Game Theory: Sonic is Lying...AGAIN! (Sonic Mania)

You know, a lot of people give Sonic a hard time for copying Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball Z and can you blame them? I mean, DBZ has seven Dragon Balls, Sonic has seven Chaos Emeralds. The Dragon Balls can give you superpowers and so can the Chaos Emeralds, and of course there's the ever-important superpower of having golden hair, so yeah, he definitely looks like Sonic. Copied Dragon Ball. Until, you know, you look it up and discover that the Super Saiyan form debuted in the manga issue that came out in August 1991 and Sonic was originally released in June 1991, several months earlier.

Remind me

again

who is scamming who here? Yes, it's still Sonic; The Super Sonic form didn't debut until Sonic 2 in 1992. But I stopped you for a second, right? Hello Internet. Welcome to

game

theory

! Calling Sonic Team liars since 2012 and today, unfortunately, will be no exception. Hey, it's not that I want to hate these fantastic furry

game

s. In fact, my best childhood memories are playing Sonic 2 in the basement with my friend Max and his little brother. I was Sonic and Max was Tails. We met every weekend to advance a little more in the game. Inevitably I would quit and his brother would be forced to sing Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" to make me laugh and keep me playing.

Now that I say it out loud, it was a strange relationship. Anyway, Sonic Mania is great! A game that reminds me of my love for Sonic and my frustration with THESE: the Chaos Emeralds. Because my other childhood hobby, besides getting a kid to sing Christina Aguilera songs to me in a basement, was gemmology. I was fascinated by shiny rocks, precious stones and, above all, crystals. In fact, I still have my collection to this day. It's also why one of my favorite channels these days is JTV, hosted by my friend Natalie. It's a channel that discusses all things gemstone-related, like what stones would power a lightsaber and what Game of Thrones dragonglass is in real life.

But the thing is, as a rock nerd, it always bothered me that the Sonic games called these gemstones "Emeralds" because I just don't think they are. I firmly believe that Chaos Emeralds are not actually emeralds. I just never had time to research it before UNTIL TODAY because my job now is literally researching all the little details about video games that bothered me as a kid. So get ready, loyal theorists, this episode is a genie in a bottle coming to you now. Far from being a collectible that you can ignore, we now know that the Chaos Emeralds are items of great power in the Sonic universe.

I know sometimes it seems like they can basically do whatever is convenient for the plot at the time, but when you look at them across the games, the

sonic

story is pretty consistent about what powers these gemstones have. The two main points are: let's put a list on the screen right now. 1) Chaos Emeralds are energy sources. I mean, the Chaos Emeralds have been repeatedly shown to possess enough energy to power some pretty absurd super weapons like Robotnik's Eclipse Cannon and when not in the villain's hands, they can also be used by forces. of good in the temples of Gaia.

Speaking of Gaia's temples, point 2), they can absorb power and also provide it. In situations where Chaos Emeralds lose their energy, they can be placed on the altar of a Gaia temple to recharge them through the power of the Earth. In short, Chaos Emeralds are basically like epic rechargeable batteries. Lastly, we know their color, in the early games the number, color and shape of the emeralds were inconsistent between games, but from Sonic 3 onwards (well, at least until Sonic

mania

) they were finalized as seven carved gemstones. bright red. , green, blue, cyan, purple, yellow and gray. And this was always what bothered me as a kid.

I thought emeralds were supposed to be green, but maybe I was wrong and that starts us off with the question, "What makes an emerald an emerald?" Well, emeralds are classified as gemstones and technically a gemstone is a crystal composed of a single mineral. But it can't be just any old mineral, just as snowflakes are specifically a crystalline form of water. Emeralds are specifically a crystalline form of the mineral called Beryl. But there is a problem: there are other gemstones besides emeralds that are also beryl crystals. For example, aquamarine is a very popular gemstone that, like emerald, is a beryl crystal.

So what makes a gemstone an emerald and not an aquamarine when both are made from the same mineral? One word, color. Emeralds are green and always have to be green, getting their color from small amounts of chromium as they form. So, good news, Pokémon taught us all one thing well. Emeralds are and always will be green. The bad news is that Sonic has been

lying

to us about that fact for literally decades. Which means I can technically finish the episode right now. At most, only one of the Chaos Emeralds can actually be an emerald, but hey, that's not game

theory

, it's a fact of the game.

Thanks for watching. Okay, okay, obviously I'm not going to end the episode after five minutes. Actually, finding out that the Chaos Emeralds aren't actually emeralds brings us to the even more interesting question of: If they aren't emeralds, then what exactly are they? ? I mean, other than the color, they all look pretty identical. Same shape, same texture, same function in the story. It's not like Robotnik is all "I NEED THE PURPLE CHAOS EMERALD." No, they are all interchangeable. (future) WHY That tells me they could belong to the same species of gemstone. Yes, rocks also have species (no, they are minerals), gemstones are said to be part of the same species if they are made of the same mineral. and they have the same structure.

For example, the crystallized form of the mineral corundum can be red, which is what we call ruby, or blue, which is what we call sapphire. They look different, but the basic components are actually the same. So they are part of the same species. Just like a Terrier and a Golden Retriever are both part of the same species even though they are two different looking dogs. So, emerald is a form of green crystallized beryl. But Beryl is a complete gem species that comes in a wide variety of colors, meaning that perhaps all Chaos Emeralds could be emeralds.

But they can all be Beryl, putting them in the same chemical species as emeralds. To be sure, we have to go down the list of colors. The green is obviously emerald. The yellow is Heliodor, a gold-colored form of crystallized beryl. Teal is aquamarine. What I talked about already gets its light blue color from two or more iron ions. Adding a few more of those iron ions makes it darker. And you get a Maxie blue beryl gemstone, max, max six, max six. And you will get the blue beryl gemstone. Maxixe (Mashishi), the red beryl does not have an attractive name.

It is simply red beryl dyed with manganese. However, a curious fact is that red beryl is approximately one hundred and fifty thousand times rarer than diamond and sells for up to one hundred and forty-one thousand dollars per ounce. Forget about being worth its weight in gold, red beryl is literally worth a hundred times the same amount of gold. So red beryl is rare, but definitely possible. But here's where we start to run into trouble: that damn purple emerald. Which

again

is just an oxymoron. You see, the purple variety is a beryl. It simply doesn't exist. I mean, there are some forms of beryl that are technically classified as purple, like morganite, but that clearly looks more pinkish and definitely not the rich, deep purple shade we see in the Sonic games.

There's also the tiny problem of Sonic, in Sonic.

mania

that features a purple emerald and a pink emerald and the Beryl species has no solution for that, other than doing more research, the Beryl crystals in the real world did not behave in any way like we see the Chaos Emeralds used in the games from Sonic, I mean, when was the last one? The time he wore an aquamarine gem he used a power, a weapon of mass destruction or even a weapon of minor annoyance. Simply put, it does not appear that Kass emeralds are in any way related to emeralds or their gemstone species.

Which means that we. We go back to the drawing board to find a kind of gemstone that meets our requirements, which comes in a rainbow of seven very specific colors, acts as a power source and can be recharged like we see in the Sonic games, and those last two requirements are unusual, right? Gems that can charge my laser recharge. They look like something out of science fiction because of video games, but in my research I came across a property of certain gemstones called piezoelectric electricity, basically when you squeeze or heat up the GEMA knob. produces an electrical voltage The exact way it does it This is too complicated to explain here But suffice it to say that a crystal that produces electricity When heated or pressed hard enough sounds like the exact type of thing Robotnik would be looking for to power his devices apocalyptic This fact is actually supported in the comics when the Sonic the Hedgehog comic revealed Sonic's origin with Dr.

Robotnik Sorry, so it was dr. Avi kin trailer hitch. He fuses with a rotten egg and then becomes Eggman. That's not a joke. Deep research into

sonic

history goes to some truly strange places. Anyway, the machine that helps turn the Chaos Emeralds into what they are today is called a chaos rock compressor or retro orbiter. Compressor, that is. pressing the stones to make them spit out cold electricity, so with that established, only seven families of natural crystals have this piezoelectric trait, but in one of them a port stood out, also known as the most common gemstone on earth, hey, I mean, sometimes. the answers are hiding in plain sight oh so I know what you're going to say But canonically Sonic's planet Mobius is Earth tens of thousands of years in the future, that's according to deep research into the comics, like I said , the further you separate the sonic cannon, the stranger and stranger.

Hey, we understand that not only can this create voltage through its piezoelectric properties, but it also works the other way around. You can place a charge through the quartz crystal and it will produce mechanical movement by bending or flexing small vibrations that are useful for sending information to a machine in a very precise way, something like a radio frequency, in fact it is that exact property which led to quartz crystals being used in a large number of different devices, such as the quartz watch that was invented in 1927, watches that use a quartz crystal oscillator to generate a frequency so precise that these watches are ten times more precise than a traditional mechanical watch and it doesn't stop there.

Quartz crystals also have the ability to store electrical charges, something we already talked about with the Kasimir. In addition to being used as energy sources, Chaos Emeralds can also absorb power. We see it happen in Sonic Unleashed in situations where the Chaos Emeralds lose their power. They could be placed on the altar of Gaia's temple to recharge through the power of the Earth. Quartz shares a similar ability. It has a high capacitance and is commonly used on circuit boards for its ability to store a charge. This would also help explain the Master Emerald. the gemstone with the power to counteract or amplify the other emeralds, the Master Emerald, being a larger gemstone, would have a naturally greater capacitance, allowing it to absorb the charges of the other smaller stones, nullifying these other rocks or transferring his own charge into a Chaos Emerald.

And so amplifying its powers, so in essence, we find a gemstone that creates an electrical charge, stores an electrical charge, and can be recharged, all of these things just like the Cask emeralds, in quotes. Which leaves us with one last question about color: does quartz occur naturally in all chaos gem colors? Absolutely yes, quartz as a mineral species comes in clear varieties of yellow, red, blue, teal, pink and purple. They are all incredibly common in an ironic twist. The rarest form of naturally colored quartz crystal is prasiolite or green quartz. Because they get their green color from being exposed to radiation Oh yeah, now this doesn't necessarily mean that the Chaos Emeralds themselves are radioactive.

But the fact that there are giant green quartz crystals on Angel Island seems to indicate that there could be something radioactive. That could potentially explain how talking hedgehogs, foxes and echidnas suddenly emerged. It would actually make sense in the Sonic Origins comics. Aliens bombard planet Earth with bombs intended to exterminate all life onthe planet. Bombs melted life on Earth in genetic news. According to official sonic tradition. DNA from the ancient human population fused with DNA from the animal kingdom to form modern mobians like Sonic and Tails, that's Sonic's official origin story, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, I sound like a broken record, but seriously, the deeper you dive into the sound. franchise It's the dark, dark place, so what I'm trying to say here is that it would make a lot of sense for these gene bombs to leave behind some kind of radioactive decay that gives us not only hedgehogs that can run faster than the speed of sound, but also Also the green quartz Chaos Emerald to rule them all now, if you'll excuse me, diving into the depths of Sonic has given me a headache, I need to go listen to some Christina Aguilera, but hey, that's just a theory.

Oh, game theory, you have to apply it the right way. What a nerd even more with gemstones, remember that channel. I previously talked about Jay TV's channel, my friend Natalie. She is a professional gemologist. Who has made a lot of interesting videos on topics like powering crystals? Lightsabers and Star Wars, the real-world equivalent of Dragonglass from Game of Thrones, makes two amazing videos about gems, fossil crystals, and meteorites every week since. You're a fan of game theory. In fact, I would recommend his most recent video. What are actually your gems with the crest of mine? It's worth clicking on the box on the left to see it.

It's like my Minecraft diamond armor value video, but even better. And if you like what you see from her, subscribe and tell her Matpat sent you, leave too. she a comment with the word flapjack because that will really confuse her fans they will say oh well We know the secret we know the inside joke they will say what is happening Why is flapjack welcome and now are you going to do it? Excuse me, I feel like I'm in a swimming pool. I'm sweating bullets and in the closet right now, and it's really hot in California, so I don't have air conditioning right now.

It's a problem, so I'm going to pass out or towel off on one of the two. See you next week.