Autorun sections

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General guide on how to get the fastest framecounts on the autorun sections of this game.

In general:

- Take the inner curves
- Only press left/right when you're explicitly turning. Do NOT continue holding left when hugging the left wall for example - this will lose you time
- When approaching the ending spring, the game will generally move you into the spring for you - let it move you

### Windy Hill Tutorial

- Hold right / up-right as you drop down. Keep holding it until you very visibly hit the right rail
- Make sure you are holding up when the stage begins to curve right.
- Do nothing for the rest of the section

This will get you a 4.06-4.07 second time

**Windy Hill 1**

- Hold left / up-left as you drop down. Keep holding it until you very visibly hit the left rail
- Make sure you are holding up when the stage begins to curve left.
- Hold up for the rest of the section.

This will get you a 3.16-3.17 second time, assuming speed shoes are active the entire time.

**Desert Ruins 1**

- Stay in the center as much as possible. Only move to the side when there's a cactus in the way then go back to the center.
- Exception being when the ending spring is coming up - just let the game move you into it

**Tropical Coast 3**

- Doesn't really matter when you press left, as long as you reach the left "wall" when the tube starts to curve - so immediately after the spike ball on the left, hug it and then stop holding left
- If you don't care about the drill, then after the turn ends, stay on the left side (but inch right to avoid the spike ball)
- If you do care about the drill, then after the turn ends, swerve right far enough to be on the drill's right (but as little right as possible - going farther right than necessary loses frames) then after passing the preceding spike ball, tap left to grab the drill.
- Either way, let the game move you into the spring.

**Frozen Factory 1**

- Don't press any direction, grab speed shoes straight ahead
- Hold the analog pad at around the 10-11 o' clock position and repeatedly jump

### Silent Forest 2

- Immediately when you enter, go as far left as possible until you're at the very edge of the path, then do nothing for the rest of the section.

General Movement Guide/Facts/Tidbits

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### Grinding on 2D Rails

- In general, you want to stay on the rail as much as possible. Grinding speed is generally faster than air or running speed.
- Typically if you jump (while holding R) off of a rail, you'll carry a lot of that rail speed into your jump for a bit. So jumping through enemies, or over a rail, works fine
- Homing Attacking into rails is also very fast

### **Grinding on 3D Rails (Only for Silent Forest 2)**

- Grinding on 3d rails is VERY fast. Stay on as much as possible
- Rail Swapping keeps your speed, so feel free to rail swap a lot.
- At the end of a rail, if there are adjacent rails, you'll want to rail swap (into nothing) to extend your "rail speed" past the end of the rail.
- Stay on the "inner curve" of rails if possible. This includes horizontal curves and "cylinder" curves.
- Taking a hit is slower than continuously grinding / rail swapping, but it's still faster than jumping. So if you need to avoid an enemy and rail swapping is NOT an option, then take a hit.

### **Snowboarding (Only for Frozen Factory 1)**

- If you hit a boost pad or come off of a rail, hop repeatedly to retain your speed - ideally you hop the frame you land. This applies to the very start of Frozen Factor 1 (because you hit a boost pad in the countdown), but NOT the start of the second snowboard section (because no boost pad)
- You can increase your chances of hopping the frame you land by pressing both A and B almost simultaneously
- With ramps, always trick - you want the speed boost from tricks, then start hopping repeatedly
- Boost pads also give you extra speed - hit them, then start hopping repeatedly

### **Miscellaneous**

Reaching Springs

- If a spring is within immediate reach, homing attack it by mashing A/B
- If it's out of reach of your homing attack, and you're grounded, then spinhop to it WITHOUT homing attacking it. Homing attacking can break even and/or be slightly slower sometimes.
- If you're already in spindash-mode, then just roll into the spring WITHOUT homing attacking it. At best, homing attacking can break even but it'll usually be slightly slower.
- If speed shoes are active, then avoid homing attacking - running/spinhopping into the spring will be notably faster.

Boost pads

- Most boost pads give you more speed than a standard spindash. You'll generally want to hit them, then stay grounded and spinning
- After hitting a boost pad, doing any sort of jump will lose that boost pad speed and revert you to standard spindash speed (which is slower).

More level-specific Stuff

- Desert Ruins 1 - When sliding forward in quicksand, turning is as fast as going straight.
- Tropical Coast 3 - When entering the whirlpools or breaking the toilet pipes with drill, holding R does NOT speed this up.
- Sky Road 3 - When riding a rocket, turn as little as possible - you do lose time from turning too much

Lost World Story Mode Save-State Strat Demonstrations

Demonstrations of a lot of strats for story mode. Ran on bizhawk with savestates but with human inputs - consider this a "what a mostly perfectly executed run looks like by kirbymastah at the time of early 2026"

Windy Hil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o9ZA-XLfB8

Desert Ruins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKnp5Q7r_Q4

Tropical Coast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LQgfxXPdq8

Frozen Factory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7A06b_iQ8g

Silent Forest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2llkerElnUE

Sky Road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtacccAYUyY

Lava Mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNswml88gE

The snowboard physic

Spam jump at a good rythme,Sonic is not slower and doesn't drift when turning,take the smallest ramp and land the earliest.

In the desert 3:ledgegrab the wall from the left:roll and double jump rapidly,avoid the beam by going right before left,you can bounce high enough from the teleporter protection,so you shortcut it without the stone.

Zavoc Pattern Fights

Every RTA-safe-ish strat on handling all 4 of Zavoc's patterns. Please read the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT_MKrQIAbQ

Zavoc Refight in Lava Mountain 3 is a lot more straightforward. For safe strats, just wait until his circle attack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p44XwBG5IIA

Zor Guide

This guide applies to both Zor fights, though it's only properly applicable to the Silent Forest version since you finish him with Quake in Lava Mountain 2. The purpose of this guide is to explain how Sonic's direction works on the last hit, and how to properly aim him at the capsule to save time.

The general gist is when you find the real Zor out of 20, you want to spindash on top of him for 11 hits then bounce attack for hit 12. You can, however, blindly know how to turn Sonic in the correct direction so you can get a good capsule hit.

First, watch this example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_B3Uh8nnTs

To start with, treat the arena as a clock, where the first Owl/item box you aim at is north (12 o' clock).

I will assume you look for the real Zor in a clockwise direction - so the first default one is North and #1, the next one to the right is 2, and so on.

![](/static/blob/1n54xjje.png)

When you finish Zor, the game KEEPS the direction you were aiming at, and then warps you north of the capsule here (yellow circle is the capsule). That means to aim at the capsule, you want to ensure Sonic is facing SOUTH on the last hit - by doing that, when you regain control, without pressing any direction, you can just spinhop and mash homing attack to hit the capsule reliably.

![](/static/blob/1n7l2vle.png)

This is really easy if Zor happens to be the very first target - which is what the linked video does. While you spindash then bounce attack on Zor, just aim yourself directly the cannon, because that's already going to be south. But in any other spot, you have to understand where you are with respect to the entire clock and aim yourself South.

Cardinal direction examples:

- If Zor is #6, then spindash LEFT of the cannon
- If Zor is #11, then spindash AWAY from the cannon
- If Zor is #16, then spindash RIGHT of the cannon
- If Zor is anything in between, you have to mentally gauge where on the "clock" you are with respect to the floor rectangles and aim appropriately

This visual example explains how this works if Zor is #6 (i.e. the 3 o' clock position, or perfectly East). This is where you'll be, and you want to aim yourself south (along the red arrow) during the last hit:

![](/static/blob/7n69xv2n.png)

You want to aim Sonic South, which (from Sonic's perspective) is "left" of the canon. You can use the rectangular floor patterns as a guide, as they will always be facing one of the four cardinal directions. See this as an example of Zor being #6, and me aiming "left" of the canon.

![](/static/blob/ynl0896n.png)

If you aim properly, then after he flies off, you'll still be facing South, warp to the North of the capsule, then be able to just blindly spinhop homing attack the capsule.

Important note: If you are NOT going to bounce attack hit 12, and plan to just continuously spindash, then when you lose control, Sonic will yeet himself in that direction. If you're going to do this, then do the OPPOSITE - Make sure you aim NORTH, so when you lose control, the game yeets Sonic into the wall closest to the capsule. The camera after you regain control will be basically random, so this is strictly slower and you still have to visually react, but at least you won't be far from the capsule.

Name	Autor
Autorun sections	kirbymastah 10 months ago
General Movement Guide/Facts/Tidbits	kirbymastah 10 months ago
Lost World Story Mode Save-State Strat Demonstrations	kirbymastah 9 months ago
The snowboard physic	Spyrunner13 5 years ago
Zavoc Pattern Fights	kirbymastah 10 months ago
Zor Guide	kirbymastah 6 months ago