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
Nowadays, the only "research" MatPat seems to do is find the theory. Half the video is jokes so stupid it's never funny, and sometimes borders on insult, and the other half... is the theory. Which he never credits, as far as I've seen.
I wouldn't be too surprised if his next sonic theory called "Is sonic actually blue or is he a different colour"
The part that annoys me the most is when he says Mania has both a pink and purple emerald when he shows the screen from Mania that shows that Sonic had collected all the emeralds which outright shows he's wrong
Cause there are only a Purple, Blue, Light Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, and Grey emerald shown.
http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Chaos_Emerald#Trivia
The wiki explains it in literally one paragraph.
like.... ok... I'm pretty guilty of liking some of matpats theories... he comes across as a pretty cool guy. but lets be straight up...chaos emeralds are called that because the name clearly stuck. i dont think sega actually considered all the emeralds emeralds but it sure sounded better then 'chaos crystals' or something to that effect... though i didnt mind the video ( getting fleetway and archie lore confused was kinda funny, but it didnt trigger me ) it just left me feeling like it was kind of...not needed? itd be like a video of 'CRAZY TAXI LIED TO YOU!' because the Taxi itself couldn't be crazy- considering its a car. BUT HEY, THATS JUST A THEORY- A LAME THEORY. thanks for reading.
Jesus Christ, Matpat fails again ! At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he came up with a theory that Optimus Prime is actually a Gundam...
Yeah, I stopped taking anything he said seriously when he suggested that Rosalina was the result of Luigi and Peach having an affair against Nintendo's will, and they withheld information on her character as a result. He's basically just a tabloid for video games.
Oh look another Game Theory with little to no fact checking. In other news water is wet. But in all seriousness the quality of his theories have degraded noticeably in recent years. Reminds me of his garbage phoenix wright theory.
Your first mistake was watching Game Theory