One of the fastest characters in video games, if not the most, is Sonic, which we have always seen moving at full speed in any title in the saga as soon as it starts running. However, SEGA’s blue hedgehog is not perfect and for example is unable to swimwhich has always been a serious problem for him to the point of becoming one of his main weaknesses.
Since the first Sonic game, whenever we have seen him dive into an area of water, he has moved very slowly inside it, so at those times his speed plummeted. Definitely these phases ended up becoming some of the most complicatedmainly due to the agony that the soundtrack offered with one of its most emblematic songs that indicated that our protagonist was about to drown.
In those moments, the search for a bubble with air or the fact of coming out directly from the water to be the only desire of the players at the controls. However, what is really curious about this whole matter is the real reason why Sonic cannot swim, something that should be possible because it is a hedgehog and these types of animals can swim in real life.
The problem is that the creators of Sonic were unaware of this important detail and when designing it they were convinced that hedgehogs could not swim. Therefore, it was completely logical not to give Sonic this ability, although it is likely that many players were not interested in this aspect at the time. More than anything because a lot of video game characters can’t swim either, so it wasn’t so strange that SEGA’s speedy mascot joined the group.
In fact, his own Yuji Naka admitted all this last year on his official Twitter account, noting that It wasn’t until 2006 that he found out that hedgehogs could actually swim. when he visited a shelter for these animals in Germany, although he also wanted to give him some weakness so that he would not be good at everything.
If I did not know. I first learned that hedgehogs could swim when I visited a hedgehog shelter in Germany. But Sonic can’t swim because I thought it would be better for him to have something he’s not good at as a character.
In the summer of 2005, during my business trip to Germany, I visited a hedgehog center in Leipzig. I learned that urchins can swim when one of the staff at the center told me that they had built a ramp to help the urchins get to shore.
Despite everything, the Mario & Sonic saga at the Olympic Games dared to deny all this when we could see Sonic compete perfectly in any aquatic event, swimming like one more without any problem, although it should also be noted that he was the only one who was equipped with a life jacket so as not to drown.
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