How fast can sonic run

The word "sonic" is in his name, after all. To be fair, these calculations stuck strictly to what can be seen during gameplay and that is, understandably, restricted in order to make the game playable. If Sonic were truly zipping around faster than the speed of sound, it would have a pretty detrimental effect on gameplay.

If we allow ourselves to suspend our disbelief, we could trust Sonic Unleaded 's in-game speed meters, which have clocked Sonic at up to 2, miles per hour. We might also reference the manual for Sonic Adventure DX , which boasts a top speed of 3, miles per hour. There are, of course, also the light-speed shoes to consider. The question of Sonic's top speed is seemingly unanswerable. Even the in-game answers don't agree with one another and that's to say nothing about the cartoons or comics.

And, to be honest, enough has been said about Sonic's speed. What we're interested in is the consequences of traveling at those speeds. And with his live-action debut finally hitting theaters this weekend, what better time to find out? Sonic's primary concern is not his speed, but his acceleration. Once at speed, things level out. The G-forces level to 1 once you stop gaining speed.

That's why astronauts on the space station don't splatter against the walls, despite traveling at more than 17, miles per hour while inside it. The forces inside your body when accelerating are the same as if you're already moving fast and suddenly stop. Your body doesn't care whether you're coming or going — it's all about changes in momentum. For our purposes, we'll assume Sonic's top speed is miles per hour, the speed of sound. That's fast. Faster than any creature on Earth can go without the aid of technology.

He's a hedgehog that chases coins across a pinball landscape and, in later games, achieves faster-than-light travel. Plus, he's still going strong after more than 27 years. As pointed out by Duke University's Patek Labs, various animals are capable of incredible speeds when it comes to parts of their anatomy, such as the mantis shrimp's 3-millisecond club strikes. There's even a hypothesis that prehistoric sauropods could have whipped their tails at sonic speed like a bullwhip, but it remains rather controversial.

Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Bored with his job as a small town sheriff, Tom Wachowski James Marsden dreams of joining the San Francisco Police Department until he meets Sonic and sets out to help the speedy blue space hog escape the clutches of the mad scientist Dr.

Robotnik Jim Carrey. In the live-action film, however, Sonic is shown to be traveling at a much slower rate early on in the film. Players would be unable to even play a Sonic game if the character moved at the speed of light, and even though Super Sonic supposedly makes Sonic far faster than normal, actually showing that accurately wouldn't make for a fun time not that Sonic's recent games have been all that fun to begin with.

It's all to say that Sonic is as fast as he needs to be or as fast as fans want him to be. He can run across the face of the Earth in a blink of an eye or break the sound barrier with ease. Or, if you stick strictly to his depiction in his game series, he can run really fast, but nowhere approaching the mythic levels of speed with which he's often attributed.

That's part of why Sonic has endured after all these years. Even with hardly a good game in recent memory, Sonic still remains one of gaming's unmistakable icons after 25 years, thanks to his constantly-changing abilities and speed. That's the way it should be, especially if it means we get more and hopefully, better Sonic games in the future.

Depends On Who You Ask. Facebook facebook Twitter twitter Reddit reddit Comment. Cameron Koch , Tech Times 23 June , am.

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