The Guide that Almost Wasn't: A Common Record on a Common Level

Green Hill 1 is about as friendly a level as they come. Sure, Eggman's done a bit of damage to the atmosphere here, but anything less and it wouldn't belong in a Sonic game. It's a great level to play for speed, and 23 players (as of the time of this writing) have managed the record of 0:25, second behind Final Zone's 28 for the largest record tie on the site. However, there are still 65 players that have something worse submitted, and countless millions that haven't even bothered to put their completion on TSC. If you're among them, this guide is for you.

First, the basics:
-Running toward the goal is good. This means to the right.
-Wasting time hitting obstacles is bad.
-Getting hit and/or dying is bad.
But you already knew that, right?

For such a fast hedgehog, Sonic has fairly slow acceleration. Just holding Right from the start takes a while. To get up to speed faster, start out with a jump.

A note about jumps. Since this game doesn't have the spindash, keeping your speed up is important. In Green Hill, with small bumps in the ground all over the place, using the terrain to your advantage is key.
If you jump on an uphill slope, you go higher, but not as far or as fast.
If you jump on a downhill slope, you go faster and farther, but not as high.
Both kinds of jumps have their advantages in different places.

Anyway, you start out on one of the uphill bumps. You may see yourself go backwards a bit on the first jump, but it does help you get up to speed faster.

If you just run forward, you won't get very far since you run into a moto-bug and die. So you need to jump over it. But if you do that, you'll end up running uphill which wastes time. How can that be avoided?

See the platform above you that has a ring box? Jump up onto that, past the box, then do another full jump from there and you neatly skip the uphill! Just don't jump too late, or you run into the side of a hidden spring in the tree and that slows you down big.

Moving forward, go past the fish. There's a halfpipe down here. Obviously you don't want to run uphill, so you have two choices.
1. Run through the downhill and jump at the bottom to clear the lip and move on.
2. Before the downhill, do a full jump at the highest point and clear the whole thing.
Both ways look to be equal, but I prefer #2.

Now for a tough (speed-wise) climb. There are three short steps up, with a rock just after #3, and if you run into the sides of the steps or the rock you lose too much time. Time a jump here to land on the left edge of step #2 (don't bounce off the crab on #1 or you don't land soon enough and have to lose time), then as soon as you land, make a short hop up to step 3 (killing the crab here) and another immediate hop over the rock. You might hit the two fish here; do a full jump as soon as you land to clear the next rock as well as the step up.

Now there's a slight dip down before an uphill climb. Go ahead and run into the dip, and do just less than a full jump in order to land on the spring to shoot you ahead. One more short jump and you should cross the checkpoint at 14 seconds.

In some levels, you can kill yourself after a checkpoint and use that to your advantage (14.9 seconds becomes 14.0 on your next life). Not here. The full momentum you brought to this point is just too valuable in this level.

Once you get onto the downhill, start a roll to build up speed beyond what running can give you. Keep that roll into the loop. FoxLuc's Azure Lake guide summarizes the loop jumping trick. Use of the down loop jump is key here. You can use the up loop jump if you want; it saves a small bit of time, but you don't need it to get 25. After to down jump, start rolling again for massive speed if you timed it right. This takes you into the double-S curve.

There's one catch to what you've just done: Sonic is now moving really fast. So fast that the screen's scroll rate and Sonic's speed don't sync up. If you rolled after a good down loop jump, and just kept going, you might notice something strange: Sonic dies for what appears to be no reason!

It's a bug in Sonic 1. The bottom of the screen is defined as a kill plane at all times in this game, and when the screen can't keep up with Sonic, he can move downhill into what's supposed to be a halfpipe, but end up crossing the bottom of the incompletely-scrolled screen along the way, which triggers a kill on what would otherwise be a great run. Blame the programmers if you must, but that's the way it goes.

The key, then, is to jump just after the tube's exit, before the path curves downhill. A note of caution: Don't hold right here. You're moving much faster than normal running speed at this point, and if you hold right while you're in the air, you'll be slowed down toward that normal speed. Not a good thing.

You want to land your jump just past the rock, and hold down to stay in rolling animation to keep up your high speed. When you get to the next step down, though, you don't want to roll because your forward momentum won't last you long enough and it's a painfully long slowdown process before you can start moving again. Release down and start holding right again at this point.

From here it's just a simple run-n-jump game: jump over the spikes and one more jump over the double step up to get past the final obstacles. Break into a roll at the last downhill section and you should cross the post before the clock would tick to 26!

Welcome to the club!