Sonic Frontiers offers players versatile movement and freedom not seen in the franchise in decades, and one fan has used it to be able to reach the first boss battle of the game earlier than intended. Usually, the first Titan boss of the game, Giganto, can't be accessed fully until players collect six of the seven Chaos Emeralds as the springs needed to reach it won't appear otherwise.
However, as per the nature of the franchise's association with speed, the speedrunning community for Sonic Frontiers has found ways to finish the game in less than an hour after two months. Even still, there are numerous different glitches and skips that players are still discovering that could make these times even lower in the coming months. This new glitch to get to Giganto early may be a big game changer, but it looks rather hilarious when executed.
In a video uploaded by user HyperBE32 on Twitter, they take advantage of some winged, pointed platforms that are part of one of Kronos Island's challenge puzzles. Once they reach the highest platform, they avoid the button that would complete the challenge and instead wait for it to go back down. Once it's finally back in its resting position, HyperBE32 uses Sonic's stomp ability to hit the platform to make it fly back up, only to hold the jump button down as it rises to eventually use a flaw in the game's jumping physics to throw Sonic far into the atmosphere.
After watching Sonic get thrown into the atmosphere and then side-step to eventually reach the boss arena, the fact that Giganto has to spawn in, music and all, once the game realizes Sonic's there just makes the glitch even funnier. While hilarious, the skip has proved to be rather useful to Sonic Frontiers speedrunners and has even been optimized since HyperBE32 discovered the trick as it's been found that the first platform can be used, not just the one at the top.
For those who wish to try this trick, be it for a new personal best speedrun record time or just to have fun throwing Sonic far into the sky or to make Giganto appear out of thin air, HyperBE32 has included a secondary video showing the exact button presses used through an Xbox controller on the side of the screen. It's fairly simple in terms of which buttons are used, but it's likely the trickiest part of the glitch comes down to the timing of when players hold down the jump button after stomping on the platform. Due to the fact that this glitch applies to almost all rising platforms in the game, there are probably plenty of other locations where it could come in handy throughout the game.
Sonic Frontiers is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
