LET'S PLAY SONIC MANIA - We all go fast together, and we all go fast forever

ME ON FRIDAY MORNING: OK TIME TO GET FOCUSED YOU CAN FINISH WRITING UP AND POSTING THIS PLAYTHROUGH BEFORE THE WEEK IS UP! WON'T THAT FEEL GOOD & COOL!

ME BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON: MAN FUCK THE INTERNET



THE INTERNET CAN FUCKING WAIT.

SONIC MANIA 12

TITANIC MONARCH ZONE
ENORMOUS KINGS
GoggleBob - FanboyMaster

The very definite last level of the game, after which there is absolutely no more game to be played! I promise.

NOTES

• TITANIC MONARCH IS MANIA'S 4TH AND FINAL BRAND NEW ZONE. And let me tell you, it's a hell of a note to go out on. If I had to pick a level it's most inspired by, I'd probably say Death Egg, but it's distinct to the point where any comparison I could make would begin and end with "They're really huge techno-fortress final levels".
• THAT SAID I DO HAVE A PRETTY SERIOUS CRITICISM RE: DEATH EGG COMPARISON. In S3&K did an incredible job of building up the Death Egg within the game's very simple story. The game constantly teases you with little glimpses of the thing to build up just how massive and important it is, so when you finally reach it you're like OH SHIT IT'S ON! Mania just sort of forgetting to do the between-level cutscenes in most of the second half of the game means titanic Monarch doesn't get the same buildup, and as such never feels quite as Earth shatteringly epic as it's predecessor. It's a very minor complaint, but presentation matters!
• THERE'S A FEW BORROWED CLASSIC GIMMICKS SCATTERED ABOUT. In most cases they're used pretty sparingly, and rarely to the point where it feels like a deliberate callback instead of just sensible level design. The one prominent exception to that design mentality comes from what I'd call one of the least likely source in the whole game: the glowing balls that you orbit around and have to time your jump off of for maximum velocity are taken from S3&K's Glowing Spheres bonus stage. Not special stage! BONUS STAGE. This game you guys!
• THIS GAME STILL PRETTY AS FUCK. the dark red level architecture looks really cool and in certain parts of Act 1 you can catch glimpses of a skyscraper-sized statue in the far background. I've seen some people claim it's supposed to be of Robotnik, and others claim it's Heavy King, and I'm not sure who's right. Whatever. Point is, it's FUCCIN SICK.
• I SPEND A REGRETTABLE AMOUNT OF TIME IN THIS VIDEO INCOHERENTLY RAMBLING ABOUT SC2VN. I'd say I'm sorry, but that would be a fucking lie. I will never allow us to forget our esports dream.
• THE ACT 1 ONE BOSS IS A RECREATION OF THE ONE FROM DEATH EGG ZONE. It's first phase is a complete re-creation, but it mixes things up in the second phase by replacing spinning platforms and lasers with gravity effects and guns that go pew pew pew. I cheese him with Super Sonic, as is my way.
• ACT 2 TAKES PLACE INSIDE THE SKYSCRAPER-SIZED EFFIGY OF EGGMAN/HEAVY KING. It's not SUPER obvious from the transition, but if you pay attention you might have picked on the fact that the Act 1 boss was fought inside an elevator, and ended with Sonic and Tails going through the doors. So that's fun.
• LIKE ALL SONIC MANIA LEVELS, IT'S MEGA-DETAILED AND FUCKING GORGEOUS. Check out the stained-glass windows of Robotnick and the Heavies in the background layers! Also all the loops are made out of lengths of heavy-duty cables zip-tied together so as to keep the wires from getting tangled! That is so cool and I didn't even notice it until literally 10 seconds ago when I paused the video to hammer out more of this writeup! OH MY GOD THIS GAME YOU GUYS
• NONLINEAR DESIGN? IN MY SONIC? After a brief intro segment, Act 2 decides to get serious and throw you into a room where you're given a choice of four paths that each teleport you to a different segment of the level. Once you pick a path, you're stuck on it until you reach the end, at which point you'll be taken back to the teleporter room, which will now have the path you just finished walled off. Beat all four paths to get to the boss! I've seem some people complain that this makes the level too long, but I honestly kind of like the sudden change of pace, and as someone who will happily play ALL THE SONIC FOREVER, I got nothing bad to say about ACT 2 really being SECRET ACTS 2 THROUGH 5.
• I CAN TOTALLY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE TELEPORTER DEAD-ENDS THO. There's a LOT of points in the SECRET ACTS 2-5 where going the wrong way will warp you back to an earlier point in the path. I guess it's better than making all of those pits instant death-traps, but it's easy to get mixed up and end up getting sent to the same respawn point 3 or 4 times before you even realize what you're doing wrong.
• I ENTER AND COMPLETE A GET BLUE SPHERES BONUS LEVEL WHICH MEANS I NOW HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT WHY I THINK THIS WASN'T THE BEST CHOICE OF CHECKPOINT-STARS BONUS STAGE LIKE I PROMISED WAY BACK IN THE PRESS GARDEN WRITEUP. Like this writeup isn't already way too long oh my god. Okay so, In this game, the Blue Spheres stages get you Emblems instead of Chaos Emeralds. You get a silver one for just finishing the bonus stage and a gold one for finishing one perfectly by getting all possible rings. These emblems are what unlock all the game's extra content, such as Mean Bean Machine and debug mode and so on. On paper, that sounds like a pretty rad way to go about unlocking the game's bonus content! So what's the problem?
• THE PROBLEM IS NONE OF THOSE UNLOCKABLES HAVE ANY EFFECT ON THE GAME YOU'RE CURRENTLY PLAYING. This essentially means you're breaking up the flow of gameplay for a reward that will only be available to you after you stop playing. Also all of those unlocks are permanent and not tied to any save file, so once you've unlocked all of them, there's literally no reason to ever jump into the stars over a checkpoint ever again. I love the blue Spheres stages! They're my favorite 16-bit era way to obtain the cool rocks, and the Mania version of the levels are the prettiest they've ever been! But I really think they should have stuck with the checkpoint Bonus Stages from S3&K, where the little minigames carried immediate in-game rewards such as rings and lives and shields! It just feels like a missed opportunity.
• AT LONG LAST WE MAKE IT TO THE FINAL BOSS! Robotnik jumps around inside a shielded orb jumping around and firing rockets at you. He can only be hurt immediately after electrifying the cables attaching him to the background, which gives you a very small window to hit him without getting hurt yourself. Every few hits one of the electrified cables will be destroyed, meaning this fight actually gets easier as it goes on.
• ALSO HE'LL OCCASIONALLY SUMMONS UP THESE HOLOGRAPHIC HANDS THAT WILL SEND YOU TO FIGHT ONE OF THE HARD BOILED HEAVIES FOR A FEW SECONDS. You can land hits on the heavies during these segments, but you'll always be sent back the main Eggman fight after a few seconds, so you're honestly better off just focusing on avoiding their various attacks.
• SO HOW'S IT STACK UP AGAINST THE CLASSIC 16-BIT SONIC FINAL BATTLES? Well it's way, way better than Sonic 1's but that's not really a high bar to clear. I'll also give it an edge over Sonic 3's for how it mixes things up by occasionally sending you to fight the Heavies. That said, it can't really match the raw impact and intensity of Sonic 2's battle against an enormous Robot with no rings for extra crushingly unfair odds. And Sonic & Knuckles' massive endgame dose of AAAAH HOLY FUCK IT'S TEN TIMES BIGGER THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WHOLE GAME AND IT'S TEARING THE WHOLE STATION APART AAAA brute force awesomeness is so far above this fight, it's not even a fair comparison. So I guess that makes it the third best CLASSIC SONIC FINAL BOSS. Not the best, but far from the worst.
• ANYWAYS I BEAT HIM, WHICH TOTALLY ENDS THE ENTIRE GAME. And that very definitely concludes this Let's Play Which is now 100% finished forever! I hope you enjoyed reading it, now that it is absolutely over, and will under no circumstances ever be updated again for any reason! See you next time!

BEAT: I mean, like half the time [a visual novel's story is] "Oh there's an anime girl, and an anime boy, they're sad, now they're kissing and they're happy." THIS AIN'T FUCKIN' SHAKESPEARE.
FanboyMaster: I mean, you basically just described Romeo & Juliet.
BEAT: That's... That's not even- ROMEO & JULIET ENDS WITH THEM SAD AND DEAD!
FanboyMaster: Yeah well that's how half the visual novels end too!
BEAT: LEARN YOUR FUCKING SHAKESPEARE!
GoggleBob: Who doesn't remember the scene in Romeo & Juliet where Juliet falls down while eating toast and then Romeo sees her panties?
BEAT: OH MY GOD.
FanboyMaster: I feel like I should point out, there is an anime version of Romeo & Juliet.
GoggleBob: There are like, three of them for some reason!
BEAT: There's an anime version of the Fucking Count of Monte Cristo! I feel like we're getting off topic here!

Hey. Hey! Gankutsuou is bomb.

It's pretty solid though I didn't feel it hung together too well by the end.

Good writeup bones.

OKAY THERE'S DEEP CUTS AND THERE'S DEEP CUTS AND THEN THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY.

That's a terrible dub.

IT WAS A CLEVAR DECEPSTION! AHAHAHA ONCE AGAIN YOU HAAVE FALLEN FOR 1 OF M Y BRILLIENT RUUSES LOLOLOLOLOL BEAT WINS AGGAIN!

NOTES

• EGG REVERIE IS THE SECRET FINAL BOSS YOU GET FOR BEATING THE GAME WITH ALL 7 COOL ROCKS. The TOP SECRET SUPER SONIC-ONLY level has been a series tradition since The Doomsday Zone, and Sonic Mania is ALL ABOUT TRADITION. So you all really should have seen this one coming.
• "EGG REVERIE" SURE IS A WEIRD NAME HUH? Weirder still is that this Zone gets no title card, and is not selectable on a completed file. As such the only way to know this level's name is to look it up online.
• SO WHAT'S GOING ON HERE ANYWAYS. Basically Robotnik and Heavy King, the only one of the Heavies that Sonic hasn't personally fought yet have gotten into a gentleman's disagreement over who gets to keep the OTHER cool rock. Also the cool rock's powers have taken them all OUTSIDE OF TIME AND SPACE, and that's why the time counter on the hud is all messed up. Sonic, who got dragged along by his own cool rocks resolves to tell both of them to quit their shit the only way he knows how: Smacking them both up! They don't like that very much, and resolve to smack Sonic in return.
• SO HOW'S ALL THAT WORK GAMEPLAY-WISE? Per TOP SECRET SUPER SONIC-ONLY rules, you're given 50 rings at the start of the level, which count down at 1 per second. Lose all 50, you die. You CAN fly around, and you get a cool air-dash that'll cost a chunk of your rings for every use, but the flight controls are kinda weird and bad, and both Heavy King and Robotnik actively seek you out, so I find it's way easier to just stand on the ground and jump into them normally. Heavy King goes on the offensive, with electric projectiles that cost you 10 rings every time they hit. Robotnick is more of a defensive fighter, preferring to shove you away with attacks that can't actually hurt you, but can keep you from attacking him long enough to run out the clock. Also there are rings floating around that gravitate towards you so you can keep your counter above zero. That too.
• WE ALL MENTION ON THE VIDEO THIS LEVEL JUST ISN'T AS GOOD AS THE DOOMSDAY. The Doomsday Zone is a pretty hard act to follow! Egg Reverie is cool, don't get me wrong, but it never quite nails the pure HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD AAAAA of chasing down Robotnik in high-earth orbit.
• THE SOFTLOCK. Sonic Mania is not a bug-free game, and I was lucky enough to catch at least one major example of that bugginess on video! In my first attempt on this dual boss, I managed to score a whole bunch of extra hits on one of Robotnik's cycles, resulting in him running out of HP much sooner than Heavy King. So when heavy King retreated after my next hit on him, Robotnik just sort of came back! Like I hadn't just killed him a second ago! And then he died again! The game wasn't sure what to do when you kill 2 bosses a total of 3 times, so it chose to just sit on the empty boss arena, without spawning either or going to the end sequence.
• SO I HAD TO RESTART THE LEVEL AND DO IT AGAIN. This time I was slightly less HELLA PRO in terms of racking up hits on Robotnik, and the game worked normally. Hooray!
• THE ENDING SEES THE COOL ROCKS COMBINE THEIR POWER, OPENING A PORTAL TO SONIC FORCES. Fun fact: Sonic Forces confirms that the Sonic series has now split into two timelines, just like in Zelda! That's fun!
• ROLL CREDITS. To everyone on that surprisingly long list, thank you very much for making a fun game I really like! And to everyone watching it now in my video, Thanks for watching! See you next time!

FanboyMaster: The best thing Q*Bert every did was put a hammer in the system! So when you lost it would just Activate the hammer!
BEAT: That's untrue. The best thing Q*Bert ever did was say swear words every time he got hurt, and then somehow appear in a Disney movie, where he STILL said swear words every time he got hurt!
FanboyMaster: It's because you couldn't tell what swear words he was saying.
BEAT: Exactly! So we all pretended they weren't swear words! But they were swear words! LET Q*BERT SAY "FUCK".

The easiest place to find the name in an official source is on the soundtrack.

Speaking of that music, do my ears deceive me, or is that...

Well! Now that we've finished the final level as Sonic, we can at last close the door on this game. It was quite a ride, wasn't it?



knock knock

Wait a minute, did you guys hear something? Maybe it was the ductwork.

knock knock

Huh, that's a bit louder. Is it coming from the door?

knock knock

OK yeah that was definitely the door. Jeez, and I just closed it. Well, OK, OK, hold your horses, let's get this open and see who it i--




Oh.


Of course it's you

COMING SOON

Oh that guy.

TOTAL dick.

At least he didn't break down the door this time

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It's Knuckleses all the way down.

THE FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE OF THIS LP IS ON

BE HERE AT 9PM EDT TOMORROW -- FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH -- WHERE I WILL SNAP INTO BEAT LIKE A SLIM JIM!

I'VE FORGOTTEN MORE ABOUT GOING FAST THAN YOU'LL EVER KNOW

IT'S HAPPPPENIIIING!!!!!

http://kadgar.net/live/BEATISHATE/the_muteKi

I am very impressed that MuteKi managed to watch both all three of the Hobbit movies AND all three of the Lord of the Rings movies, expanded editions all, between the time he beat Sonic Mania and when Beat did.

So, I got BEAT's input last night and had to go to bed before I could do anything with it, but I am looking forward to getting it and probably starting work on this once I get home from work.

Got this game on Switch and I really fucking suck at the faux Mode 7 levels.

Alas, prepping dinner took me longer than I was expecting it to (and I did start kinda late). I am hoping to get the first part of this stuff up by tomorrow, but I make no guarantees.

In lieu of this I bring you a collection of our delicious pre-race banter in a segment I call "RETURN OF TALKING TRASH LOLOLOLOL"


(depicted: me, left; BEAT, right)

ANYWAY. Our trash talking on twitter before the event started got pretty heated and I think it would do you a disservice to not share our snappy rejoinders.
I, naturally, threw the first tweet.
https://twitter.com/the_damn_muteKi/...60665789128704
BEAT came back with some Knuckles' who are ready to go:
https://twitter.com/BEAT_TWITTAR/sta...67585442787329
And I countered with an open-faced knuckles sandwich, with mushrooms -- and one of the very hands that BEAT was about to catch:
https://twitter.com/the_damn_muteKi/...69651435139072
BEAT made it clear on no uncertain terms that he had a heritage to uphold:
https://twitter.com/BEAT_TWITTAR/sta...70677248778240
And I flexed my muscles:
https://twitter.com/the_damn_muteKi/...71416037507073
And BEAT pointed out that I merely adopted the Knuckles, but he -- he was born in it:
https://twitter.com/BEAT_TWITTAR/sta...71974341427200

OUR BATTLE WAS FIERCE AND WONDEROUS.

I was going to put the first update up today but I got sidetracked by other stuff. The important thing is that the actual footage is all split and uploaded to youtube already. Hopefully the quality is decent, haven't checked yet. But since it's already on youtube I can basically start writing up summaries and posting here as soon as I have time.

YAAAAAAAAAAY!

So, when it came time to do the Knuckles mode, we weren't sure how best to do it. I wanted it to be Knuckles & Knuckles mode specifically but beyond that I didn't have any particular thoughts on how. BEAT decided that a race would be a great idea -- Knuckles & Knuckles mode has to be done in one sitting since there's no savegame feature, and it allows us both to play it. Because it's a competition with Knuckles, my mind immediately went to the idea of staging this a bit like a wrestling competition, and thus I went right to doing wrestling promos and general ridiculousness, hence the last few posts I've made in this thread.

To that end, the first 15 minutes or so of this video are of us setting up, establishing some aspects of the wrestling gimmick, establishing the ground rules of the competition, that sort of thing. If you just want the knuckling, then you can skip past that, but I got a kick out of it and wanted to keep as much of it in as possible.

Since the nature of the race means that we can't easily divide segments up into zones as cleanly, I've split the videos into roughly equal portions and tried to make the divisions as elegant as possible.

• THE CREAM RISES TO THE TOP: If you haven't seen this Randy Savage promo, you should. We reference it a bunch over the course of the race. While my promo was unscripted, I did at least take a bunch of Randy Savage and Ric Flair promos as reference for it, to get that specific level of sublime ridiculousness befitting a Knuckles race.
• KNUCKLES STARTED AT THE BOTTOM: Knuckles has a unique intro to Green Hill Zone! We start below Sonic, inside the Green Hill caves, meeting up with the Sonic/Tails lowest route somewhere around a third to just under halfway through the level. There are a few areas that Knuckles has to use his climbing to get through a la the first part of Mushroom Hill Zone, which provides an excellent introduction to his abilities.
• A TRULY SPECIAL EVENT: We agreed as part of the terms of the race that we would run all the special stages; failing would be disqualification. In practice for serious speedrunners, Knuckles runs would still get all the emeralds because the long term benefits are much higher (and the earliest releases had some major skips that allowed them to be completed in a matter of seconds -- not true on the PC version, so we take out a few minutes) due to Super Knuckles' increased speed and invincibility.
• SOUNDING OFF: All the in-game noise is from my version. Sorry folks, it was easiest for me to just edit in my video and add BEAT's footage without his audio. Otherwise it probably would have been just a bit too cacophonous. I wasn't going to do the whole "runner in first has their audio on" a la GDQ just because that's too much work and it's already taken too long to get these out. Ultimately, I am lazy.
• THIS IS A RACE, BUT IT'S NOT QUITE WHAT YOU'D THINK OF AS A STANDARD SONIC MANIA SPEEDRUN: No glitches/clipping/cutting through corners. A good speedrun of Knuckles mode takes maybe 50-something minutes. We certainly don't get anywhere near that time. But our time loss is your gain as that means much more LP content to watch!
• BEAT GETS THE EMERALDS FASTER: Well, I for one believed a clean run meant not cutting corners. Actually that's not quite true -- my questionable performance is more that I hadn't practiced or touched the special stages since the last run I did of the game which you can find on the HG101 youtube channel. As a result I played pretty conservatively for the first few stages where it was neither advisable nor necessary. In any case you do have to be at least Lv 2 speed to catch the emerald in basically all cases in the PC version, because of the weird rubberband mechanic they added to stop the speedrun mechanic mentioned above.
• WE MENTION BEAT'S BACHELOR PARTY SHENANIGANS: Or perhaps it was the afterparty. Either way, they turned Streets of Rage into a drinking game; if you caught some of it on their livestream it was maybe even more ridiculous than it sounded. We on the other side of internet land believed they were just getting water after a certain point, but apparently this was false? Either way, it was an intense moment (it's a wonder y'all still have livers, frankly!). We weren't as drunk during this race, but we had both had some alcohol going in and had some more going out. You can definitely detect my inebriation right from the start based on my performance. I figured I wasn't going to do much worse than BEAT in the worst case at the start, and expected to start pulling ahead by Flying Battery 2 or so.
• I SHOW OFF ANOTHER KNUCKLES ROUTE IN CHEMICAL PLANT: In general there aren't too many places where Knuckles route diverges mid-act as a matter of necessity (like, say, Carnival Night 2 in Sonic 3), but I figured that I'd show off one of those areas. Granted, Chemical Plant 2 is pretty large and has a number of diverging routes so we still wouldn't have seen all of the level either way.
• BEAT'S SPECIAL STAGE PERFORMANCE PULLS HIM AHEAD THOUGH OUR EMERALD COUNT IS CLOSE: The time saved in the special stages puts him up by one boss encounter at this point. We close this episode with Knuckles finishing out the mean bean machine boss while Knuckles is just about to start it. Will Knuckles retain his lead, or will Knuckles manage to cut ahead in the coming stages? Keep watching to find out!
• I DON'T HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THESE LEVELS BECAUSE THEY KEEP SHOWING UP TIME AND AGAIN AND AM STARTING TO GET SICK OF THEM ACTUALLY: Every time. Every time they do a throwback/revival game like this these are the first two levels. Sonic Pocket Adventure? A Green Hill remake, and then a Chemical Plant remake. Sonic Generations? Literally those two exact zones. Sonic Heroes? A variant on Green Hill with the checkerboard-textured islands, and then a techno-factory-metropolis. EVEN SONIC FORCES' FIRST TWO LEVELS ARE GREEN HILL AND CHEMICAL PLANT. It's ridiculous. I'm getting tired of this! You don't have to put these levels in your game! You can branch out a little! At least act 2 of Chemical Plant puts in a little variation with the bouncy floors based on Wacky Workbench. While this time around the floors are more interesting because they help you on your way through the level (since it's vertically oriented) rather than push you away from the end of the level (you still had to go left-to-right in Wacky Workbench, and the floors took you out of the main path into what amounted to punishment zones). Probably the most effective and significant change in just about any level in this game. Makes Chemical Plant a little more interesting.

EDIT: Oh right there's usually a quote from the video that closes these posts out. Let's fix that:

MorningSongs: I have to wonder if this is some sort of a religious festival, because I'm seeing a lot of fasting!
FanboyMaster: Wow. Wow. Well, crime has occurred.

All the videos are on my youtube channel, unlisted. But I left my phone at home and thus can't log into my youtube account (yay 2-factor). So the next update will be tonight. Get Hype

• I ENTER THE BEAN MACHINE: The worst thing about setting up a combo chain is when you screw up and wind up messing up your big ol' combo chain by setting up something too early or misplace an extra set of puyos and block yourself out of a massive combo. This boss is pretty easy (as we'd noted) but can be time-consuming if you screw up. By the way, if you DO happen to lose, you fall into a pit and die instantly, right there on the spot. Don't let that happen.
• I SCREW UP: Guess who got overconfident, tried to go for extra rings he probably didn't need, and fell right out of the first special stage in Studiopolis? BEAT successfully completes that stage without much issue so I'm down a stage for a while, but I do pick up the emerald later in the stage. Not too far behind, but BEAT has already gotten the 7th.
• I SCREW UP AGAIN: This one's subtle, but I take a slightly longer detour to the bottom of the stage to get the third special stage (in Studiopolis 1)...and immediately overshoot it. Not a huge time loss but one more chance for an emerald out of my grasp.
• AND THEN BEAT SCREWS UP: Was I trying to get BEAT overconfident enough to abandon his post and lose time as the extra knuckles knocks away the missiles he needs to throw into Heavy Gunner that he thought Super Knuckles would be able to do automatically? No, but that's what happens! I'm still slightly behind, but by a special stage and maybe less than a minute of stage time.
• AND THEN I SCREW UP ONE MORE TIME FOR GOOD MEASURE: I could have cut ahead if I didn't miss special stage 7 the first time. Cue my inner John McEnroe YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS IT WAS ON THE LINE THE CHALK FLEW UP IN THE AIR I WAS RIGHT NEXT TO THE DAMN UFO THAT EMERALD WAS MINE.
• WE TALK A LOT ABOUT SEGA'S GBA OFFERINGS: Some of them were pretty good. Competent handheld multicart with the old Super Scaler games (OutRun, Space Harrier, Super Hang-On, After Burner)! Jet Set Radio Future running on the surprisingly quality Tony Hawk GBA engine! Some of them were ambitious but flawed. Phantasy Star Collection. Sega Rally. Heck, Super Monkey Ball Jr. has been surpassed but it looks pretty nice. But then there are some really significant fuckups: Revenge of Shinobi (what even is this game)? Altered Beast: Guardian of the Realms? Perhaps the most egregious is the shoddy Sonic 1 port known as Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis that came out in 2006, which within the year or so had been completely surpassed by one Simon "Stealth" Thomley's attempt to port Sonic 1 to GBA accurately. Granted, Thomley's previous work had already hinted at a desire to port Sonic 1 to every possible system available (he had previously made a proof of concept for Sega CD, among others) and he continued to do so by way of the Sonic 1 Android port -- yes, he's a major part of the development team here, represented under the "Headcannon" brand.
• I DO FINALLY GET THE LAST EMERALD: And before Flying Battery Zone!
• I COULD PROBABLY WRITE AN ENTIRE ESSAY OR TWO ON THE MUSIC OF STUDIOPOLIS 2: So like one of the biggest names in TV composing is Edd Kalehoff. You might know him as the "Monday Night Football" theme guy. Or the "ABC Nightly News" guy! He has a sample of some of his work in this link. The heavy drums in the intro, with the piano and horn backing are all peak Kalehoff. Look under "News Packages" at Power News, Target News, and Entertainment News in particular. But what gets me is that it doesn't just sound like Edd Kalehoff news package -- it's probably inspired by the intro to Emerald Hill Zone from Sonic 2. And then after that it turns into a slightly more uptempo, jazzy bit where a synthesizer bit is layered in parallel with a bell or chime, which is also another Edd Kalehoff signature bit, and maybe the one he's most famous for -- and pairs appropriately with this level's other theme of classic game shows. That's right, Edd Kalehoff composed most of the music used in The Price is Right's incarnation running from 1972 to this very day, including the universally-known theme song. It's almost a wonder that it's not actually a pricing game song from the show, because it genuinely gets me every time how uncannily similar it sounds, despite me not having a direct, clear reference to use for it -- and I know from TPIR music cues, because I did a hack way back in like 2012 where I put several of them into a Sega CD port of Sonic 1 (not the one mentioned previously, this one is intended to be run from a cartridge and uses the Sega CD to play extra audio). This was genuinely a lot of work in searching, pairing, editing, and whatnot. I got a short shoutout over it a couple years later on Kotaku. I'm certainly not the only one to do something like this -- there are a few Genesis-compatible renditions of the theme song but to my knowledge I'm the only one to do a total music replacement like this, even if it is just literally the actually TV show rips. I've had some thoughts on actually adapting all these tunes to the format Sonic 1 actually uses, but it would be even more labor intensive and it would probably take me the better part of a year to work on. Also I was drunk and totally on my bullshit too. But I did it. It's there! You can play it via a real sega cd and flashcart, or load it up in Fusion! I think the files are all still on my dropbox!
• THE BOSS TO STUDIOPOLIS 2 IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS AS KNUCKLES: Tails can hit the boss at almost any time due to his tail attack. Sonic can hit him easily as Super Sonic or with the electric shield. Knuckles though? Poor Knuckles has to wait like a chump through most of the battle, making it a bit dependent on randomness. He can't be hit at all during the thundercloud attack, he can be hit during the wind attack only as Super Kncukles, but anyone can hit him during his sun attack, where the cute weather cluckoid badnik displays a ridculous number of degrees for the temperature. Speaking of a ridiculous number of degrees, here's another great Randy Savage promo commenting on his nigh-continuous heel and face turns and one of the ones I used as reference in making mine. Speaking of which...
• AND THE BEAT GOES ON: Though BEAT's capturing seems to have stalled out at a couple points in this video, he's still playing and making progress, it's just not reflected in the footage here. I don't know if the footage from his Twitch stream had this issue but based on the fact that there were no reactions from the other commentators about it I suspect something odd went wrong on my end when trying to render this all together. Because I ended up behind in Studiopolis by a couple emeralds, he winds up getting ahead of me by maybe closer to half a stage once I get them all.
• AND THEN THE BEAT GOES OFF: Well, then something does go wrong on BEAT's end and we pause for a few minutes of technical difficulties. I did not cut this out, because despite all the wrestling stuff, we were doing a legitimate race with no scripts and no funny business, and I did not want you to think something untoward happened during the pause. It's maybe a minute or two. I should probably have used this chance to take a bathroom break.
• FLYING BATTERY 1 IS PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD: It's almost the same as S3K's rendition after the first area. Once you get to the upper outside area it's basically exactly the same on the upper routes, which are fastest.
• FLYING BATTERY 1'S BOSS IS HARDER AS KNUCKLES: The lack of jump height isn't as painful as in Studiopolis since the laser does eventually get in range, but it takes a little longer to do so.
• FLYING BATTERY 2 IS HUGE AND PRETTY DEADLY: I'm pretty sure I got a time over on this level the first time through. I was searching for the window shopping achievement -- there's only one area, maybe 2/3 of the way through on the upper routes, where you can get it. This level is really long even then and can take over 6 minutes for even a skilled player taking those routes. But the bottom route is the speedrunner's choice, but it's also the deadliest due to the presence of near-constant death pits. I still take it, because I need to catch up and I think I can get by without dying. As it turns out, I can, and we finish this level nearly tied up at the boss -- in fact, I'm just barely ahead.
• ALL OUR TALKING ABOUT WEIRD SEGA PORTS SUMMONS SOME ODD CREATURES INTO EXISTENCE: Well, no, not quite. Sega had announced an event on this day (2018 Apr. 13) for a while, and announced a bunch of stuff, most of which is related to ports and re-releases. Shenmue 1 and 2 coming to XBox, PS4, and PC! Sega Ages for Switch including Thunder Force IV, Sonic 1 (Genesis emulation a la the 3DS version, not the Android port by the guys who made this game), and Phantasy Star (which it should be noted is more like the M2 collection for PS2, not the rereleased and expanded 3D Ages remake from the 2500 series called "Phantasy Star Generation I", which I would have liked to have seen, but is pretty text-heavy which might be the reason we're not seeing it. Alas, if you were hoping for that, don't hold your breath.
• THE SPIDER BOSS HERE IS ALSO A LITTLE HARDER AS KNUCKLES TOO: The point where the craft gets out of reach obviously happens sooner, and when the boss is out of reach it's difficult to actually hit it into the spikes. We're both Super Knuckles at this point anyway, so it's mostly a moot point.
• IT'S STILL ANYBODY'S GAME: Again, we're so close to being tied we may as well be. Uncanny. Will I finally get a chance to overtake BEAT in the coming stages (Press Garden and Stardust Speedway)?

There are so many good quotable bits from this episode, but I have to go with this one:
GoggleBob: Can we, uh, interrupt for one moment just to acknowledge --
FanboyMaster: BEAT's wonderful strategy is not working
GoggleBob: Apparently the missiles are just hitting Bonus Knuckles.
Fanboy: Well, yeah, they're hitting Bonus Knuckles which is screwing BEAT over really hard.
me: [laughing]
BEAT: OK, I'm back, did I beat the boss yet?
EVERYONE: NO!!

By the way, here's where that other Price is Right music rendition came from. I could have sworn at least one other game had it in there but I must be misremembering.

ALSO (edit) I think I found the cue I was thinking of. It's apparently referred to as "Phaser" and the main melody is probably the closest to the pre-chorus in Studiopolis: