Security Hall

Security Hall is the 8th stage in the Dark story on Sonic Adventure 2. Rouge is used to play this stage.

Speed Tips

Mission 1

This is a treasure-hunting stage. The general hunting tips apply. The best locations are:

Emerald 3: "In the air" Turn 45 degrees right at the start, and hop the rail. If you see the blue emerald hovering over the C block air conditioner, good for you. Glide up and grab it. If not, restart.

Emerald 2: "Everyone has seen it at least once before" This refers to the enemy directly ahead. Note the radar for this one. If it starts green, but turns yellow while you're falling and before you can move forward, don't bother trying this one, just die. Otherwise, run ahead and kick through the enemy and you just might come up with the purple emerald.

Emerald 1: "Everyone has seen it at least once before" The reason why you want to reject a green-to-yellow starting radar for emerald 2 is because the same enemy can hold either of 2 emeralds! If you got it when the radar was a giveaway, then you would end up getting the emeralds in 3-1-2 order which means you would never see the good spots for emerald 2. Anyway, the location for this one is the same as before, except this time you want the radar to start out green and turn yellow before landing.

Record video: 0:05.79 by SadisticMystic

Mission 2

TODO

Record video: 0:44.44 by yoshifan

Mission 3

At the start, as you push forward, double-tap A then double-tap B as fast as you can. This results in a short glide, followed by a dive down to the ground and a kick forward, getting you up to full acceleration. Take a bit of a turn to the left. Jump onto the rail, using it as a thin strip of ground, then jump again from there and glide toward the arms box on your left. The extra height off the ground you got by using the rail makes it so you don't have to waste time climbing the side of the box.

Kick from here into the spring. Sometimes you'll just bonk your head on the platform above; this is no good and you should restart if it happens. Usually the camera will spin around and you can press forward to land on the pulley. You can get to this point in less than 5 seconds. As you ride up, jump right as you reach the top, and hold A just long enough to get a quick climb. Climb up, moving to the center after you pass the platform that's acting as a roof to you, and do a ledge jump at the top to save time.

Now you want to run forward just enough to come to a stop on the yellow B symbol. A kick will either overshoot or take an annoyingly long time to go through the braking animation before you can start cycling through commands with Y, so you're stuck running. After you stop, you have to put on the Treasure Scope, which takes four Y presses followed by a B press. Rapid pausing can save time by the game clock here, as opposed to pure Y mashing. There's one last thing to watch out for: if you start holding forward as soon as the spring appears, and you were near the back end of it, you'll bonk your head on the underside of the Chao platform. Just land smoothly on it, and run ahead to the Chao in what should be under 15 seconds.

Record video: 0:13.99 by SadisticMystic

Mission 5

A version difference here gives Dreamcast players the ability to complete this stage over 12 seconds faster than GameCube players--an absolute eternity on such a small and quick stage. The fastest approach in this level is to get all three emeralds separately. As this is Hard mode, they can normally be done in any order, but due to a quirk in the way the red emerald is collected on a speedrun, collecting it last leads to a glitch that either adds pointless seconds to your time or can be abused in a way that's banned from competition and that can save a false time as low as 0.02 seconds.

Emerald 1: This is 45 degrees to your right, similar to the ideal emerald 3 in mission 1. However, it's further back and thus takes more time to get (3.50 seconds is the fastest known time for a straight run to the emerald). A trick unique to Security Hall can be used to shave off time. Rather than going all the way to the far-right corner and diving, do a dive into the near-right corner and press right so that the fan's upward boost is blocked by the floor. This will lead to your death as you fall back down (or, better yet, dive down). Now why would you want to do that?
Remember that when you die by getting hit, you enter an uncontrollable death animation. But when you die by falling through the kill plane, you maintain control of the character for a brief time. Also importantly, once your death is recorded, the clock stops. So the goal here is to intentionally die as fast as you can, and then you have about 2.9 seconds to freely move around with the clock stopped. Normally there isn't much you can do in that time after falling through the kill plane, but this is Security Hall. The emerald is a bit ahead of and above you, and--how conveniently--the fans are still there to blow you back up. The fixed position of the camera during this time makes it very difficult to aim your course up into the emerald properly, but it can be done, and you'll likely get a time for this segment of less than 3 seconds.

Emerald 2: Follow the Mission 3 path up to the top. Rather than stopping at the B symbol for the spring, though, just run forward to the laser complex. Do a short jump over the first laser, then after landing do another full jump while holding forward. This can launch you up into the beetle enemy, and hitting it gives you an upward boost that allows you to glide forward to the emerald. This segment should take around 13 seconds.

Emerald 3: This is where the Dreamcast advantage comes from. Just run to the weight that's at your left. Note that if you run in a straight line, the weight will still be too close to the ground and you'll hit the side of it, losing all momentum. It helps to deviate a bit left and right as you run, allowing you to maintain speed but--ideally--delaying your arrival at the weight until there's just enough space for you to squeeze under it. Then, you'll want to do a Screw Kick as soon as you pass by the safe that's under the weight. On Dreamcast, the Screw Kick's reaching power will immediately open the safe (even if it's locked) and get the emerald behind it, completing this segment in possibly less than 3 seconds. GameCube players have to unlock the red safes (preferably on a previous life--the color that's unlocked remains saved even after death), then get to the top of the main room and press a switch on the ceiling to stop the weight's movement, giving them time to dive down and dig into the safe to collect this emerald, a far longer process.

Record video: 0:18.45 by SadisticMystic