Speedrun Tricks Explained
Faster Rank Screen / Stage Result Screen
After completing a stage, if you press the Start button shortly after the letter rank is on screen you will begin the fadescreen earlier. This is to skip the "Hmph, perfect" line that plays when getting an A rank. Note that even if you get a rank below an A, the waiting time without pressing Start is the same.
Chaos Control Glitch (CCG)
In the older builds of the game, there as a bug in the code that allowed an action to be performed after pressing the button to enter the Checkpoint Menu. One of those actions happens to be acting a Chaos Power Dark or Hero. For Dark it's not that useful, but for Hero it is VERY useful. While the checkpoint menu is up, the game timers are frozen as being in a checkpoint menu is essentially a soft pausing of the game. Because of this, once the power of Chaos Control starts while in a checkpoint menu, the player will begin to move in the world, and the timer / chaos power meter remain frozen, allowing for infinite Chaos Control. This is pretty broken for some stages, but others have points that prevent Chaos Control from continuing, and will also stop this glitch.
You can perform this glitch by entering the checkpoint menu and then pressing the action of choice within a few frames of entering the menu. To get a feel for the timing, practice without a power, but with a weapon in hand. If you successfully complete the glitch, you will drop you gun at the same time the checkpoint menu appears.
Spin Dash High Jumps (SDHJ)
In a good number of Sonic series games, there is a technique called the Spin Dash Jump where the player starts a spin dash, then jumps shortly after releasing the charged spin dash allowing for long jumps over normally impossible to reach areas.
The Spin Dash High Jump works the same, but instead of moving forwards across a stage, you hit a sloped object / level geometry which redirects you up for a very high jump.
Death Loops
This trick / glitch, exploits a small window between an enemy death and its despawn. During this small window, you can use a healing burst to revive the enemy. You only get the points for healing the enemy once, but repeating the trick, you can get multiple points for defeating the enemy. This allows you to grind one enemy for a full meter's worth of points.
This is normally possible with GUN Solders without needing to do anything special, but for enemies like the Black Warrior (which despawn shortly after death), you cannot get additional points without this trick.
Wall Run Warps
There are some areas in the game where Shadow can use his Triangle Jump / Wall Run technique to make it through a section with no floor. A very useful technique, but there some areas in the game were the position calculations made after colliding with an object / level geometry go crazy. Most of the time, this sends you into the void or instantly kills you, but there are some sweet spots that allow you to warp into another part of the stage.
By some miracle, some of these warps can lead you to the level's goal ring. It's so powerful, yet so difficult to pull of, it created a new split in the speedrun categories so runners don't have to worry about needing to use this trick to actually be competitive.
Chaos Control Extension
When using Chaos Control, it will go for a set amount of time, regardless of how much of you hero meter you have left. This trick is specifically for the case where you have already been using Chaos Control for a bit, but canceled just before running out of the meter, thus being able to reactivate before the meter is completely drained. If you do so at the right time in the right spot, you can go further into a level than just the single Chaos Control could.
Leaving Secret Doors Open
This is a trick that is mainly used in Individual Level (IL) attempts, where every second counts. Normally when starting a stage from the beginning, you need to wait at Secret Doors for them to complete their opening animation before you can pass. If you die mid stage, the doors you have already opened will skip their animations and open immediately.
If you open the Secret Doors a head of time and die without hitting any checkpoints, you can complete a full stage playthrough, where the doors you need are already opened.
This is legal in the current rules for IL attempts, but the runner must include the opening of the doors in the video prior to the attempt that uses the opened doors. This is so the mechanic is clearly shown for anyone that happens to be watching without prior knowledge of the trick.
Pause Buffering
When playing on some consoles, the game can have a bit of time after using Chaos Control or moving very fast between sections where the enemies are not ready in memory and will need more time before appearing in the world. When this occurs, the player can pause the game and unpause shortly after to help give the game more time to load in the missing content.
This is helpful for runs that focus on the In Game Timer, or runs where doing this helps with the real time needed to continue.
Chaos Control Route/Spline Control in Expert Mode
The mission/partner currently selected affects which spline Shadow takes when using Chaos Control. In Expert Mode, it is still possible to set this flag in the pause menu.
- Pause the game
- Press "down", highlighting "restart"
- Press "right", setting the 'hero' flag You'll know it worked because the "restart" will move back up to "resume" with no noise
- Press "A" (or equivalent for non-GameCube, not the Start or pause/unpause button!)
Doing the same but for "left" would set the 'dark' flag
Further details can be found here
Hurt Animation Cancel
If holding a weapon when damaged and Shadow is on the ground, pressing Y cancels the animation into the weapon drop animation.
Maximum Spindash Time
The maximum spindash distance can be achieved with exactly 1.00 seconds, with a sharp decay rate even at 0.75 seconds.
2.00 seconds = 86.5 game units
1.00 seconds = 86.5 game units
0.98 seconds = 85 game units
0.75 seconds = 64 game units
0.5 seconds = 39 game units
Artificial Chaos Point Duplication
The amount of points you duplicate are based on how many individual separate chibis are destroyed in the same frame when the health of the artifical chaos reaches 0. It is possible to duplicate points by jumping or using the satellite laser, though using the omochao gun can provide huge multipliers not possible by jumping / satellite laser.