How do you pronounce Hydrocity?

hey folks sonic the hedgehog 3 is one of my favorite games of all time especially when it's combined with sonic and knuckles it makes for an extra long and very fun adventure the game's second zone is one of its best in fact it's so good that it's considered one of the best levels in sonic history despite the fact that it's a water level which video game fans are notorious for disliking unlike previous water levels the threat of drowning is fairly low because you spend plenty of time above water level the zone is fast looks great and the background music particularly for act 2 is some of the best video game music i've ever heard here's a question though how do you pronounce the name of this zone it's a question that has long haunted the greatest minds of our generation and i'm gonna try and work it out historically i've always pronounced it hydrocity zone for reasons i'll explain a little later but increasingly i've heard some referred to this place as hydrocity zone for me pronouncing it hydro city feels like a no-brainer look at the naming convention sega went with for sonic one two and three while there are a few exceptions most zones follow a similar simple pattern you have green hill zone casino night zone aquatic ruin zone and angel island zone this two-word zone structure is almost a signature of the sonic games in fact hydro city falls comfortably into this pattern the main problem with this argument though is that hydro city is presented as one single word in the zone's title card so on paper it seems like a possible outlier to the sonic zone naming rule pronounced as one single word you end up with hydrocity which actually serves as a clever portmanteau combining hydro and velocity together the more you hear hydrocity zone the better it sounds it's weird but which is correct hydrocity or hydrocity if we look for clues purely in the zone itself we're left with little strong evidence for either pronunciation i mean hydrocity does make sense at face value because the zone is watery and it's evidently man-made or echidna made which is why i always opted for hydro city but on closer inspection it doesn't feel much like a city to me now i know the floating island home to knuckles is depopulated but it doesn't really feel like a place that's particularly habitable especially because it's underground it feels more like a gigantic ancient cistern underground aqueduct or even a sewage system rather than a city when it comes to hydrocity proponents of that pronunciation have pointed to the blasts and jets of water that shoot sonic all over the place as being a perfect visual representation of hydrocity this feels kind of flimsy though we're gonna have to look a little bit further afield to really work this out the problem is officially there's no true answer sega have actually course corrected multiple times when it comes to the way the zone is actually written in sonic generations for example which released in 2011 players could unlock music tracks that could be listened to in the collection room or played in the background of levels one of the unlockable tracks is hydra city zone which gets a nice remaster and is written with a space between hydro and city it's pretty cut and dry in my opinion that if you pop a space in there it's definitely hydro city but then again when the zone reappeared in sonic mania in 2017 the original spelling was back with that space removed look past the games and to the world of sonic comic books and you won't find a definitive answer there either in the archie comics infamous writer and illustrator ken penders went with hydro city when the zone featured in the knuckles the echidna run of comics in wow i can't believe i'm saying this but as a hydro city proponent i'm in total agreement with ken penders here the ongoing idw sonic the hedgehog comic books are no use either in fact this very debate was recently made fun of in the idw comics in the free comic book day 2022 issue there's this scene where sonic and tails disagree over the zone's pronunciation who do you trust more sonic or tails now let's get real ultimately in this debate i personally weigh down on the side of hydro city that's how i've always said it but i'm not just relying on my own childhood bias after doing some research i think it's also the most likely correct pronunciation i've tried to approach this from a few different angles to compile a little list that might help to convince you too if you're a doubter in no particular order here's a few things to think about first the primary and only real evidence for the hydrocity pronunciation is the spelling and lack of space in the word but this feels paper thin it's kind of like the whole superhero name debate from friends do you remember hey why isn't it spiderman it's not like like phil's spiderman he's a spider man think about it there's no space between super and man in superman but it's superman not superman also there's no space between bats and man in batman but it's batman not batman i'm just applying the same logic to hydrocity second while hydrocity does work as a clever pun i kind of have my doubts as to whether this poem was intentional or just purely coincidental again looking at the sonic zone naming convention it's weird that this verbal cleverness was just a one-off the only other pun or name like it that springs to mind for me is tails's real name miles per hour which is like miles per hour but that's about it sonic games weren't really known for this sort of thing if this sort of thing was more common like it is in crash 4 for example i might be able to accept it a little more in fact on the opposite end of the spectrum sega were well known in the 90s for their cryptic and baffling signs messages and typos in game early sonic prototypes and concept art are littered with nonsensical messages and some even made their way into the games we're still puzzled by the cope signs in spring yard zone and if you've played streets of rage 2 you should be familiar with this incomprehensible sign that's never been deciphered that reads it's like boo all of this makes me question whether hydro city was really an ultra clever pun name or just some grammatical error third there's actually another title card oversight or mistake hiding in plain sight here can you spot it you might have noticed a grey palm tree shape behind the one on the title card the current theory is that each zone was going to have its own little grey background icon corresponding to the zones theme but perhaps lacking enough time and resources sega just kept the palm tree which was evidently intended as the icon for angel island zone this palm tree appears across all zone title cards so the title card technically has a mistake or oversight already with the palm tree the spelling would be just another one fourth and now we're getting into the real meaty evidence the sonic the hedgehog youtube channel has been putting out fun live streams for years back in the day four years ago also they were hosted by aaron weber former social media coordinator at sega of america in the 19th live stream from 2017 which unfortunately was one of the rare live streams from the period not hosted by aaron the hosts answered a couple of fan questions and spilled the beans on their take on the hydro city hydrocity pronunciation psychic moose 103 hydro city is my favorite not a bad choice sonic from sonic 3 yeah yeah hydra city's pretty good yeah the best water level from the 2d games i feel yes you know every time i read it i want to say hydrocity weapon every single time that has been something that people have gotten into a debate over is it hydro city or is it hydraulicity and while hydrocity sounds awesome because it's a fast water level great pun there uh unfortunately it is hydro city yep pretty convincing but perhaps not from an authoritative enough source for some so fifth and finally i saved the best for last how about we take a look at the name of the zone in other languages as per the instruction booklet for the game in japanese the zone's name is spelled out phonetically in katakana which i don't think really gives us a clue as to the english transliteration because it looks like the last few characters could be translated as city but are also used at the tail end of velocity when that word is written in katakana 2. if we refer to the european instruction booklet it lists the german and italian name for the zone as hydro city so no clue there either all of the other languages in the european booklet all translate literally as hydro city the hydro velocity pun is completely lost in translation as a cherry on top it turns out that the korean name for the zone hydro city can also be thrown onto the evidence pile the korean name is just hydro city transliterated into hangul but the last two characters can be used to write the word city in korean this feels like the most compelling piece of evidence for me at the end of the day i'm not sure i've been able to conclusively prove my point convincingly enough for everybody but i'd like to think i've converted a few of the hydrocity heretics until we get an ironclad answer from a bonafide authority like takashi iizuka we'll all have to live with an element of uncertainty i guess maybe in the meantime we can move on to other debates i mean the english language does kind of suck and there's plenty of zone names that have potential for this sort of debate for example the third zone of sonic mania how do you say it i've always said studiopolis but it turns out it's studiopolis which makes sense but just kind of feels wrong i don't know i'm sure there's loads of examples of this sort of thing do any spring to mine for you well folks that's all i've got it got quite nitpicky didn't it but i felt compelled to compile all the evidence together in one place so that if you ever see this debate raging you can point people here join me on team hydro city please thanks for watching and hopefully i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Johnny Vector

Views: 105,289

Keywords: hydrocity, hydrocity zone, hydrocity zone act 1, hydrocity zone act 2, hydrocity zone sonic mania, hydrocity zone sonic 3, hydrocity zone act 1 sonic 3, hydrocity zone sonic 3 act 2, hydrocity zone act 2sonic 3 air, how to say hydrocity, how to pronounce hydrocity, hydro city, hydro city zone, hydro city zone 2, IDW hydrocity, archie hydrocity, ken penders knuckles, sonic, hydrossity, hydro city or hydrocity, hydrossity zone, hydrocity debate, how to say hydro city

Id: XSTU7R8NItA

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2022