Mad Space

Mad Space is the 12th 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. Because the locations of some of the pieces were moved in the port, Dreamcast players can obtain an advantage of about 5 seconds on this level. The best locations are:

Piece 3 (Dreamcast): "diuqil live" Strangely enough, this piece has nothing to do with evil liquid (Artificial Chaos enemies). Just dive down to the platform below start, and you might see a piece moving around in a circle. That's piece #3, so grab it. However, it only appears if you're playing on Dreamcast (in which the hints for moving-trajectory pieces almost universally have nothing to do with where they really are).

Piece 3 (GameCube): "A bunch of black containers at the base" The platform you start out on has three spokes. Head in the direction of the spoke with yellow lights (back and to your right) and continue past it, to the outer platforms at the edge. Between two of the platforms, you'll see a bunch of floating black boxes. The piece can be among them, so keep a close eye as it's a tough piece to hit.

Piece 2: "seert eht ees ot tserof eht ot esolc ot" Ignoring the misspelling, this piece is in the same area as the last one. Dive down again, and look for a piece that's just standing still. That one's #2. If you got it first, that's no good since it takes away the good piece 3. Get the moving one first, then the still one.

Piece 1: "The blue enemy on the blue stand" 3 for 3 on hint errors here, as this piece's first hint isn't reversed like it should be. Glide to the left, and one of the outer platforms there has blue lights and a floating Artificial Chaos enemy. The radar here starts out blank, of course, and you have to go a considerable distance to get it to turn green. Just keep practicing a smooth glide into the enemy to bash its head in for 200, and eventually it'll have the piece so that (if you so choose) you'll never have to play Mad Space, ever again.

Record video: 0:08.94 by SadisticMystic

Mission 2

You'll drop onto 3 rings before the clock starts. Put on the Treasure Scope right away, to make (among other things) 6 rings appear around you. You only need to collect 1 of these rings, so run forward to get the ring in front of you and the 6 rings that follow up in a line (total so far: 10).

Go a bit left at the end of the path, and you'll hit a 20 box that appeared because of the treasure scope. Pressing A at this point would remove the treasure scope, but you're not done with it yet. Turn around, then do a running kick off the edge. Land on the platform below you, without pressing A, and you'll run through two 20 boxes (one of which requires treasure scope), bringing you to a total of 70.

That's all the rings you'll be getting from the starting structure. Now you can finally press A and take off the treasure scope. Jump over the rail to one side, and glide out to the outer platforms. You're looking for the stop that features 2 platforms close together. Head in that direction, and land on the closer of the two platforms.

What you're trying to do here is extremely tricky to pull off at full speed. Land on the near left corner, and get the ring there. Run forward and do a running kick through the box to reveal 5 rings. Don't go so far that you fly off the edge of the platform and die. Instead, stop your momentum and concentrate on following the circle of rings around, ending with the back right corner which will bring you to 80. Put the treasure scope on again in this corner, and a 20 box will appear, finishing the mission.

Record video: 0:13.82 by SadisticMystic (note: this video makes extremely heavy use of the rapid pause technique)

Mission 3

The procedure used to grab the Chao has so far only been done on Dreamcast, for an advantage of 20-25 seconds.

Take the down-left path at the start, and press A twice then B twice, resulting in a quick jump and glide followed by a dive and kick, to get yourself accelerated to full speed quickly. Kick through the box that holds the switch (it helps to stay above the line on the center of this path or else the camera will spin and throw your line off). Follow through into the spring, and you'll bounce to the platform higher up, where a rocket will appear. Take this rocket up (it heads for the Holy Planet), then glide forward. Aim for the small roof of the tower here, where there's a second rocket. Try to grab it as soon as it's ready, then let it carry you up to the platform above. Dive down to reach a third rocket.

When this rocket drops you off, glide right around the ARK. Halfway around, you'll find three horizontal containers, similar to the vertical ones in Meteor Herd. They're supposed to have no entrances, only a Mystic Melody warp to get inside. But that's just how they were supposed to be designed. You're going to find another way.

The container that's the farthest out, and elevated a bit above the other two, is the one that holds the Chao. The right side of that container takes the shape of an octagon. You want to glide just under the top side of that octagon, and if you hit just the right spot, you'll pass through to a spot where you can make a quick dive down to the Chao.

Record video: 0:27.00 by SadisticMystic

Mission 5

The fastest approach in this level is to get pieces 3 then 1 on the same life, then get 2 in a separate life, though getting all three on the same life costs only half a second. Reversing the order of the two segments is also possible with no time loss, but brings up the potential of having to restart a run and undo progress which was thought to have been solidified.

Because the rocket on the Holy Planet requires a switch for activation in Hard mode, the fastest ascent takes you on a different path here. Run forward and hit the switch, then jump on the box beside it and jump from there to the platform where the rocket appears. Shoot up and turn to face the Holy Planet, and start gliding. That planet isn't your destination just yet; the big platform above it is. You may have to climb up the side of the platform (if you do, be sure to ledge jump so that you can reach the rocket as soon as it's ready). After this rocket, dive down and try to land on the launching pad of a third rocket (so that you don't waste time digging upon landing). Take the third rocket up, then glide to your right and climb a short distance up to the top of the ledge.

You only want to spend a brief moment on the ledge before turning right and jumping again, heading for the platform in the distance with spikeballs. Go to the back corner where the spikeballs take turns passing over. It's tricky, but you want to arrive at the corner in between spikeballs, then immediately spin the control stick and press B to do a screw kick before the next spikeball comes around and hits you.

As soon as you grab piece 3 this way, glide off a bit so that a dive will let you go down past the platform, and preferably so that you don't get hit by a spikeball after diving. Move around, maintaining the full-speed dive until you're next to the Holy Planet. You want to start gliding as soon as the bottom of the planet flattens off and gives you a clear path to piece 1, which can be difficult to judge. Now you can just dive into oblivion and move onto the next life.

From the starting point, run back and right, following the yellow spoke. Jump and glide once you get to the edge, and look for the Spherical Planet above. It can actually pull you in from as low as you are, which is rather convenient. As soon as you notice you've been pulled into its gravitational influence, switch direction on the control stick so that you're pressing Down, which takes you in the direction you want to go. When you get directly over the platform above the planet's south pole, press B to spike down on the piece and finish.

Record video: 0:42.34 by SadisticMystic