This is the history of speedrunning Top Gear 2 For The Super Nintendo
Released in 1993 for Super Nintendo, Top Gear 2 improved upon its graphics and game-play mechanics from Top Gear (1). For a racing game of it's time it was one of the most beloved franchises by fans and critics alike. The Top Gear video game franchise was not only loved by many but to be considered by people to be the Super Mario Kart or F Zero of racing games. Like many Nintendo games, people would have a solid interest in speedrunning the game. The categories were as followed:
Any (now USA%) was beating the final country in the fastest time possible. Timing would start from console on, and end on the finish line on the third lap in San Francisco. The game initially intends for you to complete the game from start to finish, using in-game passwords if you didn't finish the race on time. However a trick within the same year that very first Any% speedrun was completed, there was a "glitch" within the games system memory. This glitch involved choosing your difficulty, continuing the country of your choice, that being the United States, and faking out the game with an improvised password that would allow you to access the final country although you have never raced it. This trick was discovered by Technickle With the Any% category now in full swing, runners were trying to get the basic understanding of how you would complete the game in the fastest time possible. Any% for Top Gear 2 was almost complete, but unfortunately, there was a roadblock, preventing the Any% to take place.
Remember how I mentioned earlier that you needed to do certain actions in order to get the final country? Well, it turns out, that once you have selected your setup, the game then proceeds to give you $0 in money and let you have nothing to use. This was a problem since you couldn't get in front of the cars since they were much faster than you. It was not just 3 months later, that Nick realized that you can actually quit out of the first race, go back to continue country, and select the United States. Normally each country is greyed out (except Australasia), but since the fake-out glitch gave the game a "corruption" of sorts, it let Nick select the final country. Each country starts you out with enough money to buy certain upgrades for the 4 races ahead. Since the United States was also a highlighted selection, it also gave you money to use. Since this was the case it gave the ending amount of money totaled up from each country resulting in $150,000 usable in the game.
Since Nick was the only runner during this time, he had to be smart about what are purchasable upgrades for your car. A few months, passed, eventually the amount was used to calculate the purchasable items as follows: Best Engine = $80,000, Best Wet Tires = $4000, Third Best Dry Tires = $3000, Best Gearbox = $50,000, & Best Nitro = $30,000 . With this total it added up to $150,000, bringing the remaining balance down to $0. However, back in 2013, this money was not used as intended, and it left the run in a dry spot. 2013 run by Nick, only used Best Engine, Best Wet & Dry Tires, Best Gearbox, but then purchasing 2nd best Nitro on top of using Automatic transmission. Nick's final time stood at a 10:19, being uncontested for 1 whole year. August 24th, 2013 was the very first instance of Top Gear 2 for Super Nintendo, began its a journey as a speed game.
The very first "speedrun" of Top Gear 2 was not done RTA but rather in a Save State manner. The runner you see here is called Dooty and completes the game with little to no upgrades as possible using TAS - Tool-Assisted Speedrun. This run was completed on Jul 6th, 2010
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August 24th, 2013 was the very first instance of Top Gear 2 for Super Nintendo, which began its journey as a speed game.
December 28th 2016 [Emu] - RallyFTW in 10m 17s Video - [I'll beat this record on real hardware sometime soon. Once I get some decent times on New York and San Francisco, I can put in some major improvements. 1'57 is more than possible on Las Vegas. For now, though, this is pretty much a proof of concept]
December 31st, 2016 9:58 - RallyFTW Video -
[A large chunk of the time improvement came from New York. Huge thanks to Nick for providing info on approaching that track. This run isn't dead by any means. Las Vegas can be improved by ~2 seconds, and San Francisco can still use a bit of work]
January 4th, 2017 9:56 - Nick Video - (copy paste link in web browser)
January 4th, 2017 9:51 - Nick Video - (copy paste link in web browser)
January 4th 2017 9:48 - RallyFTW
video -
[I didn't think it was possible to get under 10 minutes. Now, I'm pretty sure we can get under 9:45. 1'54''73, 1'56''40, 1'58''03, 2'18''61, in order. Las Vegas can be improved by one second. Gold split on Los Angeles. New York can be improved by about 2 seconds. San Francisco can be improved by ~3.5 seconds. These improvements are definite, anything further is speculation. 2intense4me]
January 11th, 2017 9:45 - Nick (No Video) [ OpieOP ]
March 9th 2017 - DunkelGotik [Emu] Video -
[sub 10 PogChamp ]
August 20th, 2017 9:42 [Emu] - Leandrom90 (copy paste link in a web browser) https://www.speedrun.com/run/zgngd8jy
[If I manage to don't make the mistakes I usually do when live, a sub-9:30 is completely possible]
January 5th, 2017 9:42 - RallyFTW
Video -
[Sum of best is 9:39. One bump occurred in San Francisco. About ~2.5 seconds can be saved on that track. Everything else was close to optimal]
March 21st 9:34 2017 - Nick (No Video) [ Bad San Fran, little better New York. Overall = Memes OpieOP ]
March 22nd, 2017 9:36 - Nos_Vagner Video -
[no comment]
January 11th 9:33 2017 - RallyFTW Video -
[I'll edit the description when I get a chance. I'll probably copypasta some of the descriptions on the video itself]
August 4th 2017 9:29 - Yoschimidtsu Video -
[no comment]
January 16th, 2017 - RallyFTW 9:22 Video -
[This run includes two new things that definitely need to be mentioned: This run uses turn throttling to obtain a sick nasty time in New York. I created a guide in the guide section on performing this technique, and how to approach that stage with this new tech. This run uses the Manual transmission instead of Automatic transmission. Nick jokingly told me that using manual might make the time a bit faster (On the topic of dealing with the game's lag frames, I believe his words were "use the manual transmission to shift between fifth and sixth gear Kappa") While he thought he was joking around, it turned out that he wasn't completely wrong; by using the manual transmission, you can accelerate a LOT faster than you would by using automatic, just because the bottom three gears have a higher acceleration rate than the top three gears do. Automatic doesn't take as much advantage as one might hope, whereas manual does. Using the manual transmission also solves another problem: getting an optimal pass on Los Angeles that also allows for an EX speed after the first bump. However, it adds a new problem: dodging more cars that come at the end of the tracks. At some points, I found it was twice or thrice as many cars, compared to what I was used to. Either way, yay for speed improvements! (I'm claiming that I figured this out, btw. Sorry Nick >:D) Sub 9:20 is possible. My current sum of bests, taken over a six-hour stream block, adds up to a 9:18, which explains why most of these times aren't gold splits]
August 28th, 2017 9:19 - Nick
(copy-paste link in web browser)
[ https://www.speedrun.com/run/y23xrqjm ]
[how did I manage to get this?! Anyway 9:16 soon! :) ]
January 18th, 2017 9:18 - RallyFTW Video -
[My times for each track are 1'51"55, 1'51"61, 1'45"76, and 2'09"51, respectively. This sums up to a total "in-game" time of 7'38"43. These times don't include the menu time in between the tracks. I found a significant time save for Las Vegas by boosting a bit earlier on the second lap after the RLR snake. I got really lucky with the car dodging at the end of that level. Los Angeles saw improvements because of an improper EX Speed that occurred on my previously uploaded run. New York saw an improvement due to improved cornering around the second evil turn (again, compared to my previously uploaded run), as well as improved speed optimization all around. San Francisco lost -0.3 seconds of time (about the same for IGT and RTA). I'm currently working on comparing a few strategies for this stage, and I've found that just over a second can reasonably be saved with the current boost route that I'm using (I've been averaging around 2'08"25 using 50% slowdown on an emulator, compared to this run's 2'09"51). In my testing, the best nitro is worth getting - if you can perform most, if not all, of the menuing before the screen completely fades in. You can perform menu actions as the screen is fading in, and you can't exit the upgrade screen with the start button until after it completely fades in. Getting the best nitro saves over half a second on the same boost route. To tell you the truth, I don't know if there's much else to pull out of this game (apart from what I mentioned about San Francisco, and whatever little time saves there are left in the other stages) unless there's some overhaul in nitro optimization that I'm overlooking. I want to give all of you guys a huge thanks for watching my streams/highlights/videos, as well as for helping me find a groove to keep playing this game. Those of you that run this game (or any of the Top Gear games, for that matter), I wish you the best of luck and the greatest of hype ]
May 29th, 2017 Video -
[Here's to getting closer to sub 9:15. This run, as always, could have been better. Had I kept my EX Speed on the double left during the 3rd lap of San Francisco, this would have been sub 9:15. That, and the terrible menuing (which, considering this was my first and only run for the day, was to be expected) could have saved just over 2 seconds combined. At least, I think so.
IGT = 7:33 ] (Old Old Old World Record)
October 1st, 2017 [Yoschimidtsu] Video -
[no comment]
October 1st, 2017 [Nick] Video -
Run starts at 48:56
Can't highlight it at the moment Twitch won't let me do so.
Ummm yeah that just happened, you are probably wondering how I got into this situation...
OH SHIT BOYS OH SHIT BOYS 9:14.700 PogChamp
October 1st 2017 [Yoschimidtsu] - 9:14.990 Video -
[Here is how to lose unnecessary time in the end]
October 1st 2017 [Yoschimidtsu] - 9:12.930
Video - https://www.speedrun.com/run/m3d668qz
[No Comment] (Previous World Record)
November 5th 2017 [Nick] - 9:12.530
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[Here we go again. 19 hrs from now it will be taken LUL, probably not, but it will tho because I know]
January 11th 2019 [Yoschimidtsu] 9:11.600
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(No Comment)
February 10th, 2019 [Technickle] 9:11.149
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Merry Chrysler :)
This was originally .220 but since the timer is one with the video on screen I actually managed to get a faster time on NY then what the timer says.
It's actually 9:11.149 since the timer was actually slower in this instance since I can't be ahead within a track and still manage to lose time via the timer.
