All the S@nics - the end

[Crow]

sonic: you're too slow! i'm the fastest thing alive!
tails: WHEAT

[Count Mohawk]

And that closes the chapter of the Emeralds for this cycle.
It feels a little bad that the Tails run is "tainted" by the need to find the Special Springos, but he is the objectively best character to go searching for them, so, in the end, what can you do?
Now for Knuckles and Amy.

Also, regarding the thing you do after getting the Emeralds:

do you have to start at Cosmic Angel to unlock the Moon Zone, or can you start directly at the normal route final boss? On my cartridge it dumps me into the normal ending if I specifically start from X Zone, but that might be because I already have Moon Zone unlocked.

[Bean]

After beating the game as the other two,

you will have to play X-Zone as Sonic again. It's like how Sonic & Knuckles would end pre-Doomsday Zone in that regard.

Edit: I have a question. Are we allowed to explain controls that are in the instruction booklet or would that count as a spoiler? It won't make the game any easier since the ones I want to mention are Sonic's, and at this point, that wouldn't help on the series.

[raocow]

nah it's fine, go ahead

[Bean]

Cool. You know about Sonic's mid-air dash, but he also uses the B button for combos. B+B is a quick little somersault forward, and you can B a third time for a sliding kick for ground-based enemies (perfect on the snowman dudes in Ice Mountain) or A after that B+B combo to do a backflip which doesn't really come in handy that much from what I remember.

You did everything Tails could do. His deal is just being easy mode and literally skipping entire parts of levels. At the start of Egg Rocket, he can flat-out fly up once the countdown timer starts and you go down that first slope. Saves you a good minute or so.

Knux will be Knux for the most part, but Amy's run should be interesting since she has a lot of moves and quirks that you wouldn't know about... and ones that I didn't know at the time either! Don't remember how helpful they are, but I'll bring any up that you don't discover on your own at some point.

[kitikami]

The Special Zone is now outta mind, outtasite

[Grounder]

sonic is the only character that actually struggles with the snow zone boss and it's kind of hilarious

ah, a reminder to look up amy's moveset, it's way more vital to playing her than it is for the others

[Leet]

You used "a place i dont understand" 6 times in this video, this is an intervention

[Crow]

"a place i don't know"

sayonara wild hearts would make a great rao-LP if it wasn't like 2 hours long i'm not spending a potential royal pick on that sorry

[Mandew]

Sonic may be fast, but his speed also tempts him to take the long, scenic route. Because he can.
Tails is more focused. He prefers taking the shortest path available. Because that's the only way he would keep up with Sonic.
Knuckles just punches through in a direct line between him and his destination. Because he's the most serious of them all.

[Grounder]

[Crow]

i'm not updating the map for knuckles as there aren't really significant differences between other characters imo sorry rao
sonic and tails are the two extremes and knuckles mostly has to follow a sonic-y path but occasionally gets to take a shortcut that's it also i'd have to rewatch the half of the level you already did if i wanted to start it now, which i don't

[Crow]

i lied

[Piesonscreations]

The crux of that Knuckles story was not going to a barbeque, when the only time I can recall where something like that happened in the games, he did go to that barbeque/picnic.

[kitikami]

Knuckles has the worst boss design in the game because the game gives you a fire punch and then punishes you for trying to use it to fireman the boss.

[Crow]

i come from the future to present amy's egg rocket

[Bean]

Once you got the hang of using Amy there, you really got on a roll even if she can't do that on her own. Don't know how that will translate over into her final few stages, but she's definitely one of the more fun oddball gameplay styles they came up with.

[helucard]

I like how you note that Amy is really powerful, and once you get past the unfortunate character, she's pretty amazing.

I distinctly remember this one scene of Sonic X because it actually represented it pretty well.
Context; Eggman makes a robot, it breaks the bracelet she made for sonic, and she's distraught over it.
Meanwhile, Sonic's not taking the robot seriously. He's just playing with the thing.
Before it has a chance to even become a potential threat, Amy's diving on it, hammer swinging, tearing it chunk from chunk.
Then crushes the head and springs from it, flinging Eggman into the ocean, and then lands on him with a tsunami causing impact.

I vaguely remember another scene where she throws her hammer, Eggman gets all cocky because now she doesn't have one, and she snaps her fingers and it appears in her hand in a puff of smoke. She's NEVER not going to have dangerous combat potential.

TL;DR, she's very capable of wrecking anyone's day.

[Leet]

Her character isn't even bad in Adventure. Like I said at the time though, sadly that is the end of her having her own character

[Bean]

Yeah, the real bad thing about Amy is her obsession with Sonic. That's literally her whole character until the later games. When they toned that down in later games, she got way better. Go figure.

[Grounder]

I'd feel more sympathy for rao getting hit by traps if he didn't keep falling for the same ones every single time and then blaming the game.

Anyway, that was Amy.

[Crow]

amy takes tails-sized shortcuts in a few places

[Crow]

the big reveal; the paths + the level map, together at last

[helucard]

Thank you very much for your diligent mapping of everyone's GPS trail, Cyril :3c
Pretty amazing to see it all assembled like this.

[raocow]

I love it!