Sonic the Hedgehog/Sonic

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 bounces across the top as in Naegleria's tutorial.

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

Marble 1

• Make sure you grab the shield, otherwise it'll just get in your way later.
• Push against the wall on the moving platform until you're balancing inside it. From here, while the platform moves down and back up, gently tap right enough times to shift Sonic two pixels to the right. The pixel you're looking for is this one:

Look particularly at Sonic's left foot - the vertical line that marks the left edge of the moving platform should basically bisect the flat part of Sonic's foot. This is kind of tricky at first, but experience will help.

• As soon as you identify the pixel, stop pressing right. This is because the upcoming zip is subpixel-dependent: the subpixel range between 12 and 71 (out of 255) will let you go through the wall. So if you stop pressing right as soon as you identify this pixel, and your button presses are pretty short, then there's a good chance you'll fall in this range. The range 0-11 gets you stuck in the wall, though, from which you can only die.
• When Sonic reaches this height (with Sonic's left foot roughly a third of the way up the block in the left wall), hold left, and the very next frame, hold jump:

This should put you on the other side of the wall. Immediately kill both of the bats - if you don't, you won't reach the top of the spiked platform - and complete the stage.
Target time: 0:29 if everything goes right first try. Each additional attempt at the zip costs six seconds, and if you miss the spiked platform cycle, that's another three gone.

Marble 2

• Line yourself up on the leftmost pixel of the moving platform, like this:

A useful way to tell that you're on it is to line up the vertical line on the left edge of the platform with the corner of Sonic's left foot.

• As the platform reaches this position, tap right for one frame, then hold jump on the next. You can use a pause buffer to separate these two inputs, but that means you have to press jump and Start on the same frame upon resumption:

Here, the bottom of Sonic's left foot should be in line with the bottom of the square it's hidden behind. You have to extrapolate a little bit to figure out exactly where it is, but the timing is pretty lenient to start the zip.

• Hold nothing until the big wall reaches the left edge of the screen, then hold left. This should run you into the signpost as soon as it appears.

Target time: 0:11

Marble 3

• After pushing against the left wall, tap right twice and then hold up. This should put you in the right position for the buzzbomber to knock you into the ground below the platforms. If you fall to the left of the left platform, you didn't move far enough to the right, similarly if you end up on the middle platform you moved too far right.
• Once the left platform has moved to the very top of its cycle (which is more than two squares above the bottom), hold right and jump three frames later. You can't jump on the first two frames, so piano roll all three buttons and hope to get one on the right frame.
• Stay still from then until the second of the high pitched notes in the boss music plays, then jump for the first hit. There are a number of ways to do the boss fight here, depending on the amount of risk you're willing to take. A fairly simple method is to stay on the right platform for the whole fight, getting four hits before he flies over to the left and another four as he flies back.

Target time: 0:30

Spring Yard 1

• The jump off the ramp onto the red spring should be left as late as possible. Additionally, let go of all directions on the way down. Press down as you hit the ramp, then right to land on the wall.
• The jump off the wall also needs to be held back as late as possible, which is kind of tricky because you can't see where you are! If you jump too early though, you'll just fall to the bottom which takes a long time to recover from.
• If you get a jump from the very edge of the upsloped ramp, you can land right on the platform above the spring and save a bit of time. It's safer, especially if you verify that it's the wrong height, to let the jump go shortly after launching it, land on the lower platforms with the rings and jump up.
• Once on the upper platform, do a full size jump from just after the last post on this platform, around here:

This should land on a spiked enemy way out in front. Hold jump until just after you hit the enemy, this will give you enough of a bounce to clear the two spikeballs up ahead but not waste time waiting to fall into the spring pit.

• It's possible to hit the tiny gap in the right wall directly, but it needs to be hit perfectly and if you miss, the spring throws you back up, costing about three seconds and potentially getting you hit.
• The speed shoes can sometimes run out on the final stretch. If you think they will, roll (and let go of right) to prevent the speed cap from kicking in.

Target time: 0:25

Spring Yard 2

• The jump over to the spring is important: hitting the left edge of the screen resets your subpixels to 0. Once you hit the edge, let all directions go until hitting the bumper - you'll always get bumped up like this.
• There's no really good cue for when to jump off the ramp, but you have to get it right near the end without going down onto the steeper part in order to skip over the pit. Once you land on the stretch here, you actually want to activate the speed cap on purpose, so as to aim your jump onto the platform with four rings.
• It's possible to clear the gap with the spike ball near the end with a single jump, but it needs a very tight jump, and it's so late that it appears that you pass through half of the green cylinder on the way! At the cost of about half a second, you can also just clear it in two jumps instead (one onto the platform in the middle of the pit).
• For the final jump, much like the upside-down ramp in SY1, leave the jump as late as you can. Ideally you hit the ceiling and carry all your momentum to the finish, although sometimes you'll get a slower finish.

Target time: 0:31

Spring Yard 3

• Run to the left first, then when you reach the left edge of the screen switch to right and jump. This sets up the two spike balls up ahead so they are just out of your way as you go past.
• A few things have to go right after you go past the spike balls: skipping over the small bump in the floor, getting enough horizontal speed on the next jump to bounce off the crab, then timing the two jumps up the moving platforms perfectly (the second, if done right, should squeeze through the gap at the top), and finally making one more jump up on top of the platform you just squeezed under and moving all the way to the right, then immediately holding down. If any of these steps fail, then don't try and make your way over there, you'll simply die. Just wait for another cycle to go past and go up there safely.
• As soon as the screen shifts right, press left to zip and then right again when the zip stops. When the ground stops you (right underneath the door), let go of right, jump, then tap right just as Sonic is about to land again, and you should be moved into the wall under the door. Simply jump from here to fall, then hold left and you'll fall again.
• From here, hold left for about half a second and then jump. What you're looking for is the two spike ball pits above you. In between the two of them, there's a brown section of the wall that's twice as wide as the other similar parts around it. Jump up against it so you're standing right next to it, but every time you land let go of the directions or you'll zip away again. From right next to the block, use short zips left and right to position yourself under it, like this (you should move into this position from the left hand side):

From here, you can hold right and, on the very next frame, jump and you'll drop down another level in the floor.

• As you drop, you'll see there are double brown and green columns. Hold left after landing on the lower level and, once the third set of double columns has reached the left edge of the screen, switch to holding down and you should be rolling in the halfpipe as you reappear on screen.
• As you roll up the left wall, you go through a set of 10 rings. As you make contact with the last one, do a full jump and you should land in the pocket in the wall with the invincibility and speed shoes.
• The boss isn't too hard, but occasionally you'll miss one of the hits (particularly hit 6). If you do miss a hit, Robotnik actually moves a bit higher in the air so you can't reach him with a regular jump, but if you roll before you jump you'll jump slightly higher, enough to reach him even at the high point of his cycle.

Target time: 0:54-0:58 on the early cycle at the start, 1:01-1:05 on the later cycle.

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.