Easy way to get Knuckles A Ranks

Back in the day i used this cheesy way and it still works as i've seen.
No extra software or device required.

Introduction

We all know how much of a trouble it is to get Knuckles A Ranks as you need to find RANDOMLY PLACED OBJECTIVES under a minute.

I managed to get it "honestly" on Speed Highway and Casinopolis but that took me way too many retries, plus i needed to memorize all of the possible spawns on both stages.

I somehow realized this trick by myself back in the day it was first released for PC and it still seems to work.

How does it work?

1) Slowly and calmly start the stage and look for the first emerald piece

Seriously, no need for rush, trust me. But the important part is: DON'T ACTUALLY TOUCH THE EMERALD PIECE. Just find it. Once you're 100% sure of where it is...

2) Esc > Restart > RUN TO WHERE YOU FOUND IT

Emeralds positions reset when you "quit" the stage (or run out of lives) but not when you just esc > restart. Then go and ACTUALLY grab the piece.

3) Everytime you grab a piece, it counts as a Checkpoint.

That's where the trick lies: When you restart and go straight to where you are sure the piece is, you'll get it in a very low time. Thus checkpoint with plenty of time to look for the other two.

4) Find the Second piece, BUT DON'T GRAB IT EITHER

Restart. You'll restart at the place where you found the 1st one. Grab the 2nd.

5) Look for the 3rd piece, Find it.

If you're under 1 minute, just grab it. If you're not, then restart again and go for it.

PS.: You have 4 lives on Trial mode. You can still do a total of 4 restarts freely. That's enough for doing this exploit + having 1 extra in case you screw up something.

Extra tips

Sir Tristan on the comments mentioned these to me a long ago:

- The Ship's deck tilt persists through restarts, which may help with some of its shards, make sure to leave it the way you need before pressing Esc > Restart.

- Works for Mission B too, you can touch the orb, find the piece and then restart, it will count as you haven't touched it.

Conclusion

You can easily do this with all stages as i recall. I'll post screenshots here after i complete their respective A ranks.

[Cool hedgehog]

& Knuckles

[laaj81]

Thank you for showin' us this. It really helps my speedruns!!!

[Gilition]

I do a similar method but I look for all the pieces and then restart

[Mu1ho483]

This method is genius. Now we don't have to do it the frustrating, intended way!

[FrogFigs]

tHABNJS

[CRAZYRAP3]

theres also finite spawn locations so you could find where most of them would be hidden and figure it out from there

[Angry64]

That's Some Useful Info!! I'll Greatly Put This In Mind When Aiming For A Rank!

[E-102 "γ"]

Awesome!

[Coolx]

That's what I did too! Nice job putting it into a gide for others

[Claytonic]

I like the pictures. Very nice!