You know, a lot of people give Sonic a hard time for ripping off the Super
Saiyan thing from Dragon Ball Z and can you blame them?
I mean, DBZ has seven Dragon Balls, Sonic has seven Chaos Emeralds
Dragon Balls can give you super powers and so do the Chaos Emeralds
and of course there's the ever-important super power of having golden hair, so yeah,
It definitely looks like Sonic copied Dragon Ball.
Until, you know, you look it up and you find out that Super Saiyan form premiered in the manga issue that came out in August
1991 and Sonic was originally released in June of
1991, several months earlier. Remind me again who's ripping off who here?
Yeah, it's still Sonic; the Super Sonic form didn't debut until Sonic 2 in 1992
But I totally had you going for a second there, right?
[intro music]
Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory! Calling Sonic Team liars since 2012 and today,
unfortunately, will be no exception. Hey,
It's not like I want to hate on these furry-tastic games. In fact, my fondest childhood
memories are playing Sonic 2 in the basement with my buddy Max and his younger brother
I was Sonic and Max was Tails. We would get together every weekend to make it a little further in the game.
I would inevitably rage quit and his brother would be forced to sing Christina
Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" to make me laugh and get me to keep playing the game.
Now that I actually say it out loud, It was a weird relationship.
Anyways, Sonic Mania is great! A game
reminding me of my love for Sonic and my frustration with THESE:
the Chaos Emeralds. Because my other childhood hobby, outside of getting
a young boy to sing Christina Aguilera songs to me in a basement,
was gemology. I was fascinated by shiny rocks, precious gemstones and most of all crystals. In fact,
I still have my collection to this day.
It's also the reason why one of my favorite channels these days is JTV hosted by my friend Natalie.
It's a channel nerding out over all things gemstone like what stones would power a lightsaber
and what is Game of Thrones dragonglass in real life.
But the thing is as a rock nerd it always irked me that the Sonic games called these gemstones
"Emeralds" because I just don't think that they are.
It is my firm belief that the Chaos Emeralds aren't actually emeralds.
I've just never had the time to actually research it before
UNTIL TODAY because my job now is literally over researching
all the little details in video games that bothered me when I was growing up
So get ready loyal theorists this episode is a genie in a bottle come come coming at you now
Far from being a collectible that you can ignore
we now know that the Chaos Emeralds are objects of great power in the Sonic universe.
I know sometimes it feels like they can basically do whatever is convenient for the plot at the time
But when you actually look at them across games the sonic lore is actually pretty
Consistent about what powers these gemstones
have. The two big points are :
let's throw a list up on the screen right now.
1) Chaos Emeralds are power sources
I mean the Chaos Emeralds are repeatedly shown
to possess enough energy to power
some pretty absurd super weapons like
Robotnik's Eclipse cannon and when they're not
in the hands of the villain they can also be used by the forces of good
in Gaia temples. Speaking of Gaia temples
point 2) they can absorb power as well as provide it.
In situations where the Chaos Emeralds are drained of their energy
they can be placed on the altar of a Gaia temple to recharge through the Earth's power.
In short Chaos Emeralds are basically like epic rechargeable batteries. Lastly,
we know their color, in the first few games the number, color, and shape
of the emeralds were inconsistent between games
But from Sonic 3 onward (well at least until Sonic mania)
They were finalized as being seven brilliant cut gemstones colored
red, green, blue, cyan, purple, yellow and gray.
And this was always the thing that bothered me as a kid.
I thought emeralds were supposed to be green
But maybe I was wrong so 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 just can't be any old mineral just like snowflakes are specifically a crystalline form of water.
Emeralds are specifically a crystalline form of the mineral called Beryl
But there's a catch, you see there are other gemstones besides emeralds that are also
Beryl crystals. For example aquamarine is a super popular gemstone that, like an emerald, is a Beryl crystal.
So what makes a gemstone an emerald as opposed to aquamarine when both are formed by 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're being formed. So, hey, good news
Pokemon taught us all one thing right. Emeralds are and will always be
green. Bad news is that Sonic has been lying to us about that fact for literally decades.
Which means I can technically end the episode right now. At the very most only one of the Chaos Emeralds can
Actually be an emerald, but hey, that's not a game theory that's a game fact,
Thanks for watching.
Okay, okay, obviously
I'm not gonna end the episode after five minutes
Actually finding out that the Chaos Emeralds aren't really emeralds leads us to the even more interesting question of : If they're not emeralds then,
What are they exactly? I mean apart from color,
they do all seem to be fairly identical. Same shape, same texture, same function in the story
It's not like Robotnik is all "I NEED DA PURPLE CHAOS EMERALD". No, they're all interchangeable.
(future) WHY
That tells me that they might belong to the same species of gemstone
Yeah
Rocks have species too (no they're minerals), gemstones are said to be part of the same species if they're made up of the same
mineral and have the same structure. For example, the crystallized form of the mineral corundum can be colored red,
which is what we call a ruby, or blue which is what we call a sapphire.
They look different, but the basic building blocks are actually the same.
So they're part of the same species. Just like a Terrier and a Golden Retriever are both part of the same species even though
they're two dogs that look different. So emerald is a form of crystallized Beryl that's colored green.
But Beryl is an entire gem species that comes in a wide variety of colors,
which means that maybe the Chaos Emeralds can all be emeralds?
But they can all be Beryl putting them in the same chemical species as
emeralds. To find out for sure though we have to go down the color list. Green is obviously emerald. Yellow is Heliodor, a form
of crystallized beryl with a golden color. Teal is aquamarine. Which I talked about already getting its light blue color from iron two-plus ions
Adding a few more of those iron ions turns it darker
And you get yourself a blue beryl gemstone Maxie, max, max six, max six.
And you get yourself the blue beryl gemstone. Maxixe (Mashishi), red beryl doesn't have a cool name
It's just red beryl tinted with manganese. Fun fact
though, red beryl is about a hundred and fifty thousand times as rare as diamond ,selling for as much as a hundred and forty-one
Thousand dollars per ounce. Forget worth its weight in gold, red beryl is worth
Literally a hundred times the same amount of gold. So, red beryl, rare, but definitely possible.
But here's where we start to run into problems : that darn purple emerald.
Which again is just an oxymoron. You see purple variety is a beryl.
Just don't exist. I mean there are some forms of beryl that are technically classified as purple, like morganite
But that clearly looks more pink and definitely not the deep rich shade of purple that we see in the Sonic games
There's also the teeny tiny
Problem of Sonic - in Sonic mania which both feature a purple emerald and a pink emerald and the Beryl species has no
Solution for that plus doing more research Beryl crystals in the real world behaved nothing like the ways
We see Chaos Emeralds used in the Sonic games
I mean when was the last time you saw an aquamarine gem used a power a weapon of mass
destruction or even a weapon of minor annoyance long story short
It doesn't look like Kass emeralds are in any way shape or form related to emeralds or its gemstone species
Which means we're back to the drawing board to find a gemstone species that does meet our
requirements that 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 be recharged
Themselves seem like just a thing out of science fiction er because of video game
but in my research
I actually stumbled across a property of certain gemstones called piezo electricity basically when you squeeze or heat up the GEMA knob it
produces an electrical voltage
The exact way it does
This is way too complicated to explain here
But suffice it to say a crystal that produces electricity
When heated or pressed not enough sounds like the exact sort of thing Robotnik would be looking for to power his doomsday devices
This fact is actually supported in the comics when the Sonic the Hedgehog comic revealed Sonic's origin with dr. Robotnik
Sorry back, then he was dr. Avi kin towbar. He gets fused with a rotten egg and becomes Eggman later
That's no joke deep sonic lore research gets to some really weird places
Anyway, the machine that helps make the Chaos Emeralds into what they are today is called the rock or retro orbiter chaos compressor
Compressor ie putting pressure on the stones to get them to spit out electricity cool so with that established only seven naturally-occurring
Crystal families have this piezo electric trait about them
But one of them one stood out ports aka the most common gemstone on earth hey
I mean sometimes the answers are hiding in plain sight oh, so I know what you're gonna say
But canonically Sonic's planet Mobius is earth tens of thousands of years in the future
that's according to deep lore research in the comics like I said the more you pick apart the sonic cannon the
Weirder and weirder against hey we get this not only can courts create voltage through its piezo electric properties it also works in Reverse
You can place a charge across the quartz crystal and it will produce mechanical
motion by bending or flexing tiny
Vibrations that are useful for sending information to a machine in a very precise manner kind of like a radio frequency in fact
It's that exact property that led to quartz crystals being used in large numbers of different devices like the quartz clock that was invented in
1927 clocks that use a quartz crystal oscillator to generate a frequency so
Precise that these clocks are over ten times more accurate than a traditional
Mechanical clock and it doesn't stop there quartz crystals
Also have the ability to store electric charges something that we already talked about with the Kasimir in addition to being used as power
Sources Chaos Emeralds can also absorb power we see it happen in Sonic Unleashed in
Situations where the Chaos Emeralds are drained of their power?
They could be placed on the altar of the gaia temple to recharge them through the Earth's power quartz shares a similar ability
It possesses a high capacitance and is commonly used in circuit boards for its ability to store a charge
this would also help explain the
Master Emerald the gemstone with the power to counter or amplify the other emeralds the Master Emerald being a larger gemstone would have
Naturally higher capacitance allowing it to absorb the charges of the other smaller stones nullifying these other rocks
Or transferring its own charge to a Chaos Emerald
And thus amplifying its powers so in essence we found ourselves a gemstone that creates an electric charge stores an electric charge and can be
Recharged all of these things just like the Cask quote-unquote emeralds
Which leaves us with one final question of color does quartz naturally occur in all the colors of the chaos gems?
Absolutely yes quartz as a mineral species comes in clear yellow red blue teal pink and purple varieties
They're all incredibly common in an ironic twist the rarest form of naturally occurring colored quartz crystal is prasiolite or green quartz
Because it gets its 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 it seems to indicate that there might be something radioactive
There could that potentially explain how talking hedgehogs foxes and echidna suddenly sprung into existence
It would actually make sense in the sonic origins comics aliens bombard planet Earth with bombs intended to exterminate all life on the planet
The bombs melted life on earth into a genetic news
According to official sonic lore DNA from the former human population merged with the DNA from the animal kingdom to form
modern-day mobians like Sonic and Tails that is the official Sonic origin story ladies and gentlemen
Yeah, I sound like a broken record, but seriously the deeper you dive into the sonic franchise
It is the dark dark place so what I'm trying to say here
Is that it would make perfect sense that these gene bombs would leave some sort of radioactive decay that gives us not only
hedgehogs that can run faster than the speed of sound
But also the green quartz Chaos Emerald to rule them all now if you'll excuse me plumbing 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 gotta rub it the right way
What a nerd out even more about gemstones remember that channel. I talked about earlier Jay TVs my friend Natalie's channel
She's a professional gemologist
Who's done a bunch of cool videos about topics like the crystals that power the?
Lightsabers and star wars the real world equivalent of dragonglass from Game of Thrones she makes two awesome videos about gems
Fossils crystals and meteorites every single week since you're a fan of game theory I'd actually recommend her most recent video
What are your mine crest gems actually?
Worth click on the box to the left to check that one out
It's kind of like my video on what's minecraft diamond armor worth, but even better
And if you like what you see coming from her then subscribe and tell her that matpat sent you also leave her a comment with
The word flapjack in it because that'll really confuse her fans will be like oh well
We know the secret we know the inside joke they'll be like what's going on
Why is it welcome flapjack and now if you'll excuse me I feel like I'm actually in a pool
I'm sweating so bad 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 gonna go pass out or towel myself off one of the two
See you next week