Sonic 1 (SMS) Max Special Bonus speed run [26:37 RTA-TB]
38Upon completing this game you receive three bonuses: 20000 for every emerald you collect, 5000 for every extra life you have remaining, and a "Special Bonus" that is never explained anywhere.
As it happens, there are five different challenges you can complete throughout the game that contribute to the special bonus:
Collecting all 6 emeralds - 50,000 points
Collecting all 18 lives (one on every level) - 50,000 points - Interestingly, the one on Sky Base 3 only spawns if you have collected all the other 17 first
Playing all 8 bonus stages - 50,000 points
Completing all 8 bonus stages - 50,000 points
Not losing a life - 100,000 points
If you manage to achieve all of those things, you'll get a 200,000 bonus, coming to a massive 500,000 points overall.
In a sense, that makes this a kind of "perfect run" playthrough, since if any of the requirements are failed, the run is over. In particular, the requirement not to lose a single life is quite brutal, especially in some of the later stages with semi-blind jumps. I found the hardest to be Labyrinth 3, since collecting the extra life and getting out without dying requires some very tight jumps - in particular the very last one, for which I ended up just bringing a shield from the previous stage to save my sanity.
Also note that this run is timed using the RTA-TB method - the real time minus the time taken for time bonuses to count down. This removes any potential incentive to complete stages slower in order to get a more favourable time bonus.
Enjoy the run!
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Michael McKenzie currently has 111,701 views spread across 18 videos for Sonic the Hedgehog. The game makes up 11 hours of published video on his channel, roughly 5.28% of Sonic the Hedgehog content that Michael McKenzie has uploaded to YouTube.