Your body doesn't care whether you're coming or going - it's all about changes in momentum.įor our purposes, we'll assume Sonic's top speed is 767 miles per hour, the speed of sound. The forces inside your body when accelerating are the same as if you're already moving fast and suddenly stop. That's why astronauts on the space station don't splatter against the walls, despite traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour while inside it. The G-forces level to 1 once you stop gaining speed. Sonic's primary concern is not his speed, but his acceleration. And with his live-action debut finally hitting theaters this weekend, what better time to find out? What we're interested in is the consequences of traveling at those speeds. Even the in-game answers don't agree with one another and that's to say nothing about the cartoons or comics.Īnd, to be honest, enough has been said about Sonic's speed. The question of Sonic's top speed is seemingly unanswerable. There are, of course, also the light-speed shoes to consider.

We might also reference the manual for Sonic Adventure DX, which boasts a top speed of 3,840 miles per hour. 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 2,500 miles per hour. If Sonic were truly zipping around faster than the speed of sound, it would have a pretty detrimental effect on gameplay.

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. The word 'sonic' is in his name, after all. That's a far cry from the bill of goods we've all been sold. According to their calculations, the Blue Bolt clocks in at just about 80 feet per second, on his best day.

Everything wrong with sonic generations