How to M-speed in Sonic Unleashed and Generations.

Roman gives a visual example on what speed Sonic needs to be walking at to perform the M-speed glitch.  Have fun with it.  Some people have found it to be easier in Unleashed, and if you must know, it works for any version of Generations - even the 3DS version!

Is glitching automatically = cheating?

Using glitches is not cheating because it doesn’t give any advantage over the competition. Since it’s still within the framework of the game, anyone with the skill and knowledge can perform them. -SigmaAlpha via TSSZ

A lot of people tend to think that using glitches is "cheating."  To some extent, glitches can be used to cheat.  We see it a lot on the leaderboards of certain games and Sonic games are no exception (Ep1, Ep2, CD, Generations PC, etc.).  Though it will always be based on opinion, there are glitches that either take away the effort in the speed running experience in exchange to make it past the finish line (i.e. in 00:00:00).  Then there are glitches that do the opposite, being that they usually add to the effort for actually completing the stage.  There is still the possibility of error for making it through a section 00:00:50 to 00:05:00 seconds faster because of that glitch.  Basically, you're still playing the game.  Even though this is two ends of glitching where one is simply get the fastest possible time without playing the stage and the other plays the stage to exploit the stage, how far those glitches can go for the sake of shaving off time varies.  Some prefer using a glitch or glitches to conquer small bits of the stage, while others, a large chunk. (Note to reader: performing that glitch in Sonic Unleashed which skips a large chunk of the level makes your game prone to physically breaking within your console.)

Cheating is defined by breaking the rules through deceit.  When it comes to speed running... are there any rules?  Is there any form of deception being used?  First of all, if we are talking about the people who get 00:00:00ish times, well... they're not speed running at all more than they're just deceiving the game and the people that actually play the game.  Their focus is not the stage, just the leaderboard.  They want to appear superior at simply doing something not many people can do.  It's not a speed run more than it is a leaderboard hack.  Secondly, if people are conquering the stage by using glitches to go faster within the realm of the game, be it in small bits or large chunks, it cannot be considered cheating as they are doing something anyone can do.  Sometimes I feel that there is a lack of understand that goes in the word cheating where if one person sees another person perform something unusual (feeling deceived), they get labeled a cheater.  The accuser most likely never attempted to even perform such a glitch to understand the depth behind it even though the person who performed it makes it look easy when it's very possible for it to be difficult or have huge consequences if performed wrongly.  There is only one rule most speed runners go by, and that is to play the stage as fast as possible, and I personally believe that the legitimacy of the run is weighed in by the amount of effort that's put in to playing the stage.

It is just me, but I believe glitching is not always synonymous with cheating.

Not everyone is going to know the best methods for what makes a speed run faster (and developers don't always know all that's capable within the framework of their game).  There is usually a lot of knowledge that goes into speed running a stage in these types of games as it's usually never as simple as it looks.  If those methods are understood as ways to expand the experience for any competitor (opposed to taking away the experience) who's goal is to be the one to make it first to the finish line, why shouldn't people use glitches?  If we limited our efforts, the game grows stale because there would be limitations instead of plateaus.

And right now, I think that's what makes Sonic Unleashed more favorable than Sonic Generations for speed running among the top speed runners on YouTube.  It's not only allows Sonic to do a lot on his own while moving fast, but after much time, people are just finding ways to make him go faster.  It doesn't make Unleashed unique to other Sonic games, but it definitely stands out as the more complex game compared to Generations.

But if you're a fan of Generations and not Unleashed, don't worry... it's time just may come sooner than you think.

There's a war going on in Windmill Isle Act 2.

As this week, my youtube feed has been filled with so many speed runs of Windmill Isle Act 2, I can barely tell whether they are different or the same.  What I've come to find is that throughout the month ,sobatsuyu100 and Millernusgaming have posted quite a few speed runs of that stage and it's DLC sister 2-2 that have caught the attention of other players.  However, it is sobatuyu100 who's leading me through the recent confusion as yesterday I discovered he had ran Windmill Isle 2 just under 1:30... and he did it again... in the DLC stage... and he did it again in the normal stage... and 6 hours ago... he did it again taking off about 4 seconds from the initial sub 1:30 run.

Although it seems that the times improvements are largely due to the use of M-speed jumps, I'm not too convinced that those jumps are the whole story to his success as there's a lot of stomping going on in his last video.

Do check out these guy's latest efforts in tearing down the stage.

Millernusgaming: Act 2 | Act 2-2

sobatsuyu100: Act 2 | Act 2-2

Also, while I'm at it... check out this vid by Miller which he so rightfully titled, "Messing With The Game" as it is his celebratory vid for him earning his 100th subscriber.

M-speed glitch in Generations.

Romanemul's back with some m-speed fun... in Generations?!

I'm not too surprised that this glitch from Unleashed is possible in Generations, although there appears to be a certain condition....

You're gonna need to use the Blast Off skill.  And that's just fine imo.  Apparently, you hold up on the stick as if you're walking and woooooooooooosh!

Looking forward to some interesting speed runs (or even other things this glitch may exploit) in the future.

... well, that was easy...

My goal was to get into 1:40 in GHZ and...

I didn't even try.  The only difference was getting off the boost on the rail in the cave, and next thing you know, I'm 1:30 in the green by the next lamp post lolol.  It was a really sloppy run and I decided I would just practice without recording.  That's probably going to be a bad habit because I'll never know how I pulled off the rail glitch (people have said the cave rails are not easy.)

When I said Speed Highway 2 was the easiest... apparently, I was wrong.  I suppose SH2 is more involved, whereas GH2 has more room for exploitation (as far as I know).  You can exploit the super speed glitch up to two times in the first 2D section and once in the second 2D section.

So now my goal for this stage is 1:39 or less.  I have been practicing super speed, but it's still very much a challenge.  Not sure if I'll try and record a run tonight.  Don't even have the music I want for this stage yet.

Dunno why I decided to take a picture with my phone still knowing PVR is forever plugged into the 360 and TV - and is turned on.  I could've tried seeing how taking pictures with the recorder works.  Soon enough.


Episode 2 is still getting the smackdown by reviewers (both official and consumer) on metacritic.  I'm a bit surprised just how many of these "official" reviewers are finding this game mediocre at best.  It's probably just me being in the midst of all the hype.  GameInformer showed no mercy in their review.  Look at the sub title: "Sega Desecrates The Corpse Of Sonic 2 With Inane Co-op."'

Using Sonic as a marketing tool... oh!  Speaking of reviewers who show no mercy...

This guy, lol.  Not the best reviewer, but most of what he says is pretty accurate.  Personally, I wouldn't mind reviewing this game if it meant I could get the game for free.  I'm totally against buying this game if it supports a future episode which is the case of this 4 series.  However, I'm not sure if PC sales count (I don't really know if this computer can run it, but I assume it likely can.)  Well, that's all for today.

Well, damn!

Shoutouts to the keyboard speed runners!

Also was able to take a bit from this run.  It didn't occur to me to use the homing attack when you're just over the button that opens the passage/operates lifting bar.

Another thing I must throw in here is roman's video of the speed glitches in Unleashed, but more importantly the Break Jump Glitch which had been recently discovered.

He said he plans on doing a video on how to reach the skies like he did.

Well, well Generations~

So I decided to load up Generations again.  Why?  Because yesterday I ordered this and the first thing I plan on recording that's Sonic related are Generations speed runs.  Maybe some time later I'll do some Unleashed stuff when I'm better at it, but for now, Generations is probably going to have my undivided attention for a while.  The real pleasure in recording stuff like speed runs or challenges in games (especially fighting games) is you can go back and look at your mistakes.  In the case of Sonic games where things move pretty fast, I'll actually get a chance to actually slow things down and analyze stuff.  In fact, there is one thing I want to analyze today which I'll get to in just a bit.

Last night I decided to mess around with Speed Highway 2 again because I learned just a few new tricks to beating my time and I've NEVER made a seamless run of the stage.  It's an easy stage, yes.  However, I rarely run it because it really is the easiest stage to speed run in the game and I don't know many other ways to improve my time.  The last time I did it, I ran it with perhaps no mistakes that I could think of, really.

Just jumped from the 1:38 to the 1:36 territory.  I really don't know how people run it faster (not including doing that level skip glitch.)  Also, I did the 30 second trial of the stage and pretty much took Sonic as far as he could possibly go in the stage.


But the stage that I've really been focused on is Sky Sanctuary 2.  At first I didn't see myself being interested in taking it seriously until I saw it seriously ran and it is... REALLY FUN.  My favorite aspect about speed running this stage is the use of the enemy placement that challenges you to bounce off enemies to advance through the stage as well as destroy them with the air boost.  Bouncing off of enemies in the stage really makes the game feel like the classics in a sense because you're not depending on the homing attack.  You don't want to use the homing attack in some parts because after you do it, Sonic loses all forward momentum.  Maintaining that momentum will yield Sonic opportunities to keep going forward after simply jumping on the enemies.  Air boosting through enemies isn't always a free kill.  Sometimes I wind up sending Sonic into their hitbox and losing rings and recently Sonic won't destroy them, but will just get pushed aside after making contact with them.  It's weird, yet amusing.

But the hardest thing about Generations modern Sonic is simply the precision platforming and Sky Sanctuary 2 has up to this point the most difficult jump in the game, and last night I took a lot of time trying to figure out how in the world Kakipi1000 pulls it off in his recorded run of the stage.

I'm talking about the orange trick ring-> air boost boost-> jump from the square platform-> air boost at 0:12 in this video.

It looks simple, but you REALLY have to be exact with how you pull this off because it's easy to screw up.  Fortunately, when I paused the video, I did it at the EXACT moment you need to air boost to that platform, because I know if I press play from that point, the air boost will immediately happen... and it did.  So here's the deal.  If you air boost, land on the platform, jump and air boost but aren't high enough, your first air boost from the trick ring was too early.  Now, you'll know that you boosted too late if you find yourself boosting beneath the square platform and this is where you strike your medium.  But look at the picture real good, specifically the relationship of Sonic and that platform as he's falling down.  Sonic's mid-section should NOT go below the green stripe on the left of the platform.  In fact, you should almost be aiming for the center of the platform with the analog stick tilting ever so slightly to the right (if you're not holding forward doing this, Sonic won't air boost at all.)

I really don't understand how this works technically because if you land on the platform, it seems logical that Sonic would be able to make the jump, right?  Well, how I understand this is that Sonic's height from an air boost relates to his speed when he lands.  The more Sonic falls, the more speed/momentum he loses (which is why you really have to do this as late/low as possible as if you air boost too early, land on square platform and jump, he won't reach it and you'll have to settle for jumping and stomping on the next floating platform). It's weird because if you do it too early, Sonic not only will have less momentum but his jump won't have the height to make it over as well.  It's quite rewarding to make this jump.  If you're forced to use both floating platforms, you'll lose about .50-.80 seconds and meter wise, there is no difference.

Personally, I find that this is the charm of Sonic games since Sonic 1 - you get the tools at your disposal, but what can they do and to what extent?  I really love the high-risk/high-reward aspect of this game.  It may have dumbed down a bit from Unleashed, but it's still got that aspect of a Sonic game that deepens the gameplay.  It just has a bit more of a "classic" gameplay-like focus.

Also I had been trying to take advantage of the 3D->2D glitch and unlike my 3D->2D glitching in Jungle Joyride 1-2 in my previous entry, pulling this one off was a lot easier.  Unfortunately, that's the only easy part about it, which is making that jump.  On my 360 version of the game (yeah, I own the PC version, too) if you jump off the rail after the glitch and make it to the side where the speed booster is and jump over the booster - the stage won't load visually.  Unfortunately, I didn't get very far with the glitch but I'll keep trying.  Controlling Sonic in 2D with 3D controls?  Yeah, ever since the N64, using analog sticks for precise movement has never been something I was ever entirely comfortable with and, well... what can I say?

You CAN 3D to 2D glitch Jungle Joyride 1-2!

So a while back, Kakipi1000 make a very impressive run of Jungle Joyride 1-2 and in the info of his video, he says:

In the original stage, you can 3D->2D glitch the first 2D section of the level.  In fact, you can also do it later in the level (although I'm not sure just how useful that is.)  If you try pulling off the glitch and going into the water like Kakipi did in the 1-2 stage, you will run into an invincible wall and die.  However, there IS an exception.

When I pulled this off, I took out my HD camcorder and started recording and I spent about an hour trying to duplicate the glitch with NO success.  I have no idea how in the world you even glitch that part on purpose.  It always happens on accident and the very moment I decide to record it, I can't get it to work.  That's the hard part.  If I can figure out how to glitch it, or get lucky doing it (because the section remains glitched if you die after the lamp post before the spring) then I'll record it.

So what do you do once you find Sonic with 3D controls in the 2D section?  Firstly, you need to get him to the first orange trick ring and the safest way to do that (if you're not confident manually moving him) is to simply slide, then jump into the ring.  After that, hold right and air boost.  This should send you far ahead to the right of the stage and the camera will shift into full 3D.  From here, you can drift past that entire 2D section in literally a few seconds.  It's a ridiculously good time saver.  Before I started recording, I was fortunate to actually complete the stage using that glitch with lots of mistakes.  Getting hit by the beams from that one robot during the chase scene and fucking up the last shortcut by accidentally performing two homing attacks on two enemies instead of air boosting to the rail.  I literally penalized myself by at least a good 4 or 5 seconds.  Plus, I don't know the best path over the second body of water section yet which adds even more time.  It was really a mess.

BUT I STILL SHAVED ABOUT 20 SECONDS OFF MY PREVIOUS TIME. LOL

So yeah, this is definitely to be continued.  I was supposed to post this yesterday but it wasn't possible.

Still so much to learn about Unleashed.  I should really take my Generations disc out of my 360.  It's earning a lot of scratches and I really can't be bothered to play it.

EDIT:  So I was browsing through the comments of Kakipi1000's run and apparently someone by the name of SHINTARO917 beat Kakipi's run by about 15 seconds (for the record, sobatsuyu100 recently beat Kakipi's run of this stage, too).  Once I checked the video, I wasn't surprised to find that this guy pulled off the glitch - not exactly how I did it, but actually better.  He took full advantage of it just the same.  I'm surprised he avoided that invisible wall since he appears to have performed the glitch no differently than Kakipi did for the normal stage.

Shoutouts to this guy... and this was 2009! *hides*  There were some things he could have done to make the run faster, but the way he pulls off the last shortcut is a MUST SEE.  I totally didn't see that one coming.

At least I don't have to go through the trouble of recording it, but it's definitely worth exploring still!  And I will say this... WHY DOES NOBODY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HIDDEN SPRING AT THE 2ND 3D SECTION?  You can save at least a good second or two.  I'll take a picture of it, or record it or something.

Wow, there's so much going on today with Sonic...

When he landed on that rail, my jaw dropped.  That was soooooo godlike!

Pretty entertaining video. :)