This quick guide shows off tips on how to get A-ranks in Eggman and Tails' stages. There are no specific walkthroughs, but applying the tips here to your playstyle will make it easy to get A-ranks in no time!

Point combos are essential to getting an A-rank. Basically, the more enemies you destroy, the larger point bonus you'll get. If you defeat two enemies, you'll get 100 extra points. However, if you destroy 11 targets, you'll get a 2,000 point bonus. To get an A-rank, you need to get as many large combos as possible. This is easier said than done for obvious reasons.

In certain levels, if you get a lock onto some enemies, don't shoot ASAP. Instead, move a bit and see if more enemies spawn in. If they do, lock onto them, then shoot.

Here's an example:


This looks like it'd be a good combo. However, if you walked forward and jumped....


You've found a lot more targets! A 500 point combo has been extended into a 2,000 point combo!

This is handy in every stage, but the outdoor levels, like Sand Ocean, Cosmic Wall and Mission Street benefit the most from this.

In later levels, you can get far enough away from an enemy to the point where you'll lose your lock on them. This is only a problem in Cosmic Wall (such as when you're on rails or falling down in a shaft), but it's something to keep in mind to prevent yourself from getting adventurous and accidentally losing a few lock-ons.

One thing is that you won't get combo bonus points if an enemy hits you. Most of enemies are harmless, but it can be a problem if you're in an area with the flying, shooting robots and blob robots. They're pretty good at hitting you if you don't keep your distance.

Enemy bullets can be targeted and shot. This is pretty handy in levels like Weapons Bed, where close-range bullet shooters will occasionally pop up and try to jump you if you're gunning for a target. If you have the Laser Blaster, a bullet that's very close to an enemy will take out the enemy after the bullet is destroyed because of how close the bullet was.



This doesn't work with the lasers that later level and Hard Mode enemies will shoot, so be careful around them.

Certain objects in the world, such as TNT bundles, the cameras in Weapons Bed, and the floaty things from Cosmic Wall, will count as enemies for combos. Use this to boost your combos.






Other stages have items you can blow up, but don't count towards combos, like the cameras in Prison Lane, the LED light signs in Mission Street and the moving flashing light things in Eternal Engine and Lost Colony. Blowing them up will give you a small amount of points, so there's no harm in targeting them.

The Laser Upgrade is pretty handy when going for an A-rank. It gives the missiles shot by you a very small explosion radius. This can be handy for groups of clustered enemies, such as the idle robots in Weapons Bed and the clusters of floating robots in levels such as Iron Gate. Its helpful in that it lets you get an enemy or two you couldn't lock onto or miss. It also makes it quicker to lock onto tight clusters of enemies, which is handy for time attack missions.

The robots with the bombs are excellent for getting big combos. You can target each bomb and the robot itself, which can give you a very nice point bonus.

You can also combine them with other enemies. The extra bonus point boost they give can make something as simple as a harmless floating robot give a nice bonus. When combined with a decent amount of other enemies, you can get a very nice bonus.


(like this)

However, don't stall when targeting a bomb robot and other enemies. After having their bombs spread for a two or so seconds, they'll toss them at you. The bombs can hurt you and ruin your combo.

Some bomb robots will shoot lasers from their bombs in Hard Mode instead of releasing the bombs. Be careful.

Gold Robots aren't needed because of how many points combos give. However, there's no harm in destroying one if you see him. An extra 1,000 points never hurts. Just don't do things like reset the stage if you don't destroy him in time because he's not that important.

Getting an A-rank for the 100 ring missions can be tricky in some cases because some levels don't have a lot of rings in the first place. The best way to get around this is to take advantage of the extra rings that checkpoints give. For example, if you have 25 rings, you'll get an extra 5 rings when you go through a checkpoint. This may not seem like a lot, but you can get some good bonuses later on, such as getting an extra 20 rings if you go through a checkpoint with 60 to 79 rings. However, if you have more than 79 rings, you won't get extra rings.

You can also exploit checkpoints. Get up to 79 rings, then stop collecting them until you get to a checkpoint. The extra 20 rings will boost your rings up to 99 rings, which means you just need to collect one ring to finish and hopefully get an A-rank.

There are a few exceptions, such as Cosmic Wall, which have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of rings.

An A-rank for the Lost Chao missions is only based on speed. Therefore, it's best to haul ass and only destroy enemies that are in your way or are required to progress, such as the enemies and objects you need to destroy to open doors in Lost Colony and Prison Lane.

A-ranks for missions that give you a time limit can be a bit daunting at first. If you try and take your time to destroy as many targets as possible, you'll run out of time. Instead, you'll need to skip some combos or reduce the amount of enemies you target in a combo, depending on where you are. This may be counter-intuitive at first, but the time limit missions either have lowered A-rank point requirements or the time bonus for completing the level will fill in for the combos you missed. It may take you a run or two to see what combos you can skip.

Another thing you need to do is quickly perform combos. Depending on the level, I lock-on while running forward or briefly lock onto a group of enemies and let the Laser Blaster upgrade do the rest (like when comboing the groups of idle robots in Weapons Bed).

Normally I don't give tips for specific levels, but this one is too good to pass up.

When you're in the on-rails sections in Cosmic Wall Hard mode, do not try and chain combos. Instead, constantly hammer the lock on button while facing enemies. This seems counter-intuitive at first, but this works great because of the laser-shooting trash can enemies. These enemies will give a ton of points if you destroy all or most of them. The other enemies (like the floating ones and the blob robots) will fill in the rest. If you do this, you can easily net over 30k points per on-rails section. This, combined with all of the 2,000 and 1,500 point combos you can get in other sections, makes getting an A-rank easy.