Sonic 3 and Knuckles - Knuckles speed run (26:28)

This is my Sonic 3 and Knuckles speed run, with total in-game time of 26 minutes and 28 seconds. This counts some time spent dying, two deaths are intentional, one is not.

Explaining every trick I use in this run is probably something I'll save for my SDA commentary, but if you have a question about something specific I'll do my best to answer it. Two specific ones definitely rate a mention though:

Marble Garden 1: What's going on here is, I use a trick called "screen wrapping" to trick the game into thinking I'm below the screen, and it scrolls down trying to catch up to me. This means I can safely jump into the muck pit, because the item that kills you doesn't exist while it's off screen. That makes me fall into a wall, which I zip out of to go past the boss before it comes back on screen. Where I end up is essentially the level looping around, but with none of the sprites.
As for why the MG2 boss appears, I can't tell you, I honestly have no idea. But try it for yourself, it works, I promise. I've actually seen a video where this boss is triggered to appear in Hydrocity 1, and skips Marble Garden entirely going on to Carnival Night. However, that trick is both debug-only and emulator-only - it only works due to an emulation error.

Ice Cap: The setup here is so that I am pushed slightly inside the wall and am standing on the pillar at the moment it gets destroyed. This puts me into a really bizarre state which we call "slope glitch", where slopes don't really function properly and their properties are carried indefinitely, even if continuing on that angle happens to send you into a wall! Also, I can't die by falling off the bottom of the stage because Ice Cap 1 is designed to loop infinitely.
Once I hit the end of Ice Cap 1, I can zip straight from there to the end of Ice Cap 2 - it's really weird, but once I'm in that hallway, I am in what the game treats internally as "act 2". To test this, hit the final checkpoint in this stage and die to the boss - when you respawn, act 2's music starts playing. This also happens in Angel Island, incidentally, though there's nothing quite this awesome you can do with that. Then all I have to do is sink into the ground and I zip to the end of act 2.

There's a lot of other bizarre happenings in this run, but they're the two I'm sure will get the most questions.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• sonic
• and
• knuckles
• speed
• run
• sega
• genesis
• mega
• drive
• speedrun
• glitches

[JohnMKow]

pretty good job...not a fan of the glitches though...not familiar with speedruns this is probably an accepted practice

[mike89mkscelite]

@JohnMKow Truth be told, there are some parts of it I don't enjoy actually performing... but it's a speedrun, the objective is to finish as fast as possible, and that's what I did.

I'm actually considering making a few videos of runs through this game that play through the levels "normally"; there's some work to do on the definition of what "normal" play is, but I think I can make something that'll be fun to watch.

[NinjahNizz]

Ahhh Lava Reef Act 2 music, I forgot how much I love you :D

Fantastic job on the run too Rom!

[mike89mkscelite]

@NinjahNizz Alright, my first case of Youtube mistaken identity! I'm positive it won't be the last.

[legosony00]

tip on hz 2 use the bubble shied bouse in the begening press left this will send you flying.

[tistifli]

@variousthings it was the fastest way to get past the moving walls

[variousthings]

What caused the death at the star post at the start of Hydrocity 2, and why was it done?

Also: YOU BROKE THE MARBLE GARDEN ZONE.

[NinjahNizz]

@mike89mkscelite Oh whoops! It was faved by him not uploaded... i'm gonna go hide in the corner of stupidity now :x

[NKSPKI]

Awesome bro. I always though Knuckles was far more interesting than Sonic gameplay wise anyway.

[ageguyera21]

Tight.