Sonic the Hedgehog/Sonic

This game has a run page on SDA!

Forewords

The current fastest known time is 12:02 by mike89. Sonic 1 has a rich speedrunning history with lots of people contributing with strats, glitches and routes. What is presented here are not necessarily the fastest routes known, but rather what is typically thought of as reasonable in a single-segment speedrun.

If you are more interested in the fastest possible strats, for example for IL's, it's recommended to check out TeeNTee314's individual level runs.

Rules and Timing

This game uses the in-game timer as the method of timing the run. It starts in Green Hill 1 and ends during the fadeout after defeating Robotnik in Final Zone. In order to time the run this way, you can use a program such as ShitSplit made by setz, or LiveSplit by CryZe and wooferzfg1. In the instance of a death you simply add that time as you would a stage. If you respawn at a star post after dying or going to a special stage you add the delta between the death and the star post spawn time (i.e. you die at 1:00 and respawn at 0:50 by the star post, then add 10 seconds).

Since the timer is framebased, 50Hz is fine to use competitively. It is however also slower in real time and gives an unfair advantage, so 60Hz is preferred.

Green Hill 1

• The jump off the ramp after the tube is completely necessary: if you don't, the screen won't scroll down fast enough and you'll just die.

Target time: 0:25

Green Hill 2

• This stage starts off kinda tricky. The jump over the spikes needs to be short, but not too short: too high and you go back up to the platform above, and too low and you hit them instead.
• The roll through the wall is also really tight, you have just enough room to build up the speed to get through the wall in one go, but more importantly you need to hold back your jump until you've definitely seen the last piece break. If you try and do it by the timing of the five before you'll tend to jump early and not break the last block. However, you can't leave it too long because you also need to jump early enough to hit the ceiling!
• The jump after the bridge should be from about the right post, hold the jump button up to the maximum height and then let it go. A low bounce off the extra life goes straight into the invincibility above. Then piano the buttons to ensure you get a short jump off the moving platform up ahead (or the spikes, if you've been a bit slower through the stage).

Target time: 0:19

Green Hill 3

• The jump up to the spring is off a very slight incline. The kind of thing that makes all the difference in this game!
• Two ways of completing the rest of the stage: either roll through the speed shoes and play the bottom path as in the video above, or bounce off them and make a series of jumps across the top as in Naegleria's tutorial.

Target time: 0:32 on the high path, 0:35 on the low.

Marble 1

Marble 2

Marble 3

Spring Yard 1

Spring Yard 2

Spring Yard 3

Labyrinth 1

Labyrinth 2

Labyrinth 3

Star Light 1

Star Light 2

Star Light 3

Scrap Brain 1

Scrap Brain 2

Scrap Brain 3

Final Zone

• Don't jump at the start of the stage, just hold right.
• When jumping for each hit, make sure you let go of any direction before hitting Robotnik.
  

If you do both of these things correctly, Robotnik should appear in the pistons in the following order: 4-3-2-4-2-1-4-3.

• For the third hit, make sure you stand to the left of piston 2 - this hit is a 2-3 pattern which is almost impossible to hit from the right side.