Hi,

I'm new to trying to speedrun this game as well as Sonic games in general. I was wondering if anybody could explain to me where I am losing frames, and how to correct it so that I can get the 24. Here is a video of possibly my closest attempt that I think might still be 4 frames off (does the timer stop on the frame when the screen stops scrolling at the act end?)

General mechanics advice would also be appreciated in terms of non-obvious things I could be doing during attempts that are sub-optimal.

I was also wondering if anybody could explain why I sometimes die to the second tunnel after the loop. This seems to happen to me frequently when I feel like I am doing well. Is it just an issue of actually doing too well basically and my speed being too fast?

Howdy! I don't know too much about Sonic 1, but as for your last question, you die there sometimes because you are hitting the kill zone before it has time to scroll down. when you go through those tubs at the speed you get from doing the loop jumps, the kill zone starts at that divet after the two tubes, so if you don't jump early enough after the tubes, you'll hit the kill zone and die. The rest of your movement seemed to be really solid! If I had a piece of advice, I'd say that you should learn some basic strats first and just try to pb. From there, you can learn new tricks. Like, for example, don't sweat the loop jump and opt for simpler strats just to get more runs going. You'll get more runs later in the game and you'll have more fun playing. Best of luck with the speedrunning!

Sup.

First off, it's a pretty decent pace, checkpoint by 0:14.00 is where you at least want it. You could chuck in things like a fast acceleration at the start (notice how some 0:24s start out holding left then switch to right and jump once you get control? That will save 3 frames if done perfectly.) and the second loop can be slightly faster in your vid. If you get a loop speed that's too fast, sometimes you can die inside the second tunnel, but that can be mitigated by tapping left in the first tunnel. Aside from that, everything else is good!

Hey guys, thank you for the advice! I was able to get the 24 after about 2-3 more hours of attempts and trying to incorporate the tips you gave me as well as hitting the invincibility monitor in the tree from below, which I'm not sure whether that actually saves any time or not to be honest, but I saw some people doing it. Here is my 24, if anybody wanted to see lol.

I'm not sure whether or not I even did the fast acceleration correctly, but I think that the tip about tapping left in the first tunnel may have been crucial. I did it on my successful attempt here because I was feeling like I might die if I didn't... I don't actually know whether that was true or not in this case, but clearly it didn't hurt anyway, since I got the 24. I imagine that some of this stuff would be easier to figure out with save states, and I do actually have a Mega EverDrive Pro coming that I bought on Black Friday, so that will probably help if I want to keep messing around with other levels in this game.

Anyway, thank you guys again for the help, and I'm probably gonna try some other levels now! xD