Sonic glitches that have worked in your favor

One I've started using recently (though it's less a glitch and more of a collision oversight) is during the countdown at the end of Metal Harbor, I spindash on one of the slants to get to the higher area by the light speed dash trail to the higher handle. There is no collision on the bottom side of the platforms there.

Saves several seconds, but still can't get an A rank for the life of me.

 

I learned to get past the barrel via the transformation glitch before learning the proper way, so an emphatic YES.

 

In Green Hill Act 1 in Generations there's a spot in the beginning where it pushes you a considerable amount across the stage if you spin dash and jump at the right time/space.

Good for speed running.

 

In Sonic Rush Adventure, if you jump immediately after releasing the spin dash during boss fights you can break the speed cap and go at the speed you can normally go during regular levels. Really helps if you're going for S ranks.

 

I'm quite sure some glitch worked on my favor at some point, but I can't remember a single one of those times. The only one I remember was only useful as a novelty exploit that became counterproductive on the long run and thus non-beneficial: at the very first act in 8-bit Sonic 1, if you roll down the curved ramp and hold forward not only while rolling, but also when leaving the ramp, you'll fly to the end of the act and stop only when hitting the right boundary of the level. This is insanely fast but will leave you encased on the signpost area with very few rings, thus preventing you from entering special stage and getting the related secret bonuses at the end of the game. Getting rings and coming back will take you more time than finishing the act proper, so good for fun but not for anything else.

Oh, I also tried the layer glitch at the end of CPZ2 that allows you to past through the loop at the top of the drowning pit once I knew about it just to test it out, but only that time; I never abuse that kind of things when playing proper.

 

A friend and I were playing '06 co-op multiplayer way back in the day and when we were down to 1 live left (lives are shared in Co-op), we both died at the same time. '06 being the buggy mess that it is didn't know how to handle this and so instead of going down to 0 lives or giving a game over like it would normally do, it rolled over to 99. That was good... Until another friend who was totally useless managed to burn through all of them in Dusty Desert. Granted that level is exceptionally bad in multiplayer (you go through Shadow's indoor section with some very finnicky tubes over bottomless pits), it still annoyed me that results of this awesome glitch got wiped out and we could never replicate it.

I may be bit wrong about the specifics of how the lives counter managed to roll over; like if there were any specific circumstances concerning the way we lost the lives, whether we were on 1 or 0 or what the timing was. I think it was some super specific timing that caused 1 to be subtracted from the lives counter before the game over fade out was triggered.

 

Yeah, it's one of those things that take a bit to practice and figure out, but it's something that's abused a lot in speed runs. There's a decent tutorial on how to do it.

 

D/M-Speed killed the online leaderboards and especially the super-fun 30 second trials. There was absolutely no point in participating in either when the game had such an easy glitch that up-ended the entire process of setting records.

 

I've accidentally zipped myself to the end of the act several times, Hill Top being a notable example. I remember a similar glitch involving Hyper Sonic and the crushers in Marble Garden, but I've never been able to replicate it.

 

This also goes for Rush, but doesn't help nearly as much as the bosses are much more static.

 

I always hated how they made it far more difficult to do in Generations - Unleashed feels way more fun to speedrun when you abuse stuff like that. Alas, it wasn't intended so I can't get too upset.

I think I accidentally did the Metropolis Zone skip once by getting pushed through the lava pit as a kid.

 

It's only natural for the speed-game to change drastically upon discovery of a game-breaking speed glitch. I mean, look at literally any Nintendo game's (especially Mario and Zelda) speed-game.

 

I mean yes, it is natural, but for me personally it's not fun to watch. It's not fun to watch someone avoid playing the game.

 

Back in the day I discovered a loop layer collision glitch in Sonic Advance 1 and didn't think it could be useful. Zeupar proved me wrong and used it to set a record on Angel Island 1.

 

Is it not the nature of speed-game to avoid time spent playing as much as possible? If you're not a fan of that, then maybe high-level speed-running isn't something you're all that interested in; I can almost guarantee you that most games with an active speed-running community have some kind of endlessly high skill-ceiling due to some absurd exploits or glitches.

 

That's kinda what I meant. I don't know if there's such a thing as glitch-less speedruns, so I don't bother with it. More power to those who enjoy it, but they can keep it.