Hyper Sonic Epilepsy Rumor

[wolvenreign]

Hey guys. I was recently doing some research on Hyper Sonic and why he hasn't come back yet, and one thing I see pop up over and over again is that "he caused epileptic seizures". Thing is, I've never once seen an actually cited source for this.

 

I've heard about Porygon being banned from The Pokemon Show for it, and that was cited, but not so much for Hyper Sonic.

 

I'm starting to think it's just an idea that stuck in people's heads because of the comedy of it, or just that it generally seemed like a good idea, but I've never seen factual support for it.

 

Can anyone help me here? It's such a widespread idea, I would hope that these sonic fans  I'm hearing from aren't helping to perpetuate myths.

[Diogenes]

Anything that flashes rapidly ends up getting an epilepsy joke attached to it. I seriously doubt Hyper Sonic ever actually triggered a seizure in anyone.

[Vertekins]

I'm guessing whoever started this rumor saw this;

 

 

And started passing it off as fact for the games to explain why Hyper forms haven't reappeared. Because I never once have heard of this and there was another officially-stated reason for the lack of Hyper forms - The Super Emeralds don't exist anymore in game canon.

[TheOcelot]

I'm guessing whoever started this rumor saw this;

 

 

Or this...

 

 

There is no way the Hyper Sonic sprite caused epileptic seizures. It's visual effect was no stronger than the Super Sonic sprite - just a few extra colours, and this was on 4th-gen hardware. 

 

Hyper Sonic was only cannon for 3&K and then never used again as there was no need for it. A shame really.

[Marcello]

He hasn't returned because he adds nothing that Super Sonic doesn't already. That's really it.

[blazingsonic]

Yeah pretty why there's nothing Hyper Sonic can do that can't be added to Super Sonic, basically Sonic Team turned a 2 sets of emeralds into a bonus feature. I mean since Sonic 3 was split into two games, what are players gonna do when they already have Super Sonic? How much fun would Sonic 3 be if you can just blast through it with Super Sonic?

[ElectricAngel]

Sonic Team revealed that Hyper Sonic isn't canon. He was just there because of the whole Sonic 3 split into two parts. Naturally, every Sonic game has Chaos emeralds, so each part of Sonic 3 had to have Chaos emeralds too. However, because you can't have 2 sets of Chaos emeralds, one set became Super emeralds when combining the 2 games. I doubt he caused seizures.

 

Also, the Pokemon incident was different. I haven't seen the scene myself, but reports say it was much more intense than something you'd see in a video game as the lights were ridiculously bright and flashing at a very rapid pace. I think they called it the paka paka method or something like that. 

 

But still, Pokemon did something completely different and Hyper Sonic is never coming back since he's not canon. There you have it.

[Solkia]

It really depends on the sensitivity of the person.

 

However in most cases it's not going to cause a seizure. For that to happen the color changes would have to be extremely split-second such as things like Pikachu's thunderbolt. The time frame and transition between colors in Hyper Sonic isn't a strong enough flash effect for it to cause an epileptic seizure in most cases.

[Blacklightning]

Honestly, anyone sensitive enough to actually catch a seizure from Hyper Sonic was probably already spazzing out long before that. Sonic games can get real damn colourful pretty fast, and all that spinning doesn't help.

[Autosaver]

 

Mario causing seizures is allowed though.

[Iggy]

That scene in Pokémon was different. It had red flashing lights blinking at a rapid pace and it wasn't only extremely hard on the eyes, it was also extremely unneeded. You could've easily replaced it with a white light that didn't flash and the scene would be much better.

Anyways, although it's not irritating to players who don't have a history of epilepsy, Sonic is a colorful game that moves very fast. As said, it's balanced so that it doesn't feel dizzying of overwhelming to most players, but it can be VERY, VERY dangerous for people with epilepsy. If you have that, you probably shouldn't be playing video games to begin with.

[wolvenreign]

I get what you all are saying, but I guess, deep down inside, I still feel frustrated that the other sonic games haven't even acknowledged Hyper Sonic's existence. He was seriously my favorite part of S3&K. I can still remember the thrill of getting to play as him for the first time.

 

Also, might I say the "this isn't canon" thing is really weird, since, at the end of S3&K, if you didn't have all of the Super Emeralds, you would escape the Death Egg, but fail to recover the Master Emerald, which is in every Sonic game past this in Knuckles' possession (before Eggman takes it or whatever). Not trying to say that that's NOT what Sonic Team said about the canon, I just find it weird to retcon something like that.

 

Couldn't they just redesign Hyper Sonic to have fresh, relevant abilities? I guess I just feel disappointed to only see Super Sonic at the climax of Sonic The Hedgehog games. It's just screaming at me, "There's a transformation above Super Sonic! USE IT MAN CMON".

 

Or they could at least acknowledge it's existence. If it had to go away, I'd like to see why, exactly.

 

I dunno. I guess it's just my personal taste that I don't like to see higher super-forms retconned. I honestly wish Spider-Man kept his symbiote suit, lol.

[Emmett L. Brown]

The main problem with adding more super forms on top of the regular one has been thoroughly explored in Dragonball Z. Super Sayian was super awesome, but Super Sayian 2 was basically "now with 50% more flavour!".

 

And then form 3, and then form 4.

 

Sonic is better off having just one regular super form which is powerful enough to defeat whatever gigantic robot or monster is threatening the world, but not so invincible that it gets boring to watch. And while Hyper Sonic has probably never triggered an epileptic response, the flashing colours are really annoying.

[Tara]

Also, might I say the "this isn't canon" thing is really weird, since, at the end of S3&K, if you didn't have all of the Super Emeralds, you would escape the Death Egg, but fail to recover the Master Emerald, which is in every Sonic game past this in Knuckles' possession (before Eggman takes it or whatever). 

But only in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and not Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles separately, as they were canonically meant to be.  The Super Emeralds were presumably only in the game because it saved the programmers the time of having to edit the mod to work with a standard seven emeralds and because they thought it would be a nice little tidbit.  Nevertheless, they are no more relevant to the game's story than Knuckles is to Sonic 2's story or blue spheres are to Sonic 1's story.

 

I'm really against adding more super forms because the concept of super forms is already cheap and overplayed.  I'd like to see more games with just plain old Sonic defeating the final boss, honestly.  While I loved the Perfect Chaos boss in SADX when I was a kid, defeating him in Sonic Generations felt infinitely more satisfying, in my opinion.  It looked and felt far more impressive than watching Super Sonic float across the water and lightly nudge him.  That aside, Super Sonic is already the next best thing to "perfect" already, so the next level up from "perfect" is apparently "perfect with a more diverse array of colors."  It's not as fun as it sounds.

[Solkia]

But only in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and not Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles separately, as they were canonically meant to be.  

 

I thought it was well known that Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were meant to be one game but were split into 2 for time constraint reasons.

[TheOcelot]

But only in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and not Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles separately, as they were canonically meant to be.  The Super Emeralds were presumably only in the game because it saved the programmers the time of having to edit the mod to work with a standard seven emeralds and because they thought it would be a nice little tidbit.  Nevertheless, they are no more relevant to the game's story than Knuckles is to Sonic 2's story or blue spheres are to Sonic 1's story.

 

I disagree.

 

The game was never meant to be split in to two parts; S3 and S&K. It was supposed to be all one game 'Sonic 3' with all 14 zones. Where's the so called confirmation from SEGA that the Super Emeralds were added in last minute, never meant to be in the original? The whole idea that the Super Emeralds aren't canon' doesn't make any sense.

 

3&K is a long adventure. It's ridiculously easy to get all the chaos emeralds by the end of the second zone, Hydrocity. So playing through the next 12 zones with Super Sonic would make the game far too easy, hardly a challenge. Much better to take the emeralds away from you after six zones and then challenge the player with harder special stages to give a slightly more impressive/more powerful rewarding super form.

 

In S&K you still see the Super Emeralds in Hidden Palace after beating Knuckles when Eggman steals the Master Emerald. The Super Emeralds are just grey and redundant. Answer me this, why weren't the Super Emeralds removed from S&K entirely (when playing it on it's own) if they have no relevance to the plot? Maybe the same reason why you couldn't play as Tails or Sonic & Tails in S&K. Either the game was split in two at a very late stage and they didn't have time to add playable Tails and Sonic & Tails and remove the Super Emeralds from Hidden Palance. Or as we are told the S&K cartridge existed purely to contain the rest of the code needed to finished the full correct complete version of Sonic 3, aka known as Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles by locking the S3 cartridge onto the S&K cartridge. Put simply, we were never meant to play Sonic & Knuckles on it's own. 

 

Also, why would you to need to collect all the chaos emeralds again in S&K (on it's own) in new blue sphere special stages having already collected them in Sonic 3 and not lost them at the end of Sonic 3. Sonic should still have the chaos emeralds at the start of Mushroom Hill zone which he does in S3&K.

 

There are too many plot wholes to suggest S&K alone is canon. Sonic 3&K is canon, and as silly as the idea of the Hyper forms might seem, they are also canon. I see no evidence to suggest otherwise.

[Solkia]

Hyper Sonic was definitely thrown in during Sonic and Knuckles dev time. Otherwise it wouldn't be as horribly glitchy in Sonic 3 stages as it is.

[Delta Starfire]

Honestly, anyone sensitive enough to actually catch a seizure from Hyper Sonic was probably already spazzing out long before that. Sonic games can get real damn colourful pretty fast, and all that spinning doesn't help.

 

That language is kinda ableist. I'm sure you don't mean it that way, but someone with epilepsy might take offence. Just sayin'.

 

Anyways, moving on. For most people with epilepsy, seizures are not triggered by bright colours or strobing lights. In fact, I'm pretty sure bright colours have nothing to do with epilepsy at all, though I could be wrong. Most people with epilepsy don't have the photosensitive kind, which can be triggered by strobing lights, so if Hyper Sonic caused seizures for anyone, even among people with epilepsy, it would be a very small minority. Having said that, outside of that Sonic Paradox video, I've never even heard of this rumour. I don't know enough about epilepsy to really say whether Hyper Sonic could cause anyone a seizure or not, but I kinda doubt it. There are enough flickering colours in that game as it is that I would think anyone likely to have a seizure triggered would get there before they hit Hyper Sonic. But I may be wrong. 

 

Certainly, I doubt that Hyper Sonic is going to cause people to froth at the mouth, collapse, and writhe around on the ground who have no history of epilepsy whatsoever. But hey, the video is for comedy, not reality.

[Spin Attaxx]

The game was never meant to be split in to two parts; S3 and S&K. It was supposed to be all one game 'Sonic 3' with all 14 zones. Where's the so called confirmation from SEGA that the Super Emeralds were added in last minute, never meant to be in the original? The whole idea that the Super Emeralds aren't canon' doesn't make any sense.

Simple logic suffices - because Sonic 3 was split in two, this required Sonic and Knuckles to have its own Special Stages so as not to screw anyone who had only S&K by not including the Chaos Emeralds. But now the combined game has an extra seven Special Stages going to waste, so what do they do? Make one-off Super Emeralds to give those Stages purpose in the completed game.

 

's not rocket science to figure it out :U

 

And if that's not good enough for you, Iizuka confirmed it at Sonic Boom (I forget which one - it was either 2012 or 2013) when he said that Super Tails and the Super Emeralds in general were just one-time only bonuses.

 

3&K is a long adventure. It's ridiculously easy to get all the chaos emeralds by the end of the second zone, Hydrocity. So playing through the next 12 zones with Super Sonic would make the game far too easy, hardly a challenge. Much better to take the emeralds away from you after six zones and then challenge the player with harder special stages to give a slightly more impressive/more powerful rewarding super form.

Ever considered that it might be done that way as a reward for players who go out of their way to explore instead of rushing through everything? I mean you have to be trying hard to find them all by Hydrocity.

 

Plus this is ignoring the fact that there's nothing at all stopping you from just ignoring MHZ's Hidden Palace sequence and simply going through the rest of the game with Super Sonic.

 

In S&K you still see the Super Emeralds in Hidden Palace after beating Knuckles when Eggman steals the Master Emerald. The Super Emeralds are just grey and redundant. Answer me this, why weren't the Super Emeralds removed from S&K entirely (when playing it on it's own) if they have no relevance to the plot?

They were likely last minute additions that were designed to only come into effect once Sonic 3 was locked on. Again, to give the extra seven Special Stages purpose. Not to mention Hidden Palace Zone's canonicity is questionable now given how from Adventure onwards it's been replaced with the Master Emerald alter.

 

There are too many plot wholes to suggest S&K alone is canon

I thought having a plot whole was a good thing - it means it's cohesive, complete and free of holes.

 

:3

 

Sonic 3&K is canon, and as silly as the idea of the Hyper forms might seem, they are also canon.

Despite what's just been said about them obviously being last minute side effects of the split (e.g. an extra seven Special Stages, Hyper Sonic the walking Obvious Beta, Iizuka's comments etc.).

 

I see no evidence to suggest otherwise.

More like you see it, but are denying it.

[Willsy]

I really doubt that Hyper Sonic caused epilepsy. As -BenderAiden- previously said, there weren't that many colours or flashes on the sprite. If there were some really strong flashes and more colours, it might have been a possibility, but I really don't think the Genesis could have handled something like that.  

[Diogenes]

Also, might I say the "this isn't canon" thing is really weird, since, at the end of S3&K, if you didn't have all of the Super Emeralds, you would escape the Death Egg, but fail to recover the Master Emerald, which is in every Sonic game past this in Knuckles' possession (before Eggman takes it or whatever). Not trying to say that that's NOT what Sonic Team said about the canon, I just find it weird to retcon something like that.

Actually, you do recover the Master Emerald in the Super Sonic ending. It's also the only ending that shows the rogue Eggrobo reactivating, which teases Knuckles' story.

Couldn't they just redesign Hyper Sonic to have fresh, relevant abilities? I guess I just feel disappointed to only see Super Sonic at the climax of Sonic The Hedgehog games. It's just screaming at me, "There's a transformation above Super Sonic! USE IT MAN CMON".

The problem is, what is the actual narrative purpose of Hyper Sonic? Super Sonic is easy enough to explain; most games that use Super Sonic in their climax have the characters finding and juggling the Chaos Emeralds throughout the game, such that they're never all in one place. But when things are at their darkest, they all come together, and a miracle happens: Super Sonic. Where would Hyper Sonic fit into this, in both a functional and narratively meaningful way?

 

Hyper Sonic is ultimately just a DBZ powerup, it doesn't actually add anything to the story, it just lets the characters punch harder so they can punch stronger bad guys.

[Splash the Otter]

And if that's not good enough for you, Iizuka confirmed it at Sonic Boom (I forget which one - it was either 2012 or 2013) when he said that Super Tails and the Super Emeralds in general were just one-time only bonuses.

That's actually something that I find annoying. Tails supposedly needed the Super Emeralds for his Super form because he was inexperienced. Since at the time he had only been playable in two games, it makes sense. But Tails has gotten a lot stronger since then, so it stands to reason that he wouldn't need the Super Emeralds anymore.

 

Not to mention Hidden Palace Zone's canonicity is questionable now given how from Adventure onwards it's been replaced with the Master Emerald alter.

I don't see why they would retcon the Hidden Palace, other than to make Knuckles look stupid. Seriously, why would you keep something like the Master Emerald out in the open where anyone can come along and steal it? Knuckles is just making things harder for himself!

[baba_944]

You know, I joked with my ex best friend about this. I told him that the reason Hyper Sonic wasn't coming back was due to people getting seizures. I never thought about that day until now. That was 5 years ago. 

[Iggy]

That language is kinda ableist. I'm sure you don't mean it that way, but someone with epilepsy might take offence. Just sayin'.

Um, I don't understand? I may not have epilepsy, but I have had a seizure before, and I don't understand how that could be considered offensive. I'm not trying to pick a fight or go off topic here, I'm just curious.

[Harley Quinn]

I didn't see it as ableist in any sense. *shrug*

 

But yeah, I've never heard of this rumor, nor do I think it has a leg to stand on, really...