Chaos Emeralds

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The Chaos Emeralds, as depicted in Sonic the Hedgehog. At the time, there was no seventh Emerald.

A Chaos Emerald is a mystic item that appears in the Sonic the Hedgehog video games, allowing the holder of all 7 of them to achieve ultimate power, and certain characters from the Sonic world can transform into a "super" form as a result of this (see Super Sonic). Each emerald is composed of positive and negative charged materials which make them an everlasting source of energy and allow them to float.

Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow, only use the positive charged part of the emerald to transform, which is demonstrated by Sonic at the end of Sonic Adventure and Shadow at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow The Hedgehog. Knuckles has only been able to transform in Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 2 & Knuckles and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Tails was also able to attain a super form with the use of the Super Emeralds (which are Master Emerald-empowered Chaos Emeralds) in Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

NOTE. Knuckles uses the Negative power of the Master Emerald. Shadow on the other hand is uncertain.

Plot Sequences and Background Information

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Sonic 3's Special Stage

The Chaos Emeralds can be anywhere, usually located in a Special Stage (commonly known as "The Special Zone"). Even alone, their power is unmatched by anything else in the whole entire universe; except perhaps by the Master Emerald, which is just as powerful as all seven Chaos Emeralds, if not more.

The Chaos Emeralds appear as plot points in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. In Sonic Adventure, the Chaos Emeralds were collected by Dr. Robotnik in order to feed Chaos, a water beast that changed form every time it received a Chaos Emerald. With all 7, it became Perfect Chaos, and used all of the negative energy in the Emeralds before dropping them onto the ground. Sonic then picked all 7 up and used the positive energy to become Super Sonic and destroy Perfect Chaos.

In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic and Shadow had the ability to use the Chaos Emeralds to "Chaos Control": alter time and space to teleport or freeze time. Interestingly, Sonic at one point uses the Chaos Control ability with a fake emerald, but he nearly faints afterwards. Shadow's own game implies that proficient use of Chaos control is actually a bloodline trait, which explains both why Shadow can use Chaos Control without an emerald, and why Sonic has so much difficulty using the technique. Then again, for most of Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow has one Chaos Emerald with which to use Chaos Control/Blast. In the last story though, all of the Emeralds are taken from Shadow, and Shadow is forced to use Chaos Control without Emeralds as a plot element.

In Sonic Heroes, the gameplay is more retro, so it goes back to a way of collecting the Chaos Emeralds in special stages to unlock the Last Stage. In it, Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails charge up Chaos energy, while the others buy them time by fighting Metal Sonic in the last story. Team Sonic then became the supreme Team Super Sonic and destroyed Metal Overlord.

In the Shadow the Hedgehog game, the Emeralds were found throughout the stages again (this game had the lack of Special Stages), and Shadow collected all 7 by the end of the game, only to let them be stolen by Black Doom, who used them so he could use Chaos Control to teleport the Black Comet to Earth's surface. Shadow then got the Chaos Emeralds back and became Super Shadow to destroy Black Doom and teleport the Black Comet into space to be destroyed by the Space Colony ARK's Eclipse Cannon.

The Chaos Emeralds in themselves are usually used for weapons of mass destruction (in Robotnik's case), Chaos powers, make Sonic become Super Sonic, turns Knuckles into Super Knuckles, transforms Chaos into Perfect Chaos, and for Shadow to become Super Shadow. The Super Emeralds allowed Tails to become Super Tails.

It is not known why the Chaos Emeralds need collecting at the beginning of every game (except, of course, for the purpose of game dynamics). One explanation is that after the Chaos Emeralds are used to their maximum strength, they repel each other and so end up in secret stages (regular Sonic games) or just the four corners of the world (Adventure games), very much like the Dragon Balls from the Dragon Ball series.

However, there is one exception to this explanation. During the opening sequence for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (if you chose Sonic or Sonic & Tails as your character choice), Sonic is in possession of all seven of the Chaos Emeralds. This is evident when he leaps off the Tornado and falls off-screen only to come racing across the ocean as Super Sonic before making his way onto Angel Island where Knuckles then steals the Chaos Emeralds and hides them from Sonic instead of him having to search from scratch like all other games. Thus, another explanation could possibly be that Sonic himself hides them so their power won't fall into the wrong hands, and so all of them won't be in one group for "easy picking".

An interesting note is that the manual of Sonic 3 states that Eggman tells Knuckles that Sonic is after his Chaos Emeralds. Some fans disagree with the Sonic 3 instruction manual, instead figuring that Eggman said that Sonic was after his Master Emerald; this is due to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles being one game due to lock-on technology. However, it is also important to note that in the Japanese manual of Sonic 3, there is a Knuckles' side-story where he witnesses the destruction of his island's Chaos Emeralds, thanks to the Death Egg impacting the floating island. When Eggman tells Knuckles the reason for his Emeralds seemingly vanishing is because Sonic stole them, this gives Knuckles reason enough to ally with the doctor and steal Sonic's Chaos Emeralds. (Furthermore, this note is stressed in the Sonic Mega Collection summary, when it could have easily been retconned.)

The Eighth Emerald

In the arcade game Sonic the Fighters, in order to travel to the Death Egg II, one must collect all the Emeralds. Each character held an Emerald, and to get another one from a different character, you must defeat them in a fight. However, instead of the traditional seven Emeralds, there are eight. The widely accepted reason for this is because there are eight fighters (excluding bosses). Some fans believe that the set of emeralds in "Fighters" are fake, another possable explaination. Many fans have wondered what would happen if Chaos encountered the eighth emerald.

In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, after you access the Sound Test, you could access 2 unused Special Stages (1 Chaos Emerald stage, 1 Super Emerald Stage). After beating them, you get a 'golden' emerald. After that, it goes on to Angel Island stage with the character displayed near the name of Angel Island in Sound Test (00 = Sonic, 01 = Sonic & Tails, 02 = Tails, 03 = Knuckles).

Super Emeralds

The Super Emeralds are a set of 7 Emeralds that transformed from the Chaos Emeralds with the help of the Master Emerald. (Although some fans believe that the Super Emeralds are separate from the Chaos Emeralds as shown by collecting 7 Chaos Emeralds and not entering the Special stages an eighth time.) The Emeralds made their appearance in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It may be possible that the Master Emerald transferred half of its power into the 7 Chaos Emeralds, there by turning them into the 7 Super Emeralds. These are grey, and Sonic and company have to step on them and play through Super Special Stages similar to Sonic 3's Special Stages to light them up to their original colors. Getting all the Super Emeralds (from both games) makes the Master Emerald glow, and enables Sonic to transform into Hyper Sonic, Tails to transform into Super Tails, and Knuckles to transform into Hyper Knuckles. Hyper Sonic and Hyper Knuckles are faster than their Super counterparts. Because of this, two after images of each character follow them as they run. Hyper Sonic glows the colors of the Emeralds and jumps much higher. While in mid-air, if you press the jump button again, he will do a mid-air dash that sends him in the direction you hold the D-pad and creates a flash which destroys all the enemies on the screen. As Hyper Knuckles, you glide and climb much faster. While gliding, if you hit a wall, you will do the Hyper Quake, in which it destroys all on-screen enemies.

The Super Emeralds have not been seen since. However, some speculate that the emeralds in Sonic Adventure, at the Master Emerald shrine in Tikal's time period, are indeed the Super Emeralds. Their size are roughly the same size as Sonic or Knuckles, while in the present the Chaos Emeralds are about the size of their hands. This has not been made official however. The sizes aren't likely important, seeing how in one scene of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Knuckles holds the Master Emerald in his hand. Another interesting fact is that one of the prototype screenshots of "Sonic Adventure" showed fourteen emeralds at the same time, making it possible that the Super Emeralds were a part of the story at some point. These may be references to the part of Sonic Adventure that includes Chaos taking the Emeralds' power from them, seperating the emeralds into two separate sets of power.

A theory to the sizes are that the more further away the Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald are to the shrine, the smaller they become, and the more closer to the shrine they are, the more bigger they become.

Sol Emeralds

A set of Emeralds from another dimension, the Sol Emeralds appear in Sonic Rush, and are guarded by Blaze the Cat. They are basically identical to the Chaos Emeralds, right down to being able to make someone go Super, however they are square (emerald cut) unlike the pointed shape (brilliant cut) of Chaos Emeralds. This ability has only been used by Blaze to transform into Super Blaze, though some argue that her name should be Sol or Phoenix Blaze, due to Super forms being powered by the Chaos Emeralds. It is also interesting to note their magnetic properties - both Eggman and Eggman Nega quote that the Chaos and Sol emeralds can attract and repel each other, and this power could destroy the world. As far as it is known, there is no Master Sol Emerald, but it might be red as red resembles fire (fire is Blaze's power, and she has a connection to the Sol Emeralds).

It is thought within the Sonic fanbase that the Sol Emeralds may have a role in the upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 game Sonic The Hedgehog, after it was said that Blaze may be returning in the game.

• "Sol" means "sun" in many Romance languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, and swedish.

Time Stones

In Sonic CD, the Chaos Emeralds are replaced by the Time Stones, which teleports Little Planet through time; it is for this reason why it is only visible in the planet's atomsphere for one month out of every year. The Time Stones cannot cause transformation (or if they can, have not) and have not appeared since.

In the SatAM continuity, there were two Time Stones that were guarded on an flying island which could only be accessed by defeating the guards and answering the riddle asked by the Guardian. Sonic and Sally Acorn used these two Time Stones to transport themselves back to the day of Robotnik's takeover of Mobotropolis during the two-part episode "Blast to the Past" in an attempt to stop the takeover from ever happening. This ultimately failed, but Sally was able to save her nanny Rosie by telling her to never leave Knothole no matter what due to the fact that Sally knew that she would be captured while out in the Great Forest and roboticized by Robotnik.

In Sonic the Comic, there was mention in a Sonic's World strip of there being seven Time Stones on the Miracle Planet, but only one was ever seen in the main strip and it resembled a normal stone rather than the multi-coloured gems shown in the back-up strip. Robotnik, by means unknown, had find the Time Stone and was using it to power a machine that would cyberform the whole Miracle Planet; through a bizaare time paradox, Sonic received a Time Stone from himself so he could go back in time, retrieve the Time Stone (and destroy the machine), and then go forward in time to give the Stone to himself, after which point the machine's effect on the planet suddenly vanished, as did the Stone. Its origin was never explained.

Guardians

The Chaos Emeralds were originally guarded by Chaos, a water-like being that protected both these emeralds and the Chao that lived there.

Tikal found Chaos and the Chao in her ancient Echidna family. She loved them and cared for them, but her father found out about them and wanted the power of the Emeralds for himself. He attacked the Emerald Shrine and tried to steal them for himself, but Chaos absorbed the power of the Emeralds and became Perfect Chaos. Tikal appealed to the Master Emerald to seal Chaos away inside it, sealing herself in the process. We know this because Tikal's spirit is of the age when she was sealed, which is the age at which her father attacked the Emerald, (which would mean that Tikal is now a spirit with some magic, ghost and chaos powers). The Chao lived on and bred, however.

This is the point at which the Echidnas took over in protecting the Emeralds. Knuckles is the echidna that protects them in the time of the current Sonic the Hedgehog timeline, and probably the only echidna left (in the Sonic Team storyline, other continuities like the American Sonic comics have more echidnas in existence).

It is not known if the island was afloat in the time of Tikal. The geography of the island in the past and present seems to indicate that it wasn't afloat in the time of Tikal, as the Emerald Shrine was directly connected to the Echidna city in the past, but now they're separate. It's possible the Floating Island was created when Perfect Chaos arose before Tikal sealed him which there is evidence of in the Sonic 3 manual. If this is true, the reason it does float high in the sky is most likely in order to protect the Emerald from invaders who might try to steal it (like Dr. Eggman eventually did).

Another reason for the fact that the Angel island floats, could be that the Master Emerald's energy causes the island to rises high above the surface. During the time of Tikal's life the Chaos Emeralds canceled out the Master Emeralds effects and after chaos used the Emeralds to become Perfect Chaos, the lifting effect of the Master Emerald started (although it is not shown in Sonic Adventure). This is extremely likely given that Sonic needed to retrieve the Master Emerald so the island could rise and that the island began to sink and even wobble in the sky after the Master Emerald was stolen again by an EggRobo in Sonic & Knuckles. Strangely, when the Chaos Emeralds become Super Emeralds in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which happens during the story of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, the island still floats in the air. The question is, why does it float if the Super Emeralds are in the same chamber as the Master Emerald? This may be true because the Master Emerald can cancel the Chaos Emeralds, or enhance them to make Super Emeralds. This may mean that the Master Emerald provides power for the Chaos Emeralds, and can be made to stop their power or maximize their power in close range. If the Master Emerald is giving power to the Super Emeralds, and they remain on the island, the power is still available on the island to keep it in the air.

In the Archie Comics storyline, Knuckles is the latest in a long line of Master Emerald protectors, known as the Brotherhood of Guardians.

Blaze the Cat, the new feline character featured in the 2005 DS game Sonic Rush, is Guardian of the Sol Emeralds, a new breed of Emerald from Blaze's universe.

Emerald Colors

In the original Sonic the Hedgehog, the six Emeralds were blue, yellow, red, green, pink and gray. A seventh, purple Emerald then appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. In Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the pink Emerald was replaced with cyan one - the yellow Emerald also became orange, but switched back in Sonic Adventure. The colors of the Emeralds have remained constant since, as green, yellow, purple, grey, blue, red and cyan, although Shadow the Hedgehog seems to portray the grey emerald as white, and Sonic R had both a yellow and an orange emerald instead of a blue/cyan one (the Chaos Emerald was blue in the racing course it was found in, but the screen after the race -that only comes if you finish in first- shows it as cyan.)

Certain games have used their own unique colors for the emeralds - in Sonic Spinball, they are all blue, while in Sonic Battle, they are all green. In the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series by Archie Comics, green is the color of most Chaos Emeralds. Special zones sometimes house Emeralds that are white (see Super Sonic vs. Hyper Knuckles, February 1996), a black Emerald served as a prison for Chaos 0 (see Sonic the Hedgehog #80) and mention is made of a red Emerald on an alien home world (see Sonic the Hedgehog #126). In the UK's Sonic the Comic series, the emeralds are blue, yellow, red, green, orange, grey and purple.

Chaos Emeralds in the Comics

Sonic the Comic

In Fleetway's Sonic the Comic, the history of the Emeralds is expanded considerably, though some points contradict the storyline of the games. These events were not related chronologically, but this document shall list them as such.

The story of the Chaos Emeralds begins in Mobius's distant past, during the war between the Echidna race and the Drakon Empire. Seeking vessels for their unstable, newly developed Chaos Energy, the Drakons raided the Echidnas' sacred emerald mines, and infused seven emeralds with Chaos Energy. The Echidnas were able to steal the seven emeralds back and capture a Drakon prosecutor, but exposure to the emeralds mutated the captive into a monstrous creature known as Chaos. Draining away some of the Emeralds' power, the Echidna elder Pochacamac was able to weaken Chaos, who was defeated and sealed away by the Echidnas.

Events which followed remain lost to history - Knuckles, appointed guardian of the so-dubbed "Chaos Emeralds", was apparently sealed into some form of suspended animation for unknown reasons and the Echidna race mysteriously vanished. At an unspecified point, either before or after this, six of the Emeralds were divided into twelve. Drained of the majority of their power, the two sets of emeralds dwindled in size until each gem was an emerald-cut shape about the size of a fist, and one set, drained even to the point that they had lost their individual colours, came to be scattered across Mobius. The other set remained in a temple on the legendary Floating Island, where Knuckles dwelled in stasis.

When the kindly scientist Doctor Ovi Kintobor began his plan to rid Mobius of all negative energy, he sought out a vessel that could contain such power. He located the six emeralds, which were highly suited to containing such energy, and planned to transfer into them the negative energy he had collected using his Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor (ROCC), a machine comprised of golden rings. Requiring a seventh emerald to stabilize the transfer, Kintobor and his friend, Sonic the Hedgehog, searched for one to no avail. Eventually, Kintobor believed that he had developed a way to transfer the energy without the seventh emerald using the ROCC - but just before he was about to do so, he became distracted by a rotten egg, and tripped on a cable, slamming the ROCC's control panel with his egg-laden hand and causing an explosion that bathed him in chaos energy, transforming him into Doctor Ivo Robotnik.

Robotnik gathered up the six emeralds, and put them in sub-orbital space warps to keep their power out of Sonic's hands, but Sonic was able to reclaim them. Bringing them together in his underground base, another facet of their power was revealed - if brought together, the emeralds would interact with each other, generating and radiating chaos energy in a chain reaction that resulted in a spatial warp that thrust them into the alternate dimension called the Special Zone. This first warp re-energised the emeralds to a certain degree, restoring their multi-hued appearance, but Sonic was also caught in the blast of chaos energy and was transformed into the berserker Super Sonic for the first time. After reclaiming the Emerald's from the Special Zone, Sonic hid them in the Frozen Zone where the sub-zero temperatures rendered them inactive and prevented the spatial warp. They were briefly stolen by Captain Plunder and his Sky Pirates, but before they could heat up they absorbed the pirates' negative energy and turned them into easily-beaten hippies.

In order to keep a closer eye on the gems, Sonic kept them in a refrigerated box at his Emerald Hill Zone headquarters. Robotnik, meanwhile, had encountered the awakened Knuckles and brought the echidna into his service by claiming that Sonic had stolen the emeralds. Allowing himself to be captured by Sonic's Freedom Fighters, Robotnik was able to lead Knuckles straight to their headquarters and steal the Emeralds. Taking them back to the Floating Island, Knuckles reintegrated the two sets of six into one. Robotnik had developed a control device that would take the place of the seventh emerald - the Grey Emerald - and allow him to control the Chaos Energy, but, with the doctor's deception exposed, Knuckles revealed that he'd had the Grey Emerald all along and he used it to stop Robotnik.

The seven Emeralds were returned to the Hidden Palace Zone on the Floating Island, where they steadily regenerated into their original size. The green Emerald was restored to its status as the Master Emerald, which Robotnik then stole to use as the power core for his new Death Egg; Sonic managed to get it back. The emeralds were able to subsequently remain safe on the Floating Island and allowed Knuckles to generate a protective forcefield around it, although they were still the cause of some trouble when Sonic was accidentally exposed to them and transformed into an even more deranged, demonic version of Super Sonic.

When the Drakon Empire made contact with Mobius once more, Emperor Ko-Dorr, head of the House of War, secretly entered into a partnership with Robotnik in order to reclaim the Chaos Emeralds and use it to fuel a coup against the other Houses. As part of a double-cross, Robotnik had his assistant, Grimer, apparently defect to the Drakons and inform them of the Emeralds' whereabouts; the Drakon's disabled all of the Floating Island's defences and defenders, allowing Robotnik (after Grimer had the Drakon's suddenly teleported away) to teleport in and finally seize control of all the power of the Emeralds. At first, the power seemed too much for his body to contain and he was transformed into a crystalline statue, but this soon proved to be merely a chrysalis stage as his form adapted to the energies it now contained. With the power of the reality-warping chaos energy in his control, Robotnik altered history and subjected Sonic to a series of challenges, until the hero baited him into restoring Knuckles to help him. With the echidna's aid, Robotnik was defeated and the chaos energy drained from his body - but it appeared that he could now no longer exist substantially without it, as it's removal caused him to shrink into a sub-atomic state.

The emeralds were consequently left largely unmolested, aside from a brief abortive attempt by a gang of thieves working with the Doctor Robotnik Appreciation Tube to steal them; unlike most villains, they knew the Emerald's were too dangerous to mess around with and just wanted to sell them. Robotnik himself, restored to normal, subsequently suffered a string of defeats which plunged him into a suicidal depression, and, desperate to break his master out of this dark state, Grimer unleashed the Chaos creature (which had formerly been discovered by Robotnik). Raging out of Grimer's control, Chaos headed for the Floating Island, intended to absorb the Chaos Emeralds into itself, but before it could get further than the blue emerald Knuckles jettisoned the remaining Emeralds to the four corners of Mobius. Without the emeralds' power, the Floating Island crashed to Mobius and sank into the ocean.

While Sonic himself was transported into the ancient past by Pochacamac and witnessed the origin of the emeralds and Chaos, Doctor Robotnik gathered the emeralds to draw Chaos and the Freedom Fighters to his fortress, that they might all die together; Sonic returned to the present just in time to witness Chaos absorbing the remaining emeralds and becoming the monstrous "Perfect Chaos." The disaster was stopped by the surprise arrival of Super Sonic, dying due to depletion of his own chaos energies, who plunged himself into Chaos's body and absorbed the energy of the emeralds into himself, reverting Chaos back to his Drakon form. At full power again, Super Sonic turned on the Freedom Fighters, but was defeated when he was re-integrated back into Sonic's own body.

Additionally, at one point, a black emerald was shown to be used by a group of shadow creatures in another dimension as a means of gaining access to Mobius. It's relationship to the Chaos Emeralds, if any, went unexplained.

Sonic the Comic - Online!

The online fan-made continuation of Sonic the Comic (viewed by some as an "officially unofficial" continuation due to its endorsement by some of the creators of StC) has added a little more to the history of the Chaos Emeralds. Although not explaining how the emeralds were divided into two sets or how the second set came to be on Mobius, the comic has shown them to have been found by Kintobor amongst a cache of abandoned technology left over from the Drakon-Echidna war in the Emerald Hill Zone. It also revealed Chaos Energy could be used for storing computer data and splicing genetics.

Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog

In Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog, Chaos Emeralds are much more numerous than they are in other continuities; in reality, there are far more than just seven. They are also connected to the "Power Rings", which are produced by harnessing the energy of the emeralds. They are tied to the mysterious mystical beings known as the Ancient Walkers, three dinosaur-like beings that wear masks and have amazing powers. However, in contradiction to this, it was revealed in a recent storyline that the Emeralds were the product of the Xorda (the aliens that transformed Earth into Mobius) gene bombs - a more scientific origin than a mystical one. It has yet to be revealed whether or not there is more to their story or not.

In addition, there exist 7 "Super Emeralds", which were revealed to be the transformed form of the 7 Chao that were guarded by the being known as Chaos. What's more, there's another level of existence known as "the Chaos Force", which is tied to the Chaos Emeralds and has been tapped into by the "Guardians of the Floating Island", Knuckles' ancestors - one theory is that the Xorda gene bombs allowed the energies of the Chaos Force to spill out into this plane and take the form of Chaos Emeralds. There is also a special Black Chaos Emerald that served as the containment area for Chaos.

Finally, while on an alien world, Sonic discovered a red colored emerald, which rather than transform him into Super Sonic, created a mad, crazed Super Sonic that was independent of Sonic's body.(similar to fleetway's normal Super Sonic)

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

The Chaos Emeralds made an appearance in DiC's cartoon series in a four part story called Quest for The Chaos Emeralds, but they are very different from the game versions. There are only four, and instead of different colors they are all different shapes. They have no guardian, but the Emeralds are hidden in time instead of certain place. Each Emerald focuses on a different power;

• Invisibility: this made the holder invisible, and is buried on an island in the time of pirates.
• Invincibility: this granted invincibility, but it is more complicated than simply holding it. To trigger off its powers permanently, its first holder must become king. Guarded by Merlynx the Magician in the Middle Ages.
• Immortality: This granted immortality to the holder. Resided with Robotnik's mummified ancestor in a Mobius parallel of Ancient Egypt.
• Power of Life: possibly the most powerful one, this had the power to grant life to any inanimate or dead object. Inside a volcano crater in Prehistoric times and guarded by a volcano deity who would only exchange it for a sacrifice.

Robotnik forced a scientist, Dr. Caninestein, to build him a time machine to grab the Emeralds and become Supreme High Robotnik (possibly Robotnik's super form). In this form, he could rule the universe. Unfortunately for him, the scientist granted Sonic and Tails the duty of making sure he does not get them. Assisted by Caninestein's various time-travel devices (sneakers, surfboard, skateboard) and the locals from each time area (some were parodies of real historical figures or even Sonic's own ancestors) Sonic and Tails foiled Robotnik's first attempts at the first three Emeralds, facing many life-threatening situations on the way. But Robotnik tried again and succeeded. Supreme High Robotnik almost killed the duo by sending them into the Big Bang, but it failed and Sonic formed an idea. Completely ignoring the rules of paradox (the cartoon isn't meant to be serious, after all), the duo manages to gather their past selves after they left each time area. Five Sonics and five Tails went back to the present time where Supreme High Robotnik was still wreaking havoc. The team that now consisted of ten all worked together to steal back the Emeralds and return them to their original places. Oddly, when Sonic stole the Emeralds from Supreme High Robotnik, he should have become his Super form (like Robotnik had done) but he didn't. In fact, none of the emerald powers worked on Sonic while he held them, apart from Invisibility, though in part 2, Tails used the Invincibility Emerald's powers to take out Scratch and Grounder while Sonic jousted with Robotnik. In part 3, Sonic's mummified ancestor had a different emerald which, when given to Sonic, created a shield which protected Sonic so that he could take on Robotnikhotep (Robotnik's ancestor). One possible explanation for these events is that it was possible to harness only the powers that were needed - since Robotnik wanted world domination, he used all four. There was never any need for Sonic to do this, so he uses only one or two.

Artificial Emeralds

It is possible to create synthetic Chaos Emeralds with the same power levels and abilities as the originals. This has been proven by Tails in Sonic Adventure 2 and by both Tails and the Metarex in Sonic X. However, the Metarex-made Emeralds seem to phase out after use, becoming fragile and useless. And in addition, these particular "fake emeralds" react to Sonic in a different way, instead of transforming him into Super Sonic, he will transform into the mysterious Dark Super Sonic.

Trivia

In Futurama,there is an episode where Fry and Leela gain superhuman abilities, and prevent an emerald that looks a lot like a Green Chaos Emerald from being stolen.

See also

• Warpstone
• List of fictional gemstones