Sonic 2 | Emerald Hill Zone | Act 1 Speedrun in 19 Seconds!
7I FINALLY DID IT! I AM NOW OFFICIALLY AMONG THE ELITE SUB-20 CLUB!
Check the description here for my final thoughts on this run, because oh man do I have a lot to say after dedicating myself to this 35 hour long journey. What a grind, man.
This run has been a long, LONG time coming. In fact, this run is now six months in the making. Six months since I first posted a 20 second run that I recorded for an Amino contest, followed by HUNDREDS of subsequent 20 second runs in the months that followed on my quest to get this 19. In total, since committing to getting this 19 last summer, I have spent over 35 hours grinding out serious attempts at getting this time. This easily ranks up there among my longest grinds for a single IL record.
In spite of that, it's these kinds of grinds that are one of the biggest reasons why I love speedrunning so much, because these kinds of grueling runs that demand so much precision execution & movement, that force me to strive to play as perfectly as I possibly can at all times, are always the ones that are the most rewarding to see through to the end, simply because there is nothing that compares to the feeling I get of finally triumphing in the face of adversity that the grind inevitably becomes. It was just past 3 AM when I got this run, and believe me, I wanted to chant Sweet Victory and wake up the god damn house over this.
This was an undertaking on the level of my 25.32 second run on SAdv3's Sunset Hill 2 for me, in the sense that this is a time I knew I was just barely capable of getting, one that would take me a lot of time and effort to get, and it pushed me to try my absolute hardest and play to the best of my ability in every single attempt. It forced me to learn how to react to every single scenario that could possibly be thrown at me to keep as many runs alive as possible, to consider every option I had to optimize my strategy and give me the best odds of getting a 19, no matter how nonsensical, in addition to figuring out which strategies were the most consistent to go for, which ones I should go for in situations where the strategy I want to do wouldn't work, etc. Speedrunning to me is the art of mastering the strategies that work the best for you and getting the best time that you possibly can with them.
There were many times throughout this grind where I wanted to give up, where I felt like I would never get the 19 second run I so desire, because many times throughout this grind, I missed the 19 by only one or two frames. In fact, it happened 3 times in the final 2 hour grind that led to this run, and every time, I was absolutely devastated, knowing I was so close, and yet so far from my goal. It's hard to keep going when you watch yourself miss the mark by a hair time after time, knowing that you only had to be a tiny bit better to punch it in. That you made a tiny, minuscule mistake that cost you the run somewhere.
Now that the quest is over, and I now have a 19 of my own, and a decisive one at that, upon watching everything back, I could not be happier seeing everything finally come together in the wee hours of the morning, just as I was getting ready to quit for the night. I had less than five minutes left on the video I had going in the background, and I told myself that if I didn't get it by then, that would be it for the night. What a clutch time for this run to finally come together.
Pulling off runs like this allows me to show the tremendous power of the human spirit, that if you set your mind to something, and you stick with it, and you give it your all, you really can do anything. Thanks for reading my ramblings, I have no idea what run I'm even going to attempt now that I have finally put this behind me, but whatever it ends up being, I hope you guys will continue to stick with me. Have a good day.
-hfactor66
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