Cannon's Core

Cannon's Core is the only stage in the Last story on Sonic Adventure 2. There are 5 sections in the stage, with Tails, Eggman, Rouge, Knuckles, and Sonic each taking a turn.

Speed Tips

Note: There's a glitch that takes advantage of the game's internal level-numbering system being improperly reset in order to skip entire sections of the stage. If you complete mission 2 of Cannon's Core normally with a character other than Sonic, then immediately select Chao World (which counts as mission 1) or Route 101 or Route 280 (whichever mission you select), upon completing the chosen level (in the case of Chao World, just getting back on the portal and warping out), you'll be brought back to Cannon's Core, starting with the next character in line and with the timer you had upon exiting the last stage you played (the timer is invisible in Chao World, but it's still counting). When abused to the fullest, this warp can provide a time less than 7 seconds on mission 1 and less than 6 seconds on mission 2. In 3 and 5 it's slower than the best non-warping path. This trick is banned from the main competition, and relegated to a side competition not unlike Mario Kart shortcut divisions.

Mission 1

Tails

Lock onto one dynamite pack on the left, and one on the right. Residual damage will take out the other two (provided you have the Laser Blaster; go get it if you don't!) and open the door. You can ignore the enemy ahead; go through the next door and fire a shot left to stop time. Under 6 seconds at the switch is good. Pass it and the stopped spikeballs, then fire a shot backwards to hit the time stop switch again. Run through the curve, shoot the stationary hiding Chaos enemy, then go through the door and jump off the balcony.

You'll want to avoid breaking out the hover as long as you can. The camera makes that hard to judge, but keep locking on down the middle until you lock on to the center dynamite pack on the door. If you're lucky, you can lock on to the next time stop switch before the door opens. Hover when you get the lock-on so that you don't fall into the pit, and go through the door when it opens. If you haven't already, stop time at the switch. Proceed through this curve, and turn backwards to lock on again so that you can have time stopped for the next segment. Walk out into space, fall down until you're level with the dynamite, and hover as you lock onto those.

You can even have time stopped long enough to dispose of the Chaos enemy ahead while it's still in its shell. Try jumping and locking on to the robots that are about to fall. Time will restart, so dispose of both robots then run through the door to shoot the next switch. When time stops here, you can finish this section with whatever the time reads, which should be under 15 seconds.

In the last room, shoot the Hornet to get it out of the way, then shoot the switch to keep the clock stopped. Hover jump to one of the raised blocks at the side, then hover jump from there to the top. Now you can fire shots into the door, then after a few shots turn around and shoot the switch to keep the clock stopped. Repeat until you've shot the door 12 times, destroying it.

Eggman

Clock-wise, this is easily the longest section of the stage. Take note of the timer at the start of this stage--it comes in handy later on. Skip the shielded enemies at the start, and head to the center of the next room to get all four enemies to drop. Dispose of them quickly to open the door. Kill the Hornet, then before you get on the platform, hover a bit past and to the right of it, holding B to lock on. You should pick up at least one lock-on here; release B then hover back to the platform and ride it up. I find that for best results, a full-height hover jump will most often allow you to lock onto the back enemy, and then you can lock onto the near enemy once you land back on the platform.

There are two Chaos enemies that need destroying to unlock the next door. There are a variety of ways to dispose of them: lock on to both then run behind them and shoot once they get out of hiding (slow), let them attack you and shoot them while they're attacking (fast but requires you take a hit), or even get up close to one of them, punch to hit through the shell, and create an explosion that takes out the other one in the process (fast, but very rare). Get rid of them in some way, then go through the door and jump down.

The lock-ons you made before hovering to the rising platform earlier on should, ideally, have taken out the two enemies down here through a wall, opening the door immediately. If there's still an enemy alive, you'll have to destroy it to open the door, wasting time. Continue forward through the curved hall, and jump and hit the switch above the lasers as soon as you can, then pass through now that the lasers are gone, take out the hiding Chaos, and hit the next switch to keep time stopped.

In the acid room, hover forward, using the blocks or even the short walls that denote where blocks will pass through in order to advance. After the drop, you'll want to continue to the vertical-path blocks. Remember that the outer ones move up and the center one moves down. See if the outer block isn't so high that you can't hover onto it, but isn't so low that it wastes time for it to move up to the next door. Also, this is where the timer comes in. Whatever the timer was at the start, add 30.1 seconds to that, and remember this new time.

When you're on the block, jump and hover backwards while holding B. Lock onto the switch (don't shoot yet), then turn around and hover back onto the block you came from. Time will restart, and once it reaches the "magic number" you remembered (30.1 seconds plus start time), that's your cue to release the shot. Time will stop right as the block gets to the level of the door, so hover over and get through the door, then hit the next switch.

Get to the second time stop switch in the curved hallway, shoot it, let the door open, shoot it again, and lock onto it once more but don't release yet. Go through the door, and don't hit the checkpoint or else you'll lose time if you die in the remaining part of this section. Head through the next door when it opens as well, and once you're on the balcony, release your lock-on. If done correctly, this shot is sufficient to keep time stopped through to the next time stop switch, enabling you to play the rest of the stage on a frozen timer.

Fall through this long shaft without bumping into any enemies, and at the bottom, there are three time stop switches on the wall. Fall through one of them and have Eggman's machine knock it well out of place, then immediately hover and turn to lock onto another (again, don't release), then continue forward and down. Release the lockon, defeat the two hiding Chaos enemies, then continue to the next room and try to hit the switch to keep time stopped before it can restart.

In the last room, you can hover jump to one of the side ledges, then hover jump to the top. Unlike with Tails, you can't lock on backwards at the switch unless you're at the very edge. Do what you can to hit the door with 12 volkan cannon shots without letting time start back up. Occasionally you'll have one of the moving blocks in the center be in ideal position and you can just take potshots from there.

Rouge

Start this section out by trying to glide as soon as you can. Usually you can only make it unobstructed to pillar #2 (ahead and to your left), but occasionally you'll gain control fast enough that you can get to pillar #3 (ahead and to your right). Climb up and glide to pillar #4 which is diagonally across from 3. Hit the time stop switch, but don't drop just yet. There's going to be a trick to the drop.

Displace the switch a bit. Make sure it's lined up between you and the edge of the pillar. Run through it to displace the switch more, and when you reach the edge, do a very short jump followed by a dive off the edge as soon as you can.

At this point, the switch is rocking back and forth, reacting to the displacement you gave it. It'll try to come to a standstill, at which point it starts beeping to give you the duration it stops time for. Now, you're plummeting to the ground at full dive speed. The game only draws objects that are so close to your current position. When you arrive on the ground, the top of pillar #4 is so far away that it's considered out of draw distance. The switch at the top doesn't even exist to the game at that point.

What does this mean? If you can get the switch to disappear out of draw distance before it comes to a complete stop, it never gets a chance to start beeping. That means that unless you bring the switch back within draw distance (or hit another switch later on), the duration of the time stop is permanent, or at least until the end of Rouge's section.

Now that you don't have to worry about the clock, proceed through the stopped waterfall of Kool-Aid. Your clock stoppage might have been for naught, as you're about to find out. Drop down in the next room, and look for the moving black block that can block the passage. If the block is in the way, this is no good. You'd have to hit the switch here and have time restart in order to unclog the path, but it's better for your time to just die and try stopping the clock at a different time (the start time of this section plus 10.2 seconds is good if you can make it there that quickly) so the block isn't in the way.

When you finally get the clock stopped and the block in a good position, head forward, hit the Chaos in the middle, press the switch under it to open the liquid-draining button in the middle of the starting area, and head back out into that room to hit the switch and move on.

Knuckles

Dive down into the Kool-Aid, holding left and slightly down, and aim for the time stop switch atop pillar #4. Don't resurface; you're going to take a different path that laughs at everything you normally have to do in this section, and that leaves the "normal" path in the dust. Head forward--not into the lasered-off entrance, but to the entrance below it (the one that Rouge went through). If you're feeling comfortable with the move, you can jump, land back on pillar #4 before dropping, and start an underwater glide, though you'll have to break it shortly to avoid wasting time against the wall. Another underwater glide is possible when you arrive in the tunnel, by getting kicked up after running on the diagonal edge. Dive down to the time stop switch just below the moving-block path. You don't actually need to hit the switch, but it saves time. Shoot back up with A, and move into the right corner at the top of the room. It's covered in acid, so you'll take a hit, but that's okay. After being hit, move back to the same corner and press A to shoot up through the ceiling!

Now you're gliding around (not swimming) out of bounds. Glide forward, and eventually, next to a room full of lasers, you'll see a cubical room. Aim for the right side of that room, and enter the wall to go back in bounds and back to being considered as swimming. This is the room that holds the final security door switch, so swim over to the switch and press it.

Sonic

The relevant part of this stage is extremely short, as like Rouge, Sonic can stop the clock forever. You gain control of Sonic after landing from the overhead rail. Push forward, and shortly after you start to do that, tap B and then A. This will do a somersault jump, which is the fastest way to boost that bit forward into the first switch. Be careful--it takes you a bit beyond that switch and into the air, and you have to land back on the small ledge to avoid dying. If you do, take out the first Chaos enemy in front of you, then return to the switch. Stand on the switch's base and do a single spindash jump across the gap. This will put the switch out of draw distance, and you shouldn't hear beeps starting up again. Now you can do everything else in the stage at your own leisure, as long as you don't hit the remaining switches, and claim your time.

There is one thing to watch out for: as you go down the (nonmoving) slide of orange Kool-Aid, the first downslope takes you through a small opening that takes the form of a snake's mouth. If you're not going fast enough through this opening, Sonic will just stop right there...and you'll be unable to control him. He's considered to be underwater, so you have no choice but to wait until drowning and start over from the beginning of segment 5 (or, I guess, you could pause and choose Restart, but that takes you back to the beginning of segment 1, and why would you want to do that?)

Record video: 1:15.94 by SadisticMystic

Mission 2

Follow the mission 1 path, but be sure to collect all the rings as you go and don't get hit. Most of them can be collected with time stopped, so you don't have to worry about losing time. Tails' section has 42 rings. As you come to the top of the acid-block room in Eggman's section, you should have 94, and the last 6 are just ahead.

Record video: 0:42.52 by SadisticMystic

Mission 3

The first four parts of this level play out identically to mission 1. You don't even need to stop at any of the mystic shrines. With Sonic, stop time as usual and continue until you reach the Kool-Aid slide. Run up the hill and stop just before the top, and do a full-height spindash jump. You should end up grabbing the ledge far above the ramp. If you miss, just run back to your jumping point and try again.

Kill both enemies up on the ledge to open the door, then make an easy run to the Chao.

Record video: 1:17.89 by SadisticMystic

Mission 5

The path is mostly the same, but missing some of the time stop switches. Notable differences:

Tails

The first switch is gone, so proceed at full speed and jump over the spinning spikeballs. Wait for the Chaos enemy to pop out before shooting it. At the first balcony drop, look out for the lasers that are just behind the door (shoot the time stop switch before advancing). Time will restart as you fall through space, so you'll have to take on the next Chaos enemy with time running as well. Hover over the ground where the two weights are to prevent them from falling (the next Chaos is optional, but go ahead and lock onto it to prevent it from popping up and hitting you). Occasionally the moving platform on the left will be too high for you to jump onto, so you can either choose to let time restart until it gets low enough for you to jump to, or restart the level and hope to get to that point faster.

Eggman

The four enemies drop into place sooner, which allows you to start attacking faster. There's only 1 enemy you need to lock onto through the wall, and it doesn't have a shield this time. The acid block room has a different pattern, and at the far end you want to be on the center block to move up rather than the outer ones. Go ahead and hit the checkpoint this time to make the stage easier; the time stop ends right about at the point you pass it. Dispose of the Chaos enemy behind the next door to avoid taking a hit. There are no time stop switches on the descent, and there are lasers you have to hover over to get to the ledge up ahead. Take out both Chaos enemies by letting them peek out, and play the last room the same way.

Rouge

This section is actually faster on hard mode. You gain control so soon that you can glide directly to pillar #4 on your left, and stop time within 3-4 seconds. Keep trying different times if you're obstructed by a block in the hallway.

Knuckles

This section plays with almost no differences, except the time-stop switch is located on pillar #3 (ahead and to your right) instead of #4, which makes it a more direct path to where you want to go. You can still pop through the ceiling in the same spot.

Sonic

The first time stop switch here is gone. After the first Chaos retracts its tendrils, do a spindash jump across the gap, dodging all three enemies. Now you have two choices, easy and slow or hard and fast.
Easy and slow--Jump up into the spawning Chaos ahead of you (being sure to hit its head instead of a cell), then run to the door that opens. Start a spindash from the doorway, then release it and jump to hit one Chaos, homing attack into the second, and again to land back on solid ground. Do one more spindash, jump over the lasers, and try to land on the time stop switch as fast as you can.
Hard and fast--Stop upon landing, and face the near left corner of the opening. You want to do a super bounce into this corner. Often you'll overshoot and bounce to your death, or bounce into the ceiling which is no good. The result you want is to hit the very edge of the opening so that your super bounce ejects you into the previous room, hugging the wall. The wall here is fake above a certain point; you can homing attack through the wall to see objects inside the hallway you're shooting for, and if you bounced high enough, you'll land in the hallway. Now you can just jump over to the time switch. Reunity--A spindash from here down the curved hallway can finally stop the clock permanently, and the rest is the same (except for the addition of nonmoving Chaos enemies which you can hit for free points if you feel like it...and if you do a spindash jump up to where the Chao is in mission 3, you'll find five extra lives instead).

Record video: 1:47.19 by SadisticMystic