How Pausing Broke Sonic 2 Speedruns

[@LunaticJ]

Gotta go fast

[@alexplaysgd]

gotta pause fast

[@splashmanej3]

gotta fast go yes speed very dash

[@theevilsideofthegentleman7990]

​@@alexplaysgdare you reading my mind?

[@CptJistuce]

Gotta go slow to go fast.

[@dylandelahaie7800]

That KKHTA Koishi pic is based tho.

[@meltingrocket89yt]

I’ve always loved the fact pausing breaks this game so much to the point where speedrunners can create new level wraps that wouldn’t even exist without it it’s amazing and also just funny

[@CovenantAgentLazarus]

Wrong.

[@psychomedal4146]

@@CovenantAgentLazarus used to be believable

[@mega_micro]

​@@CovenantAgentLazarus what exactly is wrong?

[@realityvanguard2052]

It doesn't just trivialize extremely precise single-frame tricks, it abuses the way Sonic 2 speedruns count time.

[@SunsetBear]

i think it’s weird and boring

[@Drekal684]

Eggman in the Wing Fortress: "Mwahaha, I'll trap that blasted hedgehog this time for -" *sonic manifests in the ceiling and destroys the laser* Eggman: "That's it, I'm getting off this plane-" *sonic perches at the edge of a platform, body contorts, becomes the letter N in defiance of logic, physics or biology*

[@ianmoore5502]

Timestamp lmao

[@Sillyguyb]

Timestamp is 8:15

[@nuggnugg8464]

reminds me of the sonic 2 edition of the "something about" series

[@T0rtureph1le]

​​@@Sillyguyb, 7:58 works better.

[@tomarmadiyer2698]

Sonic "*BE AFRAID*"

[@stillprophet7529]

"the final minute barrier that will ever be broken" I've heard that one before, how many times must we teach you this lesson old man :D

[@ianmoore5502]

"I love the young people"

[@x_MoonlitShade]

"The final ingame minute barrier that will ever be broken." Has been said and proven wrong time and time and time again in many different games' speedrunning communities. It's a statement that requires and asterisk. "The final ingame minute barrier that will ever be broken.* *: Most likely, with the current strategies, unless some major new gamebreaking skip or strategy is found in the future."

[@RadiativeChester]

Well, in this case it might be true, since the change to RTA might discourage some would-be IGT saving tricks. See how current WR went back to below that barrier

[@baggelissonic]

It's definitely the last barrier since the game is retimed now. Unless they find an ACE exploit, but thatt would just lead to a new category.

[@General12th]

10:09 Ah yes, my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog 2 speedrunner: *PAUSING*

[@Joe4evr]

Iirc, there's at least one speedrunner with a verb for their handle. I forgot who, tho.

[@IDESTROYER236]

Pausing and TAS are always there at the top. They're just that good.

[@dalcomaroni9837]

@@IDESTROYER236 in every game they play (esp TAS)

[@bentleyvos]

It's official. Sonic invented Chaos Control.

[@its_zackmfs]

LMAO

[@DontKnowDontCare6.9]

Amy has Muscle Control.

[@vanesslifeygo]

lol

[@sheikhadekola2261]

Lmao

[@SADXGamer4]

lol

[@ticron]

@10:44 "The final ingame minute barrier that will ever be broken." Speedrunners: Challenge accepted

[@JDLupus]

A tale as old as time.

[@x_MoonlitShade]

"The final ingame minute barrier that will ever be broken." Has been said and proven wrong time and time and time again in many different games' speedrunning communities. It's a statement that requires and asterisk. "The final ingame minute barrier that will ever be broken.* *: Most likely, with the current strategies, unless some major new gamebreaking skip or strategy is found in the future."

[@prestongarvey2599]

@@x_MoonlitShade as I've said to some in the past, the only time a minute barrier can't be broken is when there are no minute barriers left to break

[@x_MoonlitShade]

@@Sammy-34079 no one cares

[@Quenlin]

The only time I saw an actual "never be broken" was because the idiot that made the category made up his own special rules so he would always win, I call it "Fat Kid on the Playground" syndrome.

[@shovelclaws]

im glad someone covered this topic! sonic runs always get super overshadowed despite their amazing stories, and S2 is one of those games that has a very unique history

[@corndoggoiscool8223]

SUPER overSHADOWed?! what an (unintentional) play on words!

[@Virtualnerd101]

Your username is badass. I'm glad not everyone has forgotten Sonic X!

[@Koolee2]

“Of course, a very long time is not forever” is way too motivational to be in a video about pausing. Lol

[@Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1024]

Motivational but demotivating

[@nossir]

At least it's not in a video about edgying

[@MysticRixel]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

[@japhyriddle]

I'm surprised that there isn't a ROM hack that just gets rid of time bonuses.

[@hibnotix]

Can't believe the timing was changed to solely benefit JoeyBaby >:( fr tho this video is crack. good stuff!

[@shore7154]

Fantastic Video! Really glad I was able to help out. :)

[@cannaroe1213]

Thank you for being awesome :)

[@gamingwithahandicapreviews]

Sonic speedruns are amazing! Sonic 2 and Sonic adventure 1 are some of the most incredible games to see speederan

[@idontwantahandlethough]

it's actually _speedrunned_ (i'm just kidding)

[@SilasAdra]

So true

[@gamingwithahandicapreviews]

@@idontwantahandlethough hahaha!

[@3gotistical786]

Amazing quality video! its always incredibly appreciated to see our unique and interesting history being shared across communities :)

[@Milktube]

This seems like the perfect game candidate to be played on a hack/mod that makes the real time load after hitting the goalpost at the end of a stage be exactly the same before moving to the next stage, regardless of your in-game time, ring count, or any other bonuses. That would completely solve any concerns of people pausing for excessive lengths of time because all of that time is now frames that could've been saved instead.

[@G.Aaron.Fisher]

15:39 That screenshot has me in stitches.

[@Rainok]

Honestly, if I made the rule about pausing, I'd give a time penalty for collective frames paused. Idk if this sounds reasonable, but I am glad that they changed it to be RTA-TBC because it does feel like a more logical change especially since we have better methods for RTA if I'm correct about it

[@darren8453]

RTA-TBC does essentially the same thing but with a fixed number of frame counts.

[@Rot8erConeX]

@@darren8453 I wonder if something like RTA-TBC can be done for Crash speedruns? Since IIRC they go out of their way to break some crates specifically to avoid the end-of-level animation of all unbroken crates landing on Crash's head is shorter.

[@tokeivo]

You could do something like: ScoreTime = InGameTime + (RTA / 3) Such that every second of real time would have to save you 3 seconds in game (substitute for reasonable number). But I'm not a speedrunner - I don't know if that would just leave other issues.

[@jothki]

The difference there is that breaking crates involves the speedrunner doing more work to get a better time, not less.

[@erierierierierie]

​@@tokeivodeciding how much igt is worth rta time is completely arbitrary which is an infamously bad thing for basically every speedrun community when deciding rulesets. it's better to make something 1:1 like frames paused are added to the igt (or a similar ruleset). you can also just ban pausing theoretically (or make a new category). there's a whole lot of things you can do that are less arbitrary and they would all cause extreme controversy, so this would be even worse

[@n0ne_2_0ne4]

Sonic 2 final getting getting love??? Literally about time XD. Great video and I hope more people speedrun Classic Sonic more!

[@crab4426]

one of my favourite youtubers made a video about our speedrun community. Thank you so much, Lunatic, I really appreciate the work you put into this video :)

[@DawnSRC]

Awesome video! The Sonic 2 Speedrun has always been one of the best Classic Sonic runs and glad to see the community finally pulled the trigger on this change. Ironically Sonic Adventure 2 had a very similar timing method change but chose to actually time pauses for similar reasons lol

[@Liam-lo3mt]

Great video! I personally was for RTA-TB and was very happy to see the change. It makes the run flow a lot more in my opinion

[@teeejj_]

Good video dude, and thanks for giving our little community some love with this one.

[@vjspectron]

8:10 is one of the funniest glitch moments I've ever seen! It looks like he gets splattered against invisible glass by Robotnik's machine taking off.

[@Blatanical]

0:59 I always wondered what that song is called

[@wale26.]

It’s called a name I know not yet but too hope to find out

[@shirinrezayi-l7p]

Idk

[@reson559]

Temptation sensation by Orchestra Heinz Kiessling

[@Blatanical]

@@reson559 blessed soul i thank you

[@sphezik9690]

​@@reson559I hope you succeed in life🙏🏾

[@isocle]

I'm really glad the community decided to implement the new timing method. It makes perfect sense, and when speedgames live and die by their playerbases, changing the meta to "only pause if it saves you time" is much more appealing (for runners and viewers) and hopefully keeps the community lively.

[@ZT1ST]

I mean, maybe? I still think that Rupee Sliding in Twilight Princess is really interesting, and it involves staring at a Rupee for 8 hours to get a Low % Speed run.

[@sonicSnap]

@@ZT1ST that's low%, extremely different situation from any%

[@Tomeroche]

"The problem with being faster than light is you can only live in darkness.

[@thespeedegg]

Favorite game to run, always good to see it get covered! Awesome video!

[@blacklight683]

How to go fast:STOP and think about it

[@satibel]

slow is smooth, smooth is fast. (still somewhat accurate except pause buffering making the game very jerky)

[@babyforestwhitaker7114]

I love that 2020 is a pivotal year for so many speedruns. It implies the hacks and time saves are out there we just need time to find them!

[@Sc9cvsd]

14:11 Crazy only 30 votes changed the meta

[@DoctorSwellman]

Thanks for explaining how sonic goes so fast. I wonder if I can do the same thing if I pause in real life 👀

[@DoomGal444]

awesome video i cant believe it took them so long to switch to RTA its insane to have the #1 spot be actually so much slower than someone 6 or 7 places down

[@laytonjr6601]

Eandis went from 1st to 2nd after the change?

[@endarkenedgd]

"pausing is too op" sounds like something someone who's only ever played online multiplayer games would say while trying to play a singleplayer game

[@HyperSoundJocie]

Not a speedrunner, but I do a lot of glitch hunting as an indie dev! Stuff like this is so fascinating to me and I love watching videos like this, seeing how far the limits are pushed or what new exploits are discovered even 20-30 years later, and sometimes due to the most random reasons (like pausing in S2's case). Fantastic video, I knew about the Metropolis Zone Act 3 wrap and some smaller zips where Sonic gets forced into a wall at a precise spot like Casino Night, but not many of the others. I had no idea you could wrap in Chemical Plant Act 1! The discussion of the time penalties was interesting too, makes sense considering runners also do accommodations for PAL/NTSC differences. (Also, I heard Bomberman Hero and Chrono Trigger. Exquisite taste in music👌)

[@Reset2150676]

as someone that enjoys speedrunning sonic 2 casually, this was a very interesting video to a world im missing out on

[@designerwookiee]

I'm reminded every time I watch one of these history of (insert game) speedrunning type videos. Speedrunners do be built different.

[@BLKBRDSR71]

Sonic: Gotta go fast **PAUSE** Sonic: Huh? What just happened?

[@KarmaJolt]

I've been watching speedruns since like 2006 and... I never knew what RTA actually stands for until now.

[@griffonsarcade]

Hell yeah. Shoutouts to the wonderful and enduring speedrunning community for Sonic 2.

[@Etherealscorpions]

At 8:30, you mention the segmented run compiled by 5 runners, but only name 4 of them. Do we just not talk about the fifth person, or was the script originally "...including Person 1 and Person 2", before adding more people?

[@chJohnJobs]

I would've argued for a catagory split, Only because I enjoy fast as possible regaurdless of method

[@SuperSonic71087]

Great video! Thanks for covering this amazing Sonic speedgame!

[@IAmCymepka]

"pausing is too op" literally every GD controversy

[@Mordecai02]

Cool skips like these are sick as hell. I see this as an absolute win!

[@jfmsnation]

As someone that knew next to none of this stuff. This was hella interesting. Great video.

[@EvolvingFetus]

Many games need this change on PC tbh. Where the main meta has become to exploit the load remover, essentially allowing you to pausebuffer the entire run like it was a tas. RE4 is a good example of this.

[@damientheshinx]

When you were talking about how the timing style changed, I was honestly expecting some sort of uproar to be brought up, I'm so used to this type of controversy in speedrunning communities, it's really nice to see a community accept a change like this and peacefully adapt for once. I'm sure a few people were upset, but I'm glad that it wasn't enough that it had to be brought up in a video like this. Good job, Sonic 2 speedrunning community, you're awesome.

[@kellypaton2618]

i think a big part of it is that the old way was making speedrunners slow down and nobody wants that!

[@damientheshinx]

@@kellypaton2618 Very valid point, I don't know why I didn't think of that!

[@jazzabighits4473]

Great video, thanks for making this mate.

[@darrenmichaelid]

8:00 the chat goes crazy 💀

[@Stevegeta]

Really enjoyed watching this video. Great video !!!!!!

[@brianpso]

So happy the community chose the better choice in the end. Allowing pause buffers without consequences is absolutely stupid.

[@vincentauronward347]

I speedrun LEGO racers and hold some single track world records. Measuring with in-game time rather than RTA seems really silly. I think RTA should be king in 99% of games. The strategic value of pausing for a level wrap or just playing normally sounds really interesting and like a fun puzzle to solve. I'm very surprised to hear the debate lasted as long as it did. Amazing video!

[@SheWolfVal]

Excellent vid! Very good pacing and information

[@FoxtrotGolfLima]

RTA-TBC makes so much sense. When casual spectators look at gameplay, they don’t care about the time spent counting the score and continues, they care about the mechanics and buffer techniques, the actual playing of the game.

[@traviscrum5860]

An ad came up when you started talking about pause buffering and, somehow, the video is now stuck on pause. It wouldn't play no matter what I did, but is playing now that I exited and reopened the video Pausing (in the form of an ad) broke the video stream lol

[@amiiboking569]

Good day to not be a sonic 2 speedrunner

[@jordanthornton79]

Lmao real

[@osukarui]

Interesting dilemma and well presented videp!

[@JustPinging]

Love the videos man! This was an amazing one, keep it up!

[@magne7771]

Talk about catering to my interests. I'm a Road Rash 3:TDF player. Turns out, there's a pause/unpause glitch in there that feels like... having confetti cannons strapped to your bike, and just, with a *_WOOMPH,_* shunts you to one side or the other. It's the best. ...unfortunately, its banned in speedrunning, despite being... situational.

[@uchytjes10]

14:29 Great music selection. Shit activated me like a sleeper cell agent.

[@thesubinion]

lol nice Trails in the Sky music at the end there

[@Nevir202]

Can't imagine how irritated I would be to have a WR and then someone goes, "Ya, not WR anymore, we changed how we count!"

[@lenaz1178]

Dude I love your videos so much fr

[@onechippyboi]

3:30 SDA was more concerned with runs being entertaining to watch rather than enforcing rules and carefully tracking times. The rule was a way of telling runners that just because it's IGT and not RTA doesn't mean you get to submit a run that isn't a fast RTA run. They had similar rules for many different games/categories, and even if you gave them a world record they might not publish it if they thought the speedrun video itself wasn't impressive or high quality enough. Their thought process always made the most sense to me. It's a controversial debate especially because some games have speed tech that makes it miserable to watch and even play. The biggest example that comes to mind is GoldenEye and staring at the ground. Sometimes you have to ask yourself if the time savings is worth killing interest in a category. That's why it's important today for games to have good moderation and people willing to ban something or rule change if they think it will make everyone happier, even if it isn't technically the fastest.

[@garraty_9340]

very good video i like the explanations und storys about speedrunning

[@Ticci_Tobii]

I want to be able to speedrun games like a TAS bot Yk what that’s my new life goal

[@miwiki6]

Sonic speedruns are my favorite.

[@Purlan.]

half of a million people gathered just to watch how pausing breaks sonic 2 speedruns

[@AroundTheBlockAgain]

I'm kind of impressed Sonic 2 went so long without pause buffering strats

[@noob_jr_2sjrkc]

Levelhead has a very similar problem because a certain tech exists that can only be performed at 90% game speed and leaderboards only count actual playtime... meaning players can pause, change the speed, spend a fraction of a second performing the tech, then change it back to 100%.

[@DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

So why not just make a speedrunning hack that doesn’t pause the timer?

[@ismailyahya5916]

I thought i was watching some history vid lol, the writing in here is really great!

[@ThundagaT2]

I dont get why they didnt just ban pause buffering, or make it its own category

[@Back-Air]

This is probably the best solution that could’ve been done in this situation to keep the game healthy

[@wroometh9208]

koishi jumpscare right at the start of the video. awesome splits background

[@Peace-AKA-Brare-K]

I love how there’s niche different ways that gameplay mechanics affect speedruns, like this and framerules 😁 I do think they should each have their own categories though. Makes sense so people can perfect both different goals separately.

[@Formalec]

Always up to the community what they want as the timing on main leaderboard. This only means improvements in IGT will be slowed relative the RTA.

[@Mr_Pixel_Official]

I love how pausing breaks (let's you take a break) you and The game

[@ferna182]

It's funny that IGT was used to prevent "go slow to go fast" and then we ended up pausing, a.k.a "going slow" to go fast. We went full circle. Good thing they went back to RTA but only timing active gaming parts.

[@DonYagamoth]

That's a really neat summary, thank you :) I wonder if the Dark Souls 3 speedruns could (or already have?...) implemented something of that equivalent. To me it always felt silly that they spend half a minute quitting to the main menu any then immedialy loading again, in order to 'save' the time of the door opening animation. I understand why they do it, it's just the logical conclusion of how their timing method works and is best utilized - but having no penalty for saving & quitting seemed weird to me. Time to check their leaderboards again, because the runs themselves were really awesome aside from that

[@zahidlaguna9432]

What's crazy about these pause breaks is that openAI(the company that made chatGPT) held a competition to train an AI agent using reinforcement learning to play and beat Sonic 2. Someone found a way to train it to use pause break glitches, and they won the competition. This video reminded me of that, and I found it pretty cool.

[@theblackshawarma3605]

Reading the Title "Yeah, pause buffering, I don't know sonic speedruns but big whoop" After the Video "Okay... yeah, that's pretty freaking interesting"

[@ruslanemiraliyev4361]

First screen in the video speed runner, there was koishi komeiji from touhou project

[@michaelmartin9022]

I remember controllers with "turbo" and "autofire" would also have "slo-mo" switches. This actually just autofired the start button. In Sonic, where "pause" just stopped the game, this worked great. In games with a pause message, or even pause menu... noot so much.

[@swampcooler8332]

0:01 i appreciate the koishi

[@LordAziki]

Speedrunners having an incentive to practice those zips without pausing will make speedruns a lot more competitive while sticking to the spirit of speedrunning. If watching speedrun documentaries has taught me anything, it's that whenever people assume something is only possible in TAS there will be somebody crazy enough to pull it off through pure skill and dedication.

[@spyczech]

14:35 saying they "abused" pausing when it wasn't banned it applying some ex post facto type judgement

[@Afterlight411]

DID NOT expect to hear legend of heroes OST here of all places good taste in music!

[@kaldogorath]

People get so caught up in saving time that they forget that they're playing a game, it goes from playing a game well to breaking it, and in some games, not even playing the game at all through any interpretation.

[@lepopcornnaisseur546]

How does getting a bigger time bonus affect RTA? Cant you just skip the countdown by spamming "A"?

[@DudeWatIsThis]

14:05 72 hours; 30 votes - this community is tiny! Meanwhile the videos documenting speedruns are all huge. It's insane. No other forum or community on the internet gets as much attention, in regards to its size, as speedrunners.

[@crab4426]

only people who ran the game and had their runs on the leaderboard had an option to vote. It would be really stupid to listen to the people who have no clue how the timing method would change the game

[@alexohkay]

I remember doing these on metropolis act 2 and 3 as a kid, but not knowing how or why these happened.

[@JordanPurcell92]

Loved the soundtracks in the background, had to turn the volume up to make sure when I heard Dessert from Bomberman Heroes lol

[@reallegendgamer379]

Could we not just sort the leaderboard by both? You could just filter it so either in-game time or real time appeared on the leaderboard using a filter button.

[@terra_creeper]

That would somewhat defeat the purpose of a leaderboard. If first place depends on which sorting method you used, it's not really a useful leaderboard.

[@reallegendgamer379]

@@terra_creeper I mean yeah but we do have multiple categories. Maybe we could just have one category for igt and one for RT

[@terra_creeper]

@@reallegendgamer379 That would be two seperate leaderboards though, not sorting one leaderboard two ways. But I agree, splitting the leaderboard into two categories would have probably been a better solution, since both options encourage different playstyles.

[@reallegendgamer379]

@@terra_creeper yeah I realised that a filter thing defeats the purpose so that's my new thing

[@BenIsInSweden]

You can already sort the leaderboard by igt. If there are runs that are faster igt they will be included in the list instead.

[@Kuropopex]

This video makes me remember a phrase from two youtubers i watch: "You can go fast......but you really shouldn't"

[@Valientlink]

That's pretty funny actually. I always sucked at the special stages as a kid, so I'd just keep pausing and unpausing to see what was ahead lol

[@Vantoxify]

Cool video man, I enjoyed it

[@WikiHL]

Glad to see a new vid

[@n0y3s01]

You my friend are a mad man, I love it

[@nemesis3295]

Can they just have all 3 types of ranking displayed on the page?