Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I

You're looking at about 6+ minutes for every time you attempt this. Given the bosses in this title, going six minutes without getting hit is no easy feat. As others have said, you WILL be hit, and you WILL have to keep at it, likely over and over again. I literally spent hours yesterday on this Achievement, but I believe I've finally got it down, and will be attempting to help out anyone else. I'll be going in order of the bosses' appearance, and doing my best to list their attack patterns and how to defeat them.

My personal suggestion is to use Time Attack mode. You'll lose no lives this way. Unless you're going for the Avatar Award that requires you to be in Score Attack, Time Attack is my personal preference. If nothing else, practice in either of the modes to start getting familiar with the boss patterns, particularly the fourth boss.

1st Boss: Splash Hill Zone's Boss.

This is fairly easy, you likely know this boss well. It only takes four hits, and is pretty easy to dodge. Just stand on the left platform, wait for vulnerability to appear on Eggman's Egg Pod, and start using the Homing Attack/Jump Attack. If you're quick enough, you can probably beat him before he even manages to execute his 360 Degree Spinning Attack.

If something goes awry and he starts to swing, if your platform is low enough, time a Spin Dash to spin under him, make it to the other side, and start landing hits as he recovers from the swing.

2nd Boss: Casino Street Zone's Boss.

Another boss that takes four hits and is relatively easy to beat. Just slowly enter the oval-shaped arena, and stand on the platform part of the flipper (where you don't curl into a ball). Eggman will start to approach you, use a Homing Attack and he'll start to rage. Your Homing Attack should send you back against the left wall and you'll start running along the bottom of the arena. Start running right, and as you head up the right wall, jump and use the Homing Attack on Eggman. This in turn will likely send you against the right wall, running along the bottom, and up the left side where you can yet again use the Homing Attack. Just run along the bottom, up the right wall again, Homing Attack, and you can likely beat him before he even launches his "Special" attack.

Be careful about being slow with this though; sometimes if you're not fast enough spikes will pop up along the bottom center of the arena and catch you off-guard.

3rd Boss: Lost Labyrinth Zone's Boss.

I believe this one also takes four hits, but part of me wants to think five for some reason, I'm not sure. For this boss, stand all the way to the left or right, and as the first set of pillars shoot up from the ground, jump and use the Homing Attack for a free hit. Now, from here, Eggman has quite a few sets of attack patterns. I'll do my best to explain these well, if you are confused just ask in the comments and I'll hopefully be able to clarify. As stated in Yamishi's Solution, if you get crushed by the pillars, it results in a death which means you'll need to Retry the entire Zone.

Also, a word of caution. At any time when you are standing on a horizontal pillar next to Eggman, you can be dragged along with the pillar when it retracts into the wall, causing you to be damaged by being dragged into Eggman. Always be ready to Air Dash away and not be afflicted by this.

-If Eggman heads to the top-left, he can be using one of three attack patterns:

---If he heads to the left, and pillars start appearing from the top right and bottom right of the area, head to the left directly under Eggman and jump on the two platforms that appear from the bottom left. This is your chance to strike.

---The other pattern involves a pillar appearing directly under-neath him, and pillars starting to jut out horizontally from the bottom right. Jump on the bottom right pillar, wait until it gets to about a third of the way to the right, and then jump on to the pillar underneath Eggman (You might need to Air Dash, but be careful not to go too far and run into him). From here you can score an easy hit, and if hit Eggman fast enough at first, his invulnerability will time out and you can potentially score a second hit if you are lucky.

---The last one involves four pillars heading towards the center of the screen, one from each direction. Jump on the one heading vertically and use the Homing Attack on Eggman. If you're a bit nervous, there's plenty of room in the bottom left and right corners to wait it out.

-If Eggman goes to the center, this can signal one of three attack patterns:

---If he goes to the center and stays there, and pillars slide out horizontally from both sides, start jumping up them as they appear and hit Eggman, just be sure not to get stuck in the bottom pillars or you'll be crushed.

---If he goes to the center and stays there, and pillars slide out vertically from top to bottom, stand on the edge of the pillars closest to Eggman and jump into him. I will say it's easy to get stuck here and be crushed, so if you want to play it safe just stay in the center bottom and wait for the pillars to retract.

---If he goes to the center and then moves to the top right corner, a horizontal pillar will slide out on the bottom right, jump on this, and wait to jump on a pillar that slides out directly under Eggman. Again, if you can do this fast enough, you might be lucky enough to score a second hit.

-If Eggman goes to the top right corner, this can signal the following attack pattern: (Note: This is the only one I've seen. If there are more please tell me so I can add it here, I'll give credit to you if I can find that it is true)

---One involves the same four pillars heading towards the center of the screen. Again, ride the bottom one vertically and then use the Homing Attack on Eggman.

4th Boss: Mad Gear Zone's Boss:

THIS boss is the one you will come to hate. It seemingly throws objects at you at random, with little-to-no way to dodge them.

...wait, what's that? There ARE patterns? Well, let's get to it then shall we? I'll be organizing these by the number of hits Eggman has taken. Remember, these can start at any point within the pattern, but they're always the same. Like the other bosses, this one takes four-five hits to beat.

---No Hits, Start of fight:

Just keep running right, just me. Don't jump, don't brake, just run right. 9 times out of 10 Eggman will throw the standard bouncing facsimile at you, and by the time he does you'll be in the center of the screen and it'll simply bounce past you. Once you have avoided it, you should be just to the right of the center of the screen. Jump and land a hit with the Homing Attack. If he throws a Spike, just simply jump over it, and Air Dash towards Eggman to hit him.

---One Hit:

This is where Eggman starts adding the blue-colored fast-bouncing Eggman dopplegangers into the mix. Just remember that the left side of the screen is your friend. About one-fifth in on the left side of the screen is a safe point for dodging both standard bouncing objects, and speedy bouncing objects. Letting go of the controls as opposed to braking is more effective in dodging these things.

From my experience, even adding the fast-bouncing objects into the mix, Eggman still mainly throws the standard ones at you; this shouldn't be much of an issue to avoid with practice.

---Two Hits:

Eggman will now start using the fast-bouncing objects much more frequently, usually directly after using a standard one, making them hard to dodge. This one is hard to time. Once the standard one has bounced by, you'll need to move a little to the left of the one-fifth zone, it should bounce over you, start moving to the right.

Another thing he starts doing is throwing two standard objects back-to-back. Easy to dodge these, just stay in the aforementioned one-fifth area.

Remember that he can and will still throw spikes. Thankfully there's usually nothing directly before or after them, so just jump over them, Air Dash towards Eggman and get your chance to strike.

---Three Hits:

In addition to the tactics mentioned above, Eggman will now begin to throw huge Eggman-facsimiles at you. While these seem impossible to dodge, just move all the way to the left of the screen, and they should bounce right over you. Don't be afraid to move a little to the right once he's cleared.

He sometimes follows it up with the fast blue-objects, make sure you're in the above safe zone by the time the big one has cleared.

---Four Hits:

Now things get extra tricky, the background starts moving, becoming a slight visual distraction, and he throws objects much more frequently. There does seem to be seem patterns though, so far I've encountered:

Fast Object > Standard > Big > Fast

Fast > Standard > Fast > Big > Spike

Fast > Standard > Fast > Spike

Big > Fast > Spike

What you need to remember is the safe zones I've mentioned above, and remember that unless you're all the way to the right, you're not going to be able to land a strike when the Big one shows up. If it does, just head all the way to the left of the screen and work your way back to Eggman, avoiding any obstacles.

My best advice is just to practice on this boss, it takes a lot of coordination and practice to bypass the obstacles this boss throws, and just take a good amount of time figuring out a good strategy, and when you should spam the Air Dash to get close enough to Eggman to strike.




5th and Final Boss: E.G.G. Station Zone Boss:

This one is much easier than the one before in my opinion, but there is still room for error. The main things to remember here are that where you stand determines where you the pink projectiles go near the end of the fight, and when you can Spin Dash under the mech's feet about halfway through. This entire sequence takes a total of 36 hits (thanks HeroofTime4u!)

When you start the fight, learn right away how high you need to jump to bounce vertically enough to land a Homing Attack. By this I mean:

If you Jump into the mech in too far a position, you'll just bounce back down to the ground.

If you jump high enough, you're bounced up slanted to the left a bit, and you can use the Homing Attack to score another hit. This is the preferred method and should make things a bit easier, not to mention it bounces you away from the mech.

The ideal place to jump for that to work is the black thing under his nose, just to the left of the yellow stripe on the body of the mech.

As soon as your are pushed away after the Homing Attack, start towards the Mech again. His claw should have lowered, and you'll be able to repeat this two-three more times.

After that, he'll launch upwards, and a reticule will appear on Sonic. Quickly make your way to the right of the screen, wait for the reticule to finalize its position (it will remain green), and Spin Dash to the left quickly. He'll land, and do one of thee things:

Launch upwards again, in which case repeat the "Spin-Dash to the right and wait for the reticule to lock on" step again.

Start shooting his claws towards you. They'll only go so far to the left, just make your way all the way to the left and watch how far they go to gauge their distance. After this he'll generally launch upwards.

Start Walking to the left. In this situation you repeat the "Jump high enough onto him to be able to Homing Attack again" strategy.


After doing this enough, you'll have caused quite some damage to Eggman's precious little machine. This is about the halfway point. His machine will start to shake, smoke will start to rise, and it will eventually be covered in electricity. You can score about four hits here with the "Jump High/Homing Attack" strategy before he goes berserk.

REMEMBER, when he's covered in electricity, DO NOT ATTACK HIM. You will cause no damage and you will be hurt, so AVOID HIM when covered with electricity.

Make your way all the way to the left of the arena. His mech will start doing the "HATERS GON HATE" walk towards you. Your goal here is to wait until you can Spin Dash under-neath his legs. This is generally done by waiting until his left leg is raised to step forward, and spin dashing under-neath it to the other side.

Once you've passed under-neath him, head all the way to the right. He'll start to walk backwards, but no matter how close he gets he won't hit you. He'll launch upwards again, the reticule will lock on to you, and you'll have to vamoose again after it finalizes.

Here's where it differs. If you make your way all the way to the left again, he will likely just launch up and repeat the process.

You'll want to break out of the Spin Dash before making it all the way to the left. When the camera zooms out, he'll launch a claw towards you. When the camera zooms out, THEN start heading to the left of the screen. The claw will make it towards you, miss, head straight up, and then fall depending on where you are standing. As it falls, use the Homing Attack on it. It will bounce across the screen, hit Eggman, and give you a chance to score four hits using the "Jump/Homing Attack" strategy. He will then launch upwards again and the cycle will repeat a few times.

Keep in note: After 2-3 times of this, he will shoot small pink projectiles. If they're going to hit you as you go towards the claw he shot, just wait for them to pass and then hit the claw.

Sometimes he will also fire a laser, just hit the claw ASAP.

When you've gotten him down to his last hit, he will launch upwards and the reticule will go haywire horizontally across the screen. Make sure to stay near its final point, but stay a distance to the left or right. You want to see him fall.

Right before he hits the ground, JUMP! Other-wise you will be stunned, and while not harmed, reduces your time frame to hit him. As you've jumped, jump towards him, get in close, and use the Homing Attack.

If all goes well, you'll have hit him, beat him, and unlocked your Achievement.



I realize text is a very confusing thing to comprehend when it comes to things like this. I have a DVD Recorder and will gladly find a video hosting site to upload a video walk through to if anyone needs that clarification. If you have questions, feel free to ask! I love the series and this game, and will always do my best to help you out. Good luck fellow Achievement Hunters.

There's no real trick tot his achievement other than practice practice practice. Don't expect to get this early on. There are things you cannot know how to deal with unless you've played it a few times. It can be frustrating getting hit on the 4th or final boss and having to go through another 3-4 minutes again, but once you learn every move they have, it should come.

First of all, know that all 4 bosses in the boss rush only take 4 hits to kill. After you hit them once, they will do their "special attack", but these should be easily countered. Also each boss is altered slightly, but again, not drastically enough to throw you off.

Boss 1: The classic wrecking ball boss.from Sonic 1. You'll notice that when you step on the platform, they'll start moving up and down. It doesn't change a thing. 2-3 hits, dodge it's swinging ball and nail the final hit,

Boss 2: Again, this should be cake but can be frustrating later on. Make sure your first hit is when he's at either side. You don't want to hit him in the middle and be stuck on the flipper having to either fly into his electricity or fall into the spikes. Once he's flown up at either side, roll around the edge and use the flipper to take him out.

Boss 3: Stand on the raising wall and get a cheap first hit on him. Now from here, it's all about memory. There's some new patterns with the walls, but they are small and don't crush most of the screen. There's no way around this one. Learn the patterns, know when to attack and when to wait until the next round.

Boss 4: Most people think this is luck based, but again, if you learn the patterns of his bubbles you can handle this every time. If you don't think you can make it under the bubble, fall back until you can. Then immediately start double jumping to gain back ground. The only problem is the giant yellow bubble, which requires you to be right at either end. Like I said, if you don't think you can get past it, hold down left and wait it out.

Final boss: This is where the fun begins, and Yamishi has done a solid job explaining how to beat it. You'll have to hit it a certain number of times (The number seems random to me, or maybe it's time based too) during the first phase. Compared to Sonic 2's Death Egg, this one is a cakewalk at first. Hitting him twice in concession will raise his arms and shield him temporarily, but other than that he's nothing.

The second phase is where it gets tricky. KEEP HIM TO ONE SIDE OF THE SCREEN. There you'll have a stupid lead on his lasers, projectiles and arms, and have more than enough time to spin dash under his gallop. When his arm falls from the sky, hit it 3 times (Don't homing attack though, it will take too long) and immediately run to Death Egg and nail it with 4 hits (Jump, homing, jump, homing). Do this 3 times and he'll do his final attack.

Watch for where the aim lands, then jump as he falls. Nail him with the final hit and you're golden.

Linked is a Youtube video courtesy of xF02. It shows some good and quick methods of dealing with the boss rush to help you get to Death Egg faster.