Speedrunning Activity

[W.I.P.]

''' This Page goes over speedrunning in Sonic Pulse. Crossover does not have a speedrunning community. '''

New Physics Update (test phase)
While the main game was still in a very unevolved phase, Suggyiem was working on new physics for the game. With these physics came a new parkour course for people to try and test out said physics. Back in this stage of the game, movements like the spindash and homing dashes were far more powerful than the ones you see in the current game.

One of the Discord's now well known members, Яаvеn, decided to try to speedrun this course to see how fast they could beat it. They uploaded a video to their YouTube channel titled "Trying to speedrun Sonic Pulse's parkour, I guess." This was the beginning of Pulse speedrunning and what started it all along. As time went on, more people tried speedrunning the course, however Яаvеn remained the main record holder.

The World Update
After some time in development, the physics in Pulse were altered to the ones seen in-game today. These physics also came with a brand new parkour course, which people also began to speedrun, but once again, Яаvеn remained the main record holder, with a time of 26 seconds from the starting line to the finish.

Introduction of Speedrunner R2RO
It was around this time, that the Discord member, R2RO, found interest in speedrunning Sonic Pulse. R2RO was a former speedrunner in the Naughty Dog Crash Bandicoot games, having done a few Crash Team Racing speedruns in his time. He was also personally into speedrunning as a whole, which drives him into studying a game's mechanics. R2 was not like Яаvеn, he had much less experience, but he spent his time optimizing the existing route to run it even faster. About a week after Яаvеn's 26 second time, R2RO responded with a 25 second time of his own. R2 speedran on his phone, which allowed for slightly more specific directional inputs, but overall less control and efficiency over PC.

As time went on, R2 and Яаvеn traded a few world record times, as the time got lower and lower. All of a sudden, milliseconds became more important and much more significant to Pulse speedrunning, which is why they were soon added to the new times. This is where the era of the 22 second run begins.

The sub 22 second run
Over time, the Pulse WR became less and less forgiving. The current record had been set by R2RO, who'd achieved a 22.9 second time. Eventually, he would go on to beat the time and trim it down to 22.5 seconds. It was then, when people started recognizing him as a Pulse speedrunner. R2 would go on hours daily non stop to try and get the sub 22 second run, but after a long time of trying, he eventually gave in. Leaving the record at 22.5 seconds for a whole month.

During this period of time, even Яаvеn had gotten bored of speedrunning Pulse competitively. That is, until a month later, a user by the name of Xstatik, would beat R2RO's 22.5 run, with a 22.4 of his own. After viewing the run, one could see that XStatik found a different route in the course, which turned out to be just fast enough to best R2's time. This time stayed record for a stunning... 2 hours. Яаvеn had seen the speedrun and decided to give the route a go, and responded with a time of 21.231 seconds. Soon after, R2RO optimized the route further and came back with a 20.5 second time on October 10th, 2020. This time was later accused of sped up footage, however, given plenty evidence, the time was soon proven legitimate by Suggyiem.

Introduction of R2 skip
About a month after R2's 20.5 second time, pretty much everyone had stopped speedrunning Sonic Pulse. The 20 second time was assumed to be the best possible time and people moved on. That included Яаvеn and R2RO. On October 31st however, R2RO discovered something truly game breaking. A never before seen strat even Suggyiem never saw coming. This strat consisted of a runner aligning themselves perfectly while running up the upper path of the mountain. If one was positioned right, they could skip the entirety of the mountain section. This skip was later named R2 skip, after its discoverer. On the very same day, R2RO uploaded the legendary 17.8 second time using the new R2 skip. This would remain the Mobile WR until even today.

This skip attracted the attention of yet another speedrunner, Eveefun. Similarly to R2RO, Eveefun had a lot of speedrunning experience, only that his was more professional than R2's and became a rival to him. It took a few months since the 17 second run for this to occur however. But when it was, Eveefun came back with a stunning 17.3 second time to clear the course. A lot of the time saved was due to R2 speedrunning on his phone, which had a sizeable amount of lag. This cost him the record. Over time, they would trim down the time severely by just improving their lines and movement angles. The record jumped to a 16.5 second time. It took a long time for R2 to beat this time, as he wasn't really into Pulse anymore at the time. But ultimately, on December 26th, 2020, R2 finally beat the record with a 16.481 time of his own, using a PC device to make up for his lag issues. This, even today, remains the WR for the game. Now things have calmed down. And the Green Isles parkour, is finally laid to rest.