonic series eg S1, S2, S3K, SCD]

Q: Why do you use ingame time and not real time?
A: Because http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaMGf1V3MMM

Q: What is the timer you are using?
A: It is the In-Game timer function of Livesplit. I enter all the times manually at the end of each level, and it produces the splits.

Q: What are the main differences between Sonic and Knuckles?
A: Knuckles has a smaller jump, doesn't have an aerial speedcap, and can glide. He also doesn't have Tails following him, making the notable Metro 3 level wrap impossible, but several other tricks are possible (Casino Night 2 level wrap is the biggest one). For reference, not a single stage plays exactly the same as Sonic and Knuckles (they even get different times on Sky Chase!), but some are quite similar.

Q: So who is faster? Knuckles or Sonic?
A: No level is the same, but overall it's very close. If you got perfect runs of both, Knuckles would be faster, but he has a lot of harder tricks than Sonic does, so it makes sense his time would be or a slightly lower standard, so the times should be about equal. Atm however Sonic's time (15:08) is lower than Knuckles' (15:34). If you are just talking about highest top speed in the levels, they both run at the same speed.

Q: Why do you pause before the boss in Aquatic Ruin 2?
A: It loads the boss faster. By pausing before the boss, it loads as soon as the camera is in position with the boss arena, whereas normally it takes about a second and a half to start. It's not to buffer any input, or to time anything, it's just abusing a quirky mechanic in that specific boss.

Q: Ok…you just skipped the whole level in Casino Night 2/Oil Ocean 2/Metro 2, what was that?
A: That was a level wrap. Basically you go really fast towards the left side of the level and skip past the 0 X co-ordinate, and get a negative position. So then the camera takes a while to figure out where it thinks I really am, and decides I'm at the end of the level

Q: Why aren't you entering splits?
A: I can't be bothered until I get out of Chemical Plant. They'll show up after that, all accurate.

Q: What is the World Record?
A: The WR is 15:25 (by me) - see: my splits

Q: Are there glitches in this run?
A: Yes, several.