I know it's probably pretty redundant seeing these posts, but I just wanted to say hi! I've been casually speedrunning this game for years, and I'm well aquainted with most of the basic tech, but after watching talon run hero story at SGDQ I decided I wanted to get serious about it. I either play the gc sa2b version or the pc steam version I have a few questions about where to learn various things, for instance: I'd like to learn all the master emerald locations so I could begin memorizing them.

anyways nice to meet you all

Welcome! a_moustache has started a SA2B Speedrun tutorial. It's still not complete, but it's something and very helpful. Check it out on his channel https://www.youtube.com/user/MoustacheSRL Also, Darkpr0 has a lot of videos on certain tricks WITH controller inputs that you can see on his channel https://www.youtube.com/user/RussianBlue4S As for Emerald Locations, during that SGDQ run I believe someone asked about that and Talon said there was a pastebin somewhere. I don't know myself, but maybe that could be added to Resources. Good luck, pal. Oh and simply watching runs is good too.

There is no complete guide to learn this game at this point. It's very helpful to watch many different runners of this game, that will give you a good idea of most strats, and also many different strats to choose from if you have trouble with one. For the more complex tricks, theres tutorials around, as Smashman64 already said, Darkpr0 / RussianBlue4S has very detailed tutorials on pretty much all huge tricks in the game, some other runners have done tutorials as well if you look out for them

As far as emerald locations go, yes, there is a pastebin that lists all of them ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mZ7jBAfALq6dMAAnFUwUaGEs0Ow6Tp3TcwxB7ZGapxQ/edit#gid=0 ), but for most people the possibly most enjoyable and efficient way to learn them is to just play the levels over and over again and you will learn the pieces automatically

Good luck running!

If you're serious about learning this game, I highly recommend joining the community Discord and getting in on races when able to, especially Centurion races. I'll add the Discord link to the Guides section here since it's now a public server.

I appreciate all the info, this'll help out a ton. I'll probably do a hs run now, just to hold as a basis of improvement

Hey JBLZ, Glad to hear that run got you into the idea of running this game seriously :D

For the master emerald locations, I would suggest something called a "Knuckles Centurion" (since you said Hero Story). It's a practice category where basically you play each Knuckles stage 20 times. A lot of people race it, and doing races are probably the most fun way to learn the piece locations. You don't have to do a full run or anything, a good way starting out is to do x20 runs of each Knuckles stage (play them 20 times consecutively), and we have a google doc leaderboard that I can share with you in a more private place since it's open to anyone to edit and posting it here would be bad news bears. It's a good way to compare your progress to that of other runners.

Another thing I wanna mention is the Emblem Skip Glitch. If your'e running on Gamecube, this glitch is exclusive to GCN and saves about 2.5 mins RTA (real time attack) over the run. Here's a tutorial on how to do it: While this game is now timed primarily on in-game time, it should save you some grief of waiting on loading screens. Again, this only works on Gamecube because of the ability to soft-reset.

One thing I'd like to suggest before you do runs too is not implementing some of the skips into runs right away. The main thing that will save you time in this game is basic movement, not skips, so using them early on can hinder your progress in learning basic movement. The skips I would suggest holding off on until a later time are: City Escape Skip, Green Forest Wallrun, Snake Skip in Pyramid Cave, GC (Gamecube corner) skip in Hidden Base, Crazy Gadget Skip, Crazy Gadget Skip Skip, and Final Rush Skip.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with learning them early on, I'd just like to say that learning how to play the stage well before putting skips in runs is probably the better way to go.

Other than that, if you have any questions, let me or any other runner know, we'll be happy to help.

Oh ya, and don't learn Final Rush skip from Ethmar.

Take it easy and good luck :D

Thanks, I really appreciate all the help so far, I definitely need to polish and optimize my performance, since I've been out of the scene for a minute, my practice run was really bad xD