Sonic Adventure 2 Battle: 180 Emblem Gamecube Speedrun FAQ

-----------
GENERAL FAQ
-----------

Q: What is this?
A: Welcome to my 400 Follower Appreciation stream! It's a big thanks to those who helped me get this far. I held a poll on Twitter to see what category everyone wanted to see me run and this is what was chosen by a significant landslide.

Q: What is this category?
A: I'm running a variant of the 180 Emblems category for Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. This game measures a level of completion based on "Emblems". This includes completion of levels, completion of Stories, Missions within each level, Getting A-Ranks on those Missions, Karate and Racing with Chao, Boss Rushes, and Kart Racing. There are 180 emblems total. We gotta get em all. It will take a lot of time and most of my sanity.

Q: Missions?
A: Stages in this game have 5 Missions each and usually fall into the same trend. The 1st Mission is simply complete the stage and is encountered during the Story. Mission 2 involves collecting 100 Rings. Mission 3 is finding a lost Chao. Mission 4 is completing the stage without checkpoints and within a time limit. Mission 5 is completing a harder version of the stage.

Q: A-Ranks?
A: At the end of the stage, you are given a Rank on how well you did. This rank is determined by either how good your score is (Missions 1, 4, & 5) or just based on completion time (Missions 2 & 3). There are also a couple of instances of Kart Stages which are ranked only based on the completion time. The scores and times needed for A-Rank are displayed on my splits. If there is not score or time on the split, then that particular split does not have a Rank requirement.

Q: Chao?
A: They're creatures that are adorable. We find them as Mission objectives but we can also raise our own. They have stats. You will see a lot of them later. A LOT. Plus one that looks like Tails.

Q: Isn't PC better than Gamecube? Even the Wii should be better, right?
A: Technically it is faster, but PC doesn't have access to this route. It includes playing Phantasy Star Online to unlock a special Tails Chao that has higher base stats than you can typically get in a speedrun. I'm running on the Gamecube itself instead of the Wii because the loads are actually slightly faster and it takes less time to boot up games and swap discs, which this run will require.

Q: How much slower are the loads on Gamecube vs. the PC version of the game?
A: It depends on the condition of the disc, system, and the power of the PC across the board here, but it's estimated that I lose ~3.7 seconds per loading screen due to being on Gamecube. If I were on Wii, this would probably be closer to a full 4 seconds.

Q: What is Routing?
A: Taking a route that most efficiently gets all of the emblems fast.

Q: What is your route?
A: Dark & Hero Stories -> most Mission Emblems -> Phantasy Star Online -> LOTS of Tails Chao -> Last Story -> Cannon's Core and Route 101 Emblems -> Kart Racing -> Boss Rush

Q: Why do you do Dark story before Hero story?
A: The beginning of Dark Story is much less reliable than the beginning of Hero Story (Sand Ocean in particular), so I prefer to get that out of the way sooner.

Q: How did you go straight into Knuckles' section of Cannon's Core Mission 3?
A: In the run you complete Cannon's Core Mission 2 as Rouge, however the game still has it flagged to begin the next section of Cannon's Core (in this case Knuckles) when a certain trigger is activated, which can be done from going to the chao lobby, or completing a driving stage, hence the interlacing of Route 101 during Cannon's Core. This skips Tails', Eggman's, and Rouge's sections of Cannon's Core M3, saving roughly 2 and a half minutes.

Q: Why aren't Emblems being collected?
A: A trick called Emblem Skip Glitch (ESG) was activated which allows me to skip the majority of the Emblem Cutscenes. Here's a detailed description of how it works https://pastebin.com/PmwPLYjs. It is triggered before the run starts. The SA2 community does not consider the set-up as part of the run as the run still starts from a new file and nothing else has been changed (other than the route)

Q: You keep mentioning this "Phantasy Star Online". What is it and why can't you spell "Fantasy"?
A: It's an old MMORPG that can also be played offline in single player. It lets us unlock the afrementioned Tails Chao, which is the star of the run. They can't spell Fantasy, I guess?

Q: How can I learn more about this category?
A: There are a few runners who have put a lot of time into routing and learning how to improve the times on this category as well as the game in general. You'll find that they're pretty awesome and love to see more runners getting into this game. For this run alone, I ended up consulting with and/or referencing work from Talon2461, TommyeAsY, piner, Baylee, IDGeek121 & EdwardBottle.

Q: Why are you doing this to yourself?
A: Honestly, this was a route developed by Baylee, Piner, and EdwardBottle before the Emblem Skip Glitch was discovered on the PC version, thus rendering this route obsolete before a run could ever be completed on stream/recorded on video. It's personally important to me that this route variant gets the documentation that it deserves for being as unique and ludicrous as it is. This will also be (for a while at least) my final serious run as an SA2 Speedrunner after nearly 7 years of running the game. I still plan on being a part of the community as a resource to newer runners, a friendly face, a logical router, and a passionate commentator for the game. You'll probably also see me run the occasional gimmick category that has no leaderboard for it or something as I do love this game, I just need a break for a long while. Will I ever come back? Sure, it's probably not out of the cards! I do want to actually pursue 171 Emblems when I'm ready to do so again. In the meantime, my plans are to turn my focus onto improving my time in Sonic 3D Blast 100%, learning PSO Episode 1 any% Glitched, and actually routing out Klonoa Wii All Visions. Otherwise I want to be able to branch out into more variety content, which is what I was doing when I first started streaming. Gotta do what makes me happy, right?

---------
STRAT FAQ
---------

Q: What is a "strat"?
A: Speedrunners do things fast. A "Strat" is an abbreviation for saying "strategy", "speedrun tech", etc.

ACTION STAGE STRATS:
With Sonic & Shadow I'll often be spindash chaining, which is launching spindashes consecutively. Under most circumstances this is faster than running or only perfmorming one spindash. When going downhills, it's faster to just do one lengthy spindash.

You'll also occasionally see me Pause in the middle of a jump. Because this game is coded very well, it lets me exchange potential jump height for extended lateral distance.

With Sonic, I'll also be using what's called a Super Bounce. When moving fast and using the Bounce attack and colliding with a wall, it converts my lateral momentum into vertical momentum. Basically, Move Fast and bounce into wall make Sonic go up moar.

You'll also see, especially for the Hero Egg Golem boss, me using Sonic's Ancient Light. You typically don't see this in speedruns and is technically not optimal but I have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome so it's just much easier on my wrists to play the boss this way.

MECH STAGE STRATS:
With Tails and Eggman I will typically be doing short hops in conjunction with my turns. This is because the mechs lose a lot of speed on sharp turns when running for some reason. The wider the arc of the turn, the less momentum I potentially lose.

Once I have the Hover upgrades for the characters, I'll be using what we call a Jump Hover. This just means I'm activating the Hover while still ascending from the jump (Jump and Hover are both using the A-Button), which adds to the momentum to give a higher jump. Occasionally I'll be pausing during this to try and trick the game into thinking the A-Button inputs are even closer together.

When I'm trying to quickly increase my score in a stage, you'll see the character targeting then whistling for some weird reason. It's intentional. It just lets me trick the game into giving me a score multiplier for killing things without actually killing the things.

TREASURE STAGE STRATS:
These stages are very different in that they're effectively Easter Egg hunts for 3 shiney jewel pieces (or keys). The stages give hint monitors that can tell up to 3 hints per piece. My goal is to have the first hint of each piece memorized so that I can find each piece as fast as possible.

Since I'm on the Gamecube version, I'll have less Hint Monitors in each stage. This is a big advantage for PC but since the Tails Chao is so awesome I'll take a hit to my sanity for this one.


------------------------
PHANTASY STAR ONLINE FAQ
------------------------

This is where the run differs heavily from the usual Sonic Adventure 2 180 Emblem speedrun. After Meteor Herd Mission 5, I'll be swapping games to Phantasy Star Online for the sole purpose of unlocking the Tails Chao. Because this is a speedrun and I must start with a new file, that's what we'll be doing with this game, just like I did with SA2. Since this is an RPG and not an Action Platformer, I will be creating a new character as well. This character is specifically a Female Newman Force. Forces are faster to complete the required missions in-game because they have better AOE clearing in the forms of the magic spells Zonde and Barta. You'll see me customize the action menu in such a way that I leave an inactive button in the R+A slot so that I can mash R+A through mandatory dialogue. For this segment of the run I will only be playing these four missions in this order:

-Battle Training-
-Claiming a Stake-
-Magnitude of Metal-
-The Fake in Yellow-

Note that after I complete the main objective of The Fake in Yellow, I must return to the forest BEFORE turning in the mission, and stare at the waterfall until a Chao appears. This chao unlocks the ability to download a Tiny Chao Garden to my connected Game Boy Advance, complete with the star of the run: a Tails Chao with A grades and 250 points in every stat at level 1. This is the Chao I will be using for this run, as it saves a fair bit of time over using one of the other naturally generated Chao from the garden and black market.


--------
CHAO FAQ
--------

Chao are the pets of the game. They're adorable. They have 9 Emblems that need to be collected and we will be commiting hours of this run to them. We're going to be unlocking access to the Chao Garden by getting a special Key in Eternal Engine.

Unlike the typical 180 Emblem Run, this uses a special Tails Chao imported from Phantasy Star Online. This Chao has A-Rank stats across the board, and 250 starting points in each stat even at level 1, which makes it a fair bit superior to the PC Version of this run's Chao stats of a D in Swim, C in Fly, A in Run, B in Power and E in Stamina. Once we have this Tails Chao we will be feeding it animals to rank up its stats until the Chao is at max level. Don't dwell too much on the "feeding it animals" part.

Once they're done consuming the souls of the animals (again, don't dwell on that) then they're off to beat the crap out of other Chao in Karate competitions as well as Run, Climb, Push, Swim, and Fly faster than the competition in Races.

The following portion of this Chao FAQ was mostly taken from Talon2461's Chao FAQ he uses for his 180 Emblem runs with his permission! Cheers to him for allowing me to save myself the typing!

The plan is to raise 3 chao. 1 Tails Chao to compete in all the races, 1 Hero Chao and 1 Dark chao. The Tails Chao I plan to max/get close to max on all the stats. I do this by using the animal glitch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9URM1l6wMnw) to re-use an animal as many times as I want to. I use Tails as the character for this as he's the easiest to control within the garden.

The animals I use are Condors, followed by Skeleton dogs, followed by Half-Fishes. The combination of these 3 animals are both readily available in stages (Eternal Engine, Pumpkin Hill and Green Forest respectively) and raise the stats to 99 with the least amount of animal uses. I use 129 condors, 269 Skeleton dogs and then 162 half fishes (560 total). Condors are first as it is the only one out of the 3 that reduces a stat (Run). Skeleton dogs are next as I can tell when I've given exactly 269 of them via the fly stat (as Half-Fishes don't give any fly). I don't raise any stamina levels for the Tails Chao as it is not needed and takes way too long to level it up with fruit.

Evolution is a hidden stat that varies from 0 to 1 and increases by 1/60th every 2:30 minutes. The only way to influence this stat is by feeding a Chao. Each bite that a Chao takes from a piece of fruit increases this stat by 1/200th. So the main aim is to feed the Hero and Dark Chao as much as possible while maxing out the Tails Chao. Fruits on the tree take ~ 7 minutes to grow after the previous fruit is shaken off. Grinding while trying to feed doesn't work as things get way too hectic and I end up losing time overall. So the plan is to have "Feeding sessions" where every 7 minutes, I just feed the other two chao with all 9 fully grown fruit in the garden. Doing this 8 times within the hour should cause the chao to evolve. Leaving the garden at any point stops this natural increase in evolution stat, so things like going to the black market to buy fruit will just waste time.

Super Karate requires some luck in damage ranges from the last two Chao, as well as luck on whether my Chao kicks or punches. (Kicks are faster, but do less damage, however since I have an A in run, one kick at the start allows me to ring out much easier). It is essential that my swim and power ~ 90 otherwise I start to lose time due to longer battles and I run the risk of dying. Though, thanks to the superior overall stats that using the Tails chao over a PC 180 Chao has, these risks are greatly reduced, and this section of the run is ultimately much faster and safer than what you'll find in a run done on PC. This is one of the major reasons I went out of my way to play Phantasy Star Online.

For races. Run stat is by far the most important (~12 seconds loss for every level of run lower than 99) follwed by Swim (~4 seconds) Fly (~3 seconds) and Power (~1.5 seconds). So run is essential to reach 99. Swim is also important for both Karate and Races, but I can afford to let a few levels slide. Power reaches 99 before the others so not much I can influence there and Fly is the easiest to raise due to condors giving a massive amount, but is arguably the least important out of the 4. So usually you'll see me drop a few levels of swim or fly depending on how the evolution goes. Stamina boosting is fastest while flying by quite a large margin.

Finally, once one Chao starts to evolve into a Hero Chao, I abuse the other Chao to make him dark (much faster than switching out characters and petting) and then wait for it to evolve. This is done because I need to unlock the Hero and Dark races to be able to obtain their emblems, otherwise this can't possibly be a 180 Emblem run!