Guide for Sonic The Hedgehog (Arcade)

For this run, you'll be collecting all six (there were only six in the first game) Chaos Emeralds, then finishing the game. Don't try to kill two birds with one stone and finish the game in under 40 minutes at the same time; it'll be a lot more of a hassle without knowing the game first, and replaying the game won't take that long anyway. Getting a Chaos Emerald requires you to obtain 50 rings as you finish a level. Doing this will cause a giant ring to appear past the goal post; jumping into it will take you to a special stage with a Chaos Emerald inside. You can get a Chaos Emerald in every Act except for any Act 3 stages, as well as any Acts inside the final Zone, the Scrap Brain Zone. It's highly suggested that you get your six emeralds in the first six levels it's possible to get them in, as the levels get somewhat harder as the game progresses. The videos will show you one way of collecting the 50 required rings, as well as my fumbling around the special stages to get the Chaos Emerald.

Make sure you save frequently to avoid any fatal or disruptive mistakes. With the three save files you can use, it's suggested that you use one for the start of each level, and one to use during the level; that way, if you mess up by saving at a point where you can't escape losing rings or dying, you'll at least have the level's start to fall back on. You can get a much better look at each map by clicking on it; it should be opened in a new tab for you, so you won't lose your place in the walkthrough.

Green Hill Zone

For the first level, you'll want to actually get 100 rings, so you can get an easy achievement out of the way. The video will reflect this as well, if you prefer watching those instead of reading how to find your hundred rings. Pick up the first three right in front of you, and jump up to the ring container on the ledge up above you. From there, jump down onto the top of the tree just to the right, where a spring is hidden inside that takes you to a few more rings. Continue picking up rings and dodging/attacking enemies in your way until you come to a yellow spring at the edge of a cliff. Jump onto it to reach the ring-covered area to the top right, but watch out for the collapsing floor underneath the first three rings. drop down through the small hole between two collapsing cliff edges, and then make sure you save here. To the right are three sets of spikes; try to jump between them (saving after each successful jump, if you want) so you can reach a nice set of 30 rings and an invincibility container. From here, jump up to the ledge above you and go left until you find a checkpoint gate and some moving platforms. Jump up these platforms to reach another ring container, and save here before jumping down the platforms ahead. The next three platforms will drop shortly after touching them, so you won't have much time to move to the next one. Once you make it to the top of a corkscrew with a shield container on top of it, save again before trying to use the next platforms to go up.

Not very high up from where you started is a ledge with about 17 rings on it; you'll want to collect those and dodge the attacks from four chameleons guarding them. Instead of going down the curvy tube ahead, return to the platforms and use them to go up to an even higher ledge with some more rings on it. Collect them and save at the top before touching the descending platforms ahead; these too will sink after you touch them, so it's better to be safe than sorry. At the end of the trail, a trapezoidal group of rings will be floating in the air. Just grab as many as you can as you fall down to the ground, then go across the bridge ahead and break open another ring container. Just ahead of this container is a palm tree, which has another ring container hidden in its leaves. Open that one up and, if you need any more rings, some will be below the tree while six more are resting underneath the waterfall. Reach the final goalpost, which will have Eggman's face on it, and quickly jump in the giant ring just past it.

Special stages are going to challenge your patience, as they're often quite frustrating. Make sure you save at the start of any special stage, because leaving a stage without a Chaos Emerald means you won't be able to get it again. For the entire duration of a special stage, you'll be curled up in a ball as the stage rotates clockwise or counter-clockwise. You can jump when you have a solid platform underneath you to jump from, and a few objects can change the rotation's speed and direction. If you look at the map, you can see some striped peppermint-looking circles with the words Up and Down on them; these will speed up or slow down the map's rotation when hit, and generally turn into the opposite type of block after being hit once, so you don't accidentally slow the stage to a halt or speed it up ridiculously. The R blocks reverse the rotation of the stage. Goal blocks end the stage without you having taken the Chaos Emerald if hit with enough force; don't touch these for whatever reason, and restart the special stage when you hit one hard enough for it to activate.

You start this stage off in the uppermost area of the map, although it won't stay at the top for long. Using this map, the R blocks (if necessary), and jumping, try to get to the second-largest "room" with a spring in the center of it, and make a secondary save just in case you want to return to this place instead of the start of the level. Make sure you keep your stage start save intact, though. Once you manage to make it past the holographic circles, which you can see on the map, they'll turn solid so you can't get out of this last area. That's a good thing, though, because you won't want to leave the Chaos Emerald behind. Surrounding it are some blue color blocks and four candy-looking circles. The color blocks deteriorate as you hit them, changing color after every hit until they finally disappear. Stay on top of them or jump up to them until you can get to the Chaos Emerald hidden inside them, and save so you won't have to do that again.

Now that the Centurion achievement is out of the way, you only need to focus on getting 50 rings so that the ring at the end of the Act stage appears. To start, pick up the four rings over the first bridge, and then use the spring on the rock to get a few more. Now, you'll want to stand to the left of the rock and save before jumping over the set of spikes to the left. In the area under the waterfall, you can find two ring containers and a shield. To get out of here, run towards the right wall and press to curl into a ball, which should destroy the wall when you hit it. This will reveal a speed power-up, with a moving platform to the right of it. Take the platform to the right instead of going down, because there are a lot of spikes in the lowest path that you shouldn't bother with. Collect any more rings you see on your way forward, and save when necessary. There should easily be enough rings from this point on so you can enter the second special stage.

The search for the second Chaos Emerald begins in the lower left area of the map. Be careful about the goal blocks just "below" where you start. Fortunately, in the final area, there will only be one set of goal blocks that force you to reload your save, so you shouldn't have too much trouble breaking through the color blocks to reach the emerald.

With all Act 3 stages on this run, as well as every stage after you get the six Chaos Emeralds, the main goal will just be to finish the level. As the first Zone of the game, you shouldn't find it difficult to reach the boss battle at the end of the Act, but you should keep a fair amount of rings with you just in case you get hit during the fight. When Eggman comes in, he'll swing a wrecking ball around in an attempt to hit you with it until you die. To defeat him, you need to jump up and hit his carrier eight times; this is best done by standing on one of the two platforms on the side of the stage and jumping up to avoid the wrecking ball, followed by jumping again to hit Eggman if he's close enough. After enough hits, his machine will malfunction, and the doctor will escape to the next Zone, leaving the large container of Sonic's animal friends behind. Jump on top of it to set them free and end your first experience through the original Green Hill Zone.

Marble Zone

Unfortunately, the maps for the rest of the acts aren't as detailed as they were for Green Hill Zone. Pick up the various rings you come across as you move ahead, and make your first destination the first dark purple area on the map, just to the right of a large pool of lava. As you approach the dark purple cave, you should find a few purple spiked worms walking around. There are two ways of defeating them: jump on their heads, which don't have spikes on them, or crouch while running to attack their heads while on the ground. Never go for an attack on their body. Once you get to the cave, open up the three ring containers, which will provide you with 30 of your 50 required rings. These, and the rings you've picked up, should be super close to 50 already, so you shouldn't have to go out of the way to find anything special anymore. Don't forget to save often, and you shouldn't have many problems getting through the end of this stage and into the giant ring at the end.

This special stage is a bit different in that you start out in the same "room" as the Chaos Emerald, but since there's only one room in the entire stage, you can be sent back very far from it if you're not paying attention. As usual, save as as soon as you get into the stage, and watch out for the four groups of goal blocks. This is one of the most time consuming special stages to complete due to the sheer amount of space you have to move around in once the stage turns around far enough.

At the start of this stage, some grassy lumps of land will be floating in lava. Jumping on them will make them sink into the lava deep enough for one edge of the grass to be lit on fire, so make sure to quickly jump off. Getting through the level is a pretty simple task, as it's much more straight-forward than most of the other Zones, but don't forget to pick up as many rings as you can along the way to make the giant ring appear at the end. If you take a look at the map, you can see three dark purple caves; you'll want to make sure you get inside the third one for a nice 20 rings inside containers, if you haven't already obtained your 50 before then.

As you can already tell, this is where things get more windy in the special stages. Fortunately, only the fourth and fifth Chaos Emeralds deal with large stages like this, so you won't be dealing with this for too much longer. There's not much to say about the trailing path to the emerald, as the map makes it pretty obvious where you're supposed to be headed. You should watch out for those reverse blocks, though, because there's really no reason to turn the direction of the stage around if it's moving clockwise. With the Chaos Emerald in such a small space, getting to it shouldn't take long after you finally get to it. Be sure to save once you're in that room; it'd be a shame if you have to redo the entire trail over again.

Now that you've gotten through the first two Acts of the Marble Zone, the last Act will end with a fight against Eggman. Because of this, like the third Act of Green Hill Zone, you can't get a Chaos Emerald, so just go through the level however fast you want to. In the center of the map is a square purple cave; to the left of this is an area that you have to pass through no matter what, which contains two spiky chandeliers that drop from above. Jump from the top of the second chandelier into the wall on the right to reach a secret hidden path to this cave with a nice little present inside. Jump to the upper right of this place to get to another hidden path, and skip a lot more of this level.

Once you get to Eggman, he'll have a new strategy up his sleeve to use against you. With the two available platforms for you to stand on, he's going to drop a fireball down from his carrier onto one of them at a time, and you're going to have to jump to the other one until it cools off. As you do this, hit Eggman's carrier whenever convenient until you get eight hits in; this should be a bit easier than it was in Green Hill Zone since you're not constantly trying to dodge a giant wrecking ball, but if you're having some trouble, try to get the pattern of jumping back and forth down before adding attacks into the mix. After Eggman is defeated once more, free your animal buddies in the giant container to the right and head to the Spring Yard Zone.

Spring Yard Zone

With both of the first two Acts in the Spring Yard Zone, finding 50 rings rings will come naturally, as tons of them are laced through all the paths in the levels. You can go through the level however you please because of this, with no path really being better than the other, but make sure you save a lot; I saved the game much more often starting with this Zone in particular. You may come across a blue mech that looks like its wearing a turban when standing still; this thing will try to attack you the same way Sonic attacks enemies, by rolling into them. Be cautious around the tunnels in the lower path, because that's where this thing generally shows up. Near the end of the level are some spike balls rotating around a half-pipe, which you should naturally save before jumping into or across. After you get through those, it won't be long until you get to the goalpost at the end of the Act.

Like the previous Chaos Emerald, you're going to have to snake around a long path in order to get to the Chaos Emerald. Reverse blocks, which you'll actually have to use due to the curves and turns in the stage, will be placed around the path for you to hit when you need to. Since the path to the emerald is pretty long, you should try to save during the level, so you don't have to restart from the beginning of the stage (assuming you made a save there as recommended) if you accidentally run into some goal blocks. The Chaos Emerald will be weakly guarded by a bunch of color blocks, but most of them will have already been deteriorated to some extent.

Thanks to the spring at the start of the level, this is the perfect time to talk about a mechanic you can use to move faster through levels and gain momentum quicker. Sonic has a speed cap that is easily reached when you move left or right, but not holding onto those directions will dodge the speed cap completely. To test this out here, first make a save and run into the spring and keep holding or towards the bumper at the end of the path; this should let you drop through the small gap below. Reload the save and run towards the spring, but this time curl into a ball and let go of any sort of directional controls. This time, you should bounce back very far from the spring due to having been faster than you normally should be able to go.

As stated earlier, you should be able to get 50 rings no matter which way you go through the level. The speeding blue mechs make a return here, this time in a pair, so watch out for those in the tunnel just after the halfway point in the map. The level shouldn't be too confusing to navigate through.

The last of the special stages will consist of only one large room, with the final Chaos Emerald in the center. This should be one of the easiest, if not the very easiest, emerald to obtain out of all six. Just save when you enter the stage, and get that last emerald for your collection.

Navigate through the level, which should be easy enough to do with just a map and by moving forward. None of the blue mechs will appear this time around, so you won't have to look out for them this time. When you get to Eggman, his mech will push out a spike from the bottom every once in a while and use it to pull one of the blocks of the platform you're standing on, which will break after he uses enough force on it. The particles of the block he breaks won't hit you, and it'll be very easy to land hits on him since he picks the blocks up so slowly. It won't be too long before you land eight hits on his carrier and send him flying off towards the next Zone.

Labyrinth Zone

Now that you don't have to worry about Chaos Emeralds anymore, all you have to do now is head to the end of the level from now on and focus on beating the game. The most troublesome enemy in the Zone are these little drill bots that pop out of the ground; watch the ground ahead of you to find their noses sticking out. This will be the first level that you come across that has water in it, as well. You'll slowly run out of breath while underwater, so stick by bubbly areas along the level until a nice big bubble appears to give you a big breath of fresh air. If you hear the warning noise, get out of the water or get some air as soon as you can, although you probably will be aware of that once the most stressful noise of all time plays.

To get through this level, just follow the discreet path shown on the map. It's going to be as easy as that; just go through the only path in the level until you reach the goal. There's going to be a bigger influence on grabbing air bubbles to restore your air while underwater, so stick around them when you think you'll be running out soon. The drill enemies seem to have disappeared, leaving the role of annoying enemies to red orb-like enemies underwater. They're surrounded by four spiky balls that they shoot towards you one at a time. Right after they shoot the first, the rest will soon follow. To defeat these guys, you'll have to hit them after there's an opening once they start firing their spike balls at you, or if you get hit, use your short period of invincibility to take it out by phasing through the damaging spike balls it might still have around it.

At the start of this level, you'll be pushed down a rush of water that, if you stay on it, will never end. If you take a look at the map, the bottom of the map loops back up to the top, which explains this phenomenon. You'll have to jump to the left with the right timing to reach a switch that will open up a path towards the next boss battle. If you take another look at the map, you can plan out which way you want to go, but don't forget about finding air bubbles when you're underwater during most of the level. When Eggman appears, he'll try to escape instead of taking you on in a fight. The main goal is to escape the rising water and make it to the top, where you'll be able to breathe freely again and find another large capsule animals to save. The area that you have to get through is just at the right side of the map, and is a tall vertical climb filled with fire-breathing statues and spikes that jet out at you periodically. Don't forget to save when you play throughout the level to minimize frustrations.

Star Light Zone

As with nearly every first Act in a Zone, Act 1 of the Star Light Zone is pretty easy to get through, which you can also see by looking at the map. The spherical enemies with four spike balls around it make a return to this Zone, but the newest main threat are the bomb enemies that appear throughout the whole area. You can just wait for them to explode once their fuse is lit, or if you can get the timing right, you can jump right over them. Getting to the goalpost shouldn't be all that difficult.

With this Act, you can get through everything really fast if you manage to take the higher paths. As you can see at the upper middle part of the map, there's a long curvy stretch of land that you can run across to bypass quite a bit of the entire level. There's not a whole lot to say about the Star Light Zone's stages, due to how simple things are compared to the other Zones.

As always, consult the map to plan out how you're going to get through the stage, but watch out for falling platforms that activate almost as soon as you touch them. Bomb bots make their return; as before, they'll spew out a few particles after exploding. When you reach Eggman, you'll be using three scales that you should have seen on your way to this place. Eggman will be dropping exploding spike balls down onto the scales below, so you'll have to jump on the other sides of the scales to send either you or the bomb into Eggman's carrier to inflict damage. Like always, eight hits will do enough to his ride to force him to flee and leave the next group of animal hostages unguarded.

Scrap Brain Zone

For the first Act of Scrap Brain Zone, try to stay as high as you can to get through the stage faster. As you can probably tell from the map, taking the highest path requires a lot less maneuvering and will take less time to get through. You can use the two circular gear-like pieces in the stage to continue forward, and you should always try to go to the right if possible when using these to stay on the high path. Watch out for breaks in the pipe, where fire will shoot out from, as well as small tesla-like objects will zap you if you get too close, so wait until they shock the air around them before trying to get by. Don't get too frustrated trying to stay on the highest paths, because this is your first time through the game, and you won't have to speed through the game until the next playthrough.

In addition to the two previous hazards, there are now small strips of conveyor belts and giant blades scattered throughout the second part of the Scrap Brain Zone. Getting through them requires very good timing, so save before trying to go through one of these areas. There are also circular rotating disks that you'll encounter very early into the level; you can run around the entire circumference of the circle without falling off, so don't worry about falling. To really speed up and launch yourself in the air, curl up into a ball and hold . Thanks to the mechanic to be explained in Act 2 of the Spring Yard Zone, this will speed you up much more than you would have gotten just by running. The Act is very large compared to the last one, so you should try to figure out where to go with the provided map.

Once you get to the end of this Act, Eggman will trap you, and press a switch that breaks the floor beneath you, taking you to the third Act.

If you look at the map, you can see where you start in the small rectangle of space at the top center, with the exit being just to the right of it. To get through this level as fast as possible (you really don't want to get lost in the rest of this giant area), press the switch to make the platform to the left of you sink, and run past it as soon as you can before it stops moving until you find a switch. Press the switch to open a small area up, and make sure to save here. If you look at where you are on the map, you should see six blocks in an almost-rectangle shape, if the center blocks weren't one space higher. You need to make the jump across these blocks to the other side if you want to skip as much of the level below you as possible, so make sure you save again if you want to. From the other side of that gap, it shouldn't be long before you reach a staircase-like area with some spike balls flying around it. Watch where the spike balls move to avoid them, and slowly climb up the staircase until you find a spring that shoots you out of the Scrap Brain Zone for good.

Final Zone

This last Zone consists of only one stage, with nothing in it except for a final fight with Eggman. Save as soon as you get here, because there won't be any rings to back you up in this fight. Eggman will try to stomp you with giant pistons, and he'll be in one of them; jump at a piston to cause him to take damage. Like every other fight against him, it will take eight hits to defeat him. After each piston attack, a beam at the top of the ceiling will charge four balls of energy, which will descend towards you once they're ready. When this happens, look for the biggest opening between two energy balls and stand in it, then jump as high as you can when they're coming down to avoid them.

After beating Eggman for the last time, he'll try to escape in his carrier one last time. You can optionally hit him or let him escape; it doesn't have any bearing on anything, but you may as well cause him more damage to repair before Sonic the Hedgehog 2 takes place.

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