Sonic Adventure: A-Button Challenge - Red Mountain (0)
0Argh, the pain! The deep-frying pain!
So in my LB of SA1 about two and a half years ago, I advertised a series I was gonna do where I'd complete levels in Sonic Adventure while jumping as few times as possible. Well, I never did that, favouring such oddities as Let's Plays and Sonic-only runs of Heroes stages. So I've decided that now, of all times, I should remedy this. Welcome, one and all, to Let's Break Sonic Adventure In A Different Way: A-Button Challenges!... or the SA1 No-Jump Run for short.
Red Mountain is awesome. It's a volcano stage, a mountain stage, and a vertigo stage all in one, and is sporting some of the most kickass music in gaming history. "Mt. Red: a Symbol of Thrill" is probably the most immersive musical piece to ever bless my childhood, and the whole of the Red Hot Skull section is the definition of intensity. I can't get enough of this level, which is why I was willing to put in THREE HOURS recording this stage for the no-jump challenge.
This stage plays a lot more with the concept of Light Dash manipulation. Much of this stage is a play-by-feel thing, and even more so in the no-jump speedruns of this level (no, seriously, it's possible to get sub-two minutes on this stage WITHOUT jumping. Look that up some time, though I may revisit this stage again meself whenever I do Ice Cap without glitching). However, we already covered everything you should know about the Dash, though it's worth noting that the Dash at 0:43 can actually launch you up and into the spring with good aim and a bit of luck.
GRAVITY:
Gravity's programmed weird in SA1. They tried to do stuff with momentum as a "stick to walls when going fast because gravity actually pushes you into the vertical wall" shortcut... and that can do some pretty weird stuff when you try to make the jump at 3:50, among a billion other exploitable locations in this game. Those of you familiar with the WR speedruns of Lost World (the level, not the game) should know what I'm talking about when I bash SA1 gravity. Anyway, the whole trick to mastering That. One. Jump. in this level is familiarizing yourself with how gravity will kick in after coming off the wall. Sonic basically does this weird swooshy thing whenever righting his gravity coming off a wall, and manipulating that to get you onto either available platform up high is the key to mastering that section. Good luck, 'cuz you're gonna need it.