Sonic 2 & Knuckles 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 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: 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: What just happened in Wing Fortress?!
A: That is called Slope Glitch, and is in many levels in the classic Sonic games too. Basically by being on a sprite and then not being on it in a way the game doesn't expect (eg you don't jump off, it breaks by computer Tails for example), you gain the Slope Glitch properties. In this case, it is activated by spindashing off the booster at a specific time. What it does is, keeps the same angle of the last slope you touched (as if you were in space with no gravity), which allows you to beat the boss quicker and enter the cutscene faster

Q: What is the World Record?
A: The WR is 15:34 (by me) - my splits were only made a few days ago to compare against as I derust, but I could beat that time with a really solid playthrough now.

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