Ring Theory 101

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Frieza2000
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Ring Theory 101

Post by Frieza2000 »

Rings. Where do they come from? Do they have mass? Can they be created? Why do people accept them in exchange for goods and services if they can be found littering the streets like gilded trash? These are the questions that only a hardcore Sonic nerd would give any real thought to, and I can proudly/shamefully say that I've spent hours thinking about and written pages on the subject.

This isn't about my ring theory though, it's about everyone's. I think the last continuity discussion we had was about whether or not Knuckles's story in S&K really happened, and that was 2 years ago. So I thought we could use a break from the continuing chronicles of epic incompetence we've been immersed in and have a little fun.

So, how do you think rings work? To help get started, I've compiled this list of all of the known behavior of rings that need to be explained. I don't think anyone wants to hear exact, realistic physics; it just has to make some sense and obey the laws of conservation of energy. Some of these can be dismissed as programming failures or non-cannon, but of course the idea is to do that as little as possible. You wouldn't think it at first brush, but when you look deep into it there are really very few explanations that can work and they're not what you'd expect.
-They float and spin seemingly indefinitely in their original position. This means they either have no mass at that point or are being held up by a force with seemingly limitless energy. Gusts of wind such as would be found in Sky Chase or Sky sanctuary don't cause them to move, yet they are moving along with the Earth's rotation and revolution.

-They have a clear habit of appearing in rows and geometric patterns.

-The ring vault in Casinopolis. They clearly have mass at that point, and they don't disappear despite having been moved from their original position. They neither spin nor float.

-They can be found all over the Earth, floating aimlessly in the upper thermosphere, on the moon, and in special stages.

-Rings are moved from their starting position by the lightning shield, but dropped rings aren't affected.

-Rings are not affected by enemies or rising ground (Flying Battery is the first example that comes to mind)

-Sonic still falls backwards when he gets hit.

-Rings protect you from bullets, spikes, energy beams, fire, electricity, etc, but not from pits, drowning, being crushed, or instant death beams (Eggman's beam during the Metal Sonic race in Sonic CD)

-In some games, you don't lose all of your rings when hit.

-Rings that Sonic drops come out spinning, bounce, and are affected by Eggman's ring vacuums.

-Dropped rings disappear after a few seconds.

-Dropped rings can be recollected and are still worth 1 whole ring, even after protecting the holder from damage.

-What I lovingly refer to as the half ring quandary. There's no such thing as a fraction of a ring. When Sonic untransforms during a fraction of a second, he never has a fraction of a ring. That means that it either disappears completely when any fraction of its energy is used, or it recharges if anything less than all of its energy is used.

-Ring boxes.

-Big ring portals and the fact that they're worth 50 rings if you've got all the emeralds.

-In Reactive Factory in Sonic R, there's a machine that spits out a seemingly limitless amount of rings.

-The buttons in SA1 and SA2 cause trails of rings to appear seemingly indefinitely.

-The rings in Sonic R can be seen reappearing from nowhere. I think this is the only game you'll see that.

-Tails and Eggman's mechs can absorb rings, but not all inanimate objects can.

-Sonic needs to be holding 50 rings to transform, but none of the rings are used up during the transformation process and it only takes 1 ring at any given instant to sustain Super form (in union with the power of the Chaos Emeralds).

-In SA2 vs. mode, every 20 rings collected allows the player to use a special move. These moves don't use up any rings, but can't be repeated until another 20 rings are collected.

-Super form drains 1 ring per second.

-Light dash.
I'd post my theories to help get the ball rolling, but to avoid the already imminent tl;dr I'll wait.

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Post by Zeta »

Just blame everything on the Chaos Emeralds. That's what the comic did, and I'm somewhat inclined to actually agree with them on this point. South American God begets magical deus ex machina gems begets magical rings. Seeing as how I can't think of a single Sonic game without the Chaos Emeralds, we can assume without much contradiction that they are the product of some sort of strange radiation eminating from the Master/Chaos Emeralds - which already warp time and space, which explains their odd weightlessnes.

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

Also, Rings that have been lost after taking damage adhere to the laws of physics. They fall down and bounce along the ground, slowing down as friction builds. They're obviously very light based on the way they bounce, but regardless of how many times they skip along the ground, they always remain upright. They never fall broad-side down as you would expect a real ring to do.

Furthermore, exactly where does Sonic store all the Rings he collects? The meter counts every one he's touched, but even if he takes damage and the tally drops to 0, the Rings that scatter in the vicinity aren't necessarily the exact amount that was lost. For example, even if you're holding 300 Rings, only 20-something will be dropped, but the count still reverts to 0. (In the Game Gear games, he only ever drops 1-3 at a time regardless of how many he was holding.)

And what about the Rings with magnetic properties in Chaotix?

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Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Also, Rings that have been lost after taking damage adhere to the laws of physics. They fall down and bounce along the ground, slowing down as friction builds. They're obviously very light based on the way they bounce, but regardless of how many times they skip along the ground, they always remain upright. They never fall broad-side down as you would expect a real ring to do.
They do in Sonic 2k6, sometimes. When you get hit, the rings will appear standing upright and spinning, but when you collect them, they react like physics objects and fall and tumble as such. Splash damage from explosions effects them, too - if you lose your rings in the midst of many explosions, the rings will fly off away from the explosion. This makes finding dropped rings when playing as Tails with his dummy ring bombs especially frusterating.

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Post by The Doc »

Maybe the rings themselves are non-canon. Invisible items in the Sonic world, but visible benchmarks solely for the player. I mean, maybe I'm missing one or two instances, but when has a character in the games ever actually acknowledged the Rings?

In the Special Stages, whenever the words come up "COLLECT 40 RINGS" or "GOOD!" or "NOT BAD!", it's not the character that's reading those--it's the player.

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Post by Grant »

That's a good observation, Doc. I can't think of a whole lot of instances in the games where that happens even though the characters constantly refer to the Emeralds.

The only one that immediately comes to mind, oddly, is in Flickies Island where you throw the birds into the big gold ring. That could be reconciled, though, I bet.

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Post by G.Silver »

And what about rings that power enemies, as seen in Chaotix? And what about those Chaos Rings or Fruit Loops or whatever they were?
Dropped rings disappear after a few seconds.
I don't think this is so much the rings disappearing as it is simulating Sonic finally losing track of the fallen ring (consider it a trade-off for the 2D advantage of being able to tell exactly what is behind him). Similarly, you can explain the fact that the number of rings dropped is not necessarily the number you carried because after a certain point your brain simply can't handle the number and it's just an inaccurate "bunch" of rings. In this boggled state of mind, obviously, you lose a few, just like you lose them if you don't pick them up quickly enough. Sonic is not good at counting, and forgets things quickly. He's a guy who lives in the moment!

We can also answer the question of "where does he keep the rings" this way as well. <i>Sonic does not know</i>. This is another reason why the ring numbers aren't equal, because even though he seems to be keeping them on-hand, he has already misplaced and lost several rings before the hit, so they were not even there to be dropped.

Another possibility is that although the games are 2D, the rings can bounce away in 3 dimensions and Sonic lacks the capacity to go after those that bounce into the z-axis, so they are not depicted so as not to frustrate the player.

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Post by Hybrid »

So far I'm liking Doc's theory the best.

That said, I still think there are more "in-game" reasons for rings to exist outside of just being there for the player.

More often than not, rings are required in order to obtain the Emeralds, and even when you don't need them, you can at least find them in the vicinity (think Sonic 1 special stage). This lends itself to the idea that rings are perhaps a side-product of excess energy from the emeralds, a solid material formed from the very energy the emeralds exude. The emeralds, when used in conjunction with each other, provide Sonic with semi-permanent invincibility (for the duration of his transformation). The individual rings seem like a weaker form of that power; They wont protect you from getting hurt, but they will prevent you from dieing. Unlike the emeralds, the rings are not an organized "set" of all-powerful jewels, therefore their limited powers do not stack the same way the emeralds do, explaining why carrying multiple rings doesn't make you more invulnerable than carrying just one.

Its also worth noting that the Emeralds can, for the most part, only be powered by the use of rings. The only exception to that would be Chaos Control, which requires only one emerald and seemingly no rings, however one could argue that Shadow's wrist bands are in fact rings, and Sonic was able to do it that one time because he is the one chosen by the emeralds to defend them from Eggman (Hidden Palace Zone background).

It seems strange that 50 rings are required to activate all seven Emeralds, but only one ring is needed to maintain the charge. This definitely suggests that the rings are more than just a visible token for the player to collect. Sonic needs 50 rings to make the transformation, but once he's charged up, the immense power of the emeralds would start drawing their charge from his very life force if it weren't for the rings. Much like Sonic loses rings if he gets hurt by a badnik, Sonic loses rings to the emeralds so that he can use their extreme power without it taking a toll on his body. Hence why when he runs out of rings, he returns to his normal form. The emeralds have been shown to have almost limitless power, so it isn't them running out of power when he hits zero rings, its his body becoming incapable of withstanding the pressure of more power drain.

Unless I've been misinformed, Sonic will become Super Sonic with even one ring in Sonic Riders; Whether we a count minor deviation in a spin-off game would be up for debate, but assuming Sonic really only does need 1 ring to change, it would be a case of him needing the extra power right now in Riders, but in all other games where he isn't going against the clock, he's smart enough not to attempt the transformation without a significant buffer of rings.

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Post by Owen Axel »

In Riders Sonic is Super as long as he's not touching the ground. If he hits a ramp he'll go back to super even with zero rings, though he'll be back to normal the instant he lands. Riders probably isn't one to count, since Super Sonic sucks ass compared to the regular Sonic in gameplay.

What about the Chaos Rings in Knuckles Chaotix? What's up with those?

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Post by Hybrid »

Perhaps Sonic Riders isn't the best game to use as any sort of groundwork for a theory (him being super whenever he's in the air should in theory make collecting rings in every flight-based super level a pointless exersize), but it would still be interesting to know if he only needs one ring when grounded to transform. We could possibly disregard the aerial transformation simply because Riders is the only game where the air plays such a significant role.

As for the rings in Chaotix, I think they'd be another case of the characters themselves acknowledging the rings' existence. I mean, they obviously know they're there, though one could argue that they are not the same rings as usual but a different artifact entirely that is similiar in shape by mere chance.

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Post by AnonymousRUS »

Klonoa is the rebirth of the whole bunny idea. Klonoa even has what seems to be the combined form of rings and emeralds.I pray for a Sonic/Klonoa hybrid soon I'm thinking the console should be the Wii.

Image

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Post by Brazillian Cara »

I have a question. Where does the *TLING* sound comes from when you grab them?

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Post by Anon »

The Doc wrote: I mean, maybe I'm missing one or two instances, but when has a character in the games ever actually acknowledged the Rings?
The FinalHazard fight in Sonic Adventure 2.

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

And what about rings that power enemies, as seen in Chaotix? And what about those Chaos Rings or Fruit Loops or whatever they were?
That's actually sort of explained in the manual. The Chaos Rings were formed when the physical space occupied by ancient giant Rings (Special Rings, presumably) miraculously filled with residual Chaos Emerald energy. Now, how or why that happened is open for debate, but it suggests that there could potentially be more than just seven Chaos Rings.

The gray Rings in enemies are artificial Dark Rings that Eggman created after studying the Chaos Rings. Exactly what the properties of a Dark Ring are is another point open to discussion.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

Sonic Team tries to avoid mentioning the rings as much as possible because they're really surreal. Their existence would have serious implications on daily life, and with the series becoming more story driven and realistic they would be like small golden elephants in the room. Ignoring them is the easiest way to deal with them.

I always thought it was pretty clearly indicated by the little sparkle of light, the noise, and that fact that the ring vanishes that it was absorbed into the Sonic's body as pure ring energy, but when that particular kind of energy is expelled in the process of blocking damage it always takes the shape of a ring. I think that's the best explanation. Rings don't seem to have little force fields around them; all sorts of things pass through them. One theory might be that holding a ring partially phase-shifts you into another dimension to avoid actually being hit, but that doesn't explain why Sonic is still flung back and drops them when he's hit. I also think the protection the rings provide has to come unintentionally. I wouldn't expect Cream to know how to use the energy to protect herself on instinctively.

I remember the newly retranslated Chaotix manual mentioned a dimensional connection between all rings, which Eggman exploited to create the magnetic rings. That might also explain the light dash.
Green Gibbon! wrote:seven Chaos Rings
Five.

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Post by Bo »

In the Super Mario Bros. NES manual, doesn't it refer to it being a "mystery" as to where Mario keeps his coins?

In Sonic & Tails for the Game Gear, there are medium-sized rings that are worth 10 in the special stages. And in Knuckles Chaotix there are those funky blue ones in powerup monitors.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

Additional stuff to support my comment about rings turning into energy. Bigger rings seem to have more energy. When Sonic gets hit, he never drops big rings; they turn into small rings. The only way to reconcile that with the 'deep pockets' theory is to say that big rings are unstable and explode into smaller ones when Sonic gets hit or to dismiss the ability to collect big rings.

The fact that super form uses up rings confirms, at least, that rings have energy. Now, the physical rings disappears after they're used up by super form. This supports my idea of rings turning into energy, but there is another way to explain this. The rings could be made of an atomically unstable structure that disperses unless it's charged with enough energy. That also explains why they disappear after being used to protect Sonic from damage. That brings up the half-ring issue though, which means that they have to recharge or they'd disappear from Sonic's hand after being recollected.

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Post by big_smile »

One interesting aspect of rings is their relationship with the human world.

Humans have a use for rings (as evidenced by the posters in Speed Highway) but unlike the Chao, they do not use rings as a currency.

While rings are common in human settlements, it is rare to see rings along side humans, which might suggest that rings are 'shy' of humans (or at least large numbers of humans, as rings do occur in the presence of Dr Eggman and in the Ark sections of Shadow the Hedgehog).

There is a strong association between gambling and rings in human culture. Rings are awarded from gambling machines and also occur in human-made pinball tables (see the Casinopolis sections in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Pinball Party). When in these devices, the rings still exhibit all their normal properties, even though the rings in the pinball tables (from Pinball Party) are micro-sized.

Human mastery over rings is limited to being able to converting rings into currency (a conversion machine exists in Casinopolis). The humans do not seem to be able to use rings for any other purpose. They certainly cannot use rings for defensive purposes, as the human soldiers in Shadow do not lose rings when hit. Despite their limited knowledge, the humans have attempted to study rings - images of the golden objects are present on the ARK research monitors in Sonic Adventure 2.

Rings have permeated virtually every space of humanity. Rings are visible part of Maginary world (from Sonic Shuffle), which is a space composed of people's dreams. Rings also occur inside human computers and in cyberspace (as demonstrated by the Matrix sections of Shadow the Hedgehog). Some of these spaces, such as Maginary World, have no known presence of the Chaos Emeralds, which casts a doubt on the relationship between the Emeralds and the rings.

Another interesting non-human related feature of rings is that they do not co-exist with echidna settlements of the past. They do, however, occur in the soil of these settlements. This suggests that some event may have caused to rise the rings up from underneath the Earth.

It is not uncommon to find rings when digging the Earth, which suggests that they are a naturally forming substance. ^_^

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Post by Owen Axel »

There are six Chaos Rings you get out of the special stages in Knuckles Chaotix, plus a seventh one that got turned into the big Dark Ring Eggman's got, according to the manual, as I recall.

The bad ending of the game has all the Chaos Rings you collected gather around the Dark Ring, then disintegrating. Apparently turning a Chaos Ring into a Dark Ring makes it a heck of a lot more poweful. That, or Eggman just had some trick up his sleeve. Weirdest ending yet. Certainly the least elaborated.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

Smile. Awesome.
big_smile wrote:Humans have a use for rings (as evidenced by the posters in Speed Highway) but unlike the Chao, they do not use rings as a currency.
I heard the shops in Sonic 360 are run by humans and use rings.
While rings are common in human settlements, it is rare to see rings along side humans, which might suggest that rings are 'shy' of humans (or at least large numbers of humans, as rings do occur in the presence of Dr Eggman and in the Ark sections of Shadow the Hedgehog).
It might also suggest that they get collected immediately, but I agree with you in part. The only time we ever see a ring generate is in Sonic R, and they must generate pretty frequently for there to be so many of them, so it's likely that they don't generate when sentient beings are around.
When in these devices, the rings still exhibit all their normal properties, even though the rings in the pinball tables (from Pinball Party) are micro-sized.
Was the size of the pinball tables ever specified? They could've been jumbo tables with regular rings. Or the rings could've been holographic or part of the table, and for each you collect the table spits out a real one. I don't see how the ball could be collecting them for you directly.
Human mastery over rings is limited to being able to converting rings into currency (a conversion machine exists in Casinopolis).
By that you mean that rings were used as chips in the casino and exchanged for money, right? That would explain how they keep the machines stocked. Where was that anyway? I don't remember it.
The humans do not seem to be able to use rings for any other purpose.
Eggman uses them to power his mech's armor gauge, so they can be harnessed by machines. It wouldn't surprise me if they're the power source used to power the fantastic cities like Grand Metropolis.
Another interesting non-human related feature of rings is that they do not co-exist with echidna settlements of the past. They do, however, occur in the soil of these settlements. This suggests that some event may have caused to rise the rings up from underneath the Earth.
Maybe they buried them as a stockpile in case the city was attacked or an individual needed some in a hurry and none were around.
It is not uncommon to find rings when digging the Earth, which suggests that they are a naturally forming substance. ^_^
Since rings appear just a bit above ground, it wouldn't be surprising if many were buried by shifting landmasses or knocked to the ground and then buried by rain. They've been around for at least 3 millennia, so they've had plenty of time to accumulate in the crust.

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Post by G.Silver »

it wouldn't be surprising if many were buried by shifting landmasses
Evidence for this in Sonic CD's past and future stages!

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Post by Omni Hunter »

Also, rings seem to have a capacity to transport things naturally. Especially to places with Chaos Emeralds or the dimensions where they usually reside "Bonus Stages".

Large rings instantaneously transport whoever touches them, while smaller rings either summon large rings like in STH1 or charge transportation devices like Star Posts. Flickies rings also exhibit transportation capabilities, albeit solely for the birds themselves.

The rings' primary energy use could be the teleportation, then this can be converted to other forms of energy in a similar fashion to how wind or tidal energy can be harnessed into electrical power.

I have a theory on their generation though, maybe they are accumilations of energy bearing in mind that humans can instantly generate rings along set patterns with switches in Sonic Adventure. This can also explain why they generate in patterns and lines, possibly along lines of positive energy or "ch'i", which in turn powers the positive energy or ch'i fuelled Super Sonic and possibly links them to the emeralds which they can transport you to.

Ch'i flows throughout the world and flows can possibly alter it's flow, sometimes going underground and coming above ground? Or am I just graping at straws here?

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Post by Frieza2000 »

Omni Hunter wrote:Large rings instantaneously transport whoever touches them,
When Sonic has all the chaos emeralds, he can absorb them for 50 rings. I think if you travel through the center of the ring you warp, but you can also drain the energy from it if you want.
Flickies rings also exhibit transportation capabilities, albeit solely for the birds themselves.
The flicky rings are really just big rings. The flickies either have the power to open them or they occur naturally on the island. Since they were tricked into emerging from the ones Eggman created with his Big Ring Generator, I'd say the latter is the case. And Sonic exits the final boss from one of them in the ending movie. They're nothing special.
Ch'i flows throughout the world and flows can possibly alter it's flow, sometimes going underground and coming above ground? Or am I just graping at straws here?
It's a workable explanation. But what's the energy that accumulates to form them, how do humans tap into it at will to create ring trails, and why do these manifestations of energy behave so bizarrly? A sphere is the most condensed form of energy; a ring is a pretty weird shape to form naturally.

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Post by Sniffnoy »

If the half-ring problem is just in reference to Super Sonic, then I think it can be settled by saying that Sonic "burns" each ring from one at a time; the Superness from this ring lasts for one second, at the end of which he burns another for the next second. Even if the rings are converted to ring energy when collected, well, perhaps ring energy is simply quantized in units of rings. The only problem with this is that, IIRC, when Sonic transforms into Super Sonic, his ring count does not immediately drop by one; it does not drop until after the first second. Perhaps an aftereffect of the transformation itself?

It doesn't sound likely to me that Sonic's nontransformation with less than 50 rings is simply a matter of Sonic knowing the danger of such a thing, as Hybrid suggested, or else he would probably detransform when he reached 1 ring rather than 0. Unless he were somehow able to control only the transformation and not the detransformation.

I would suggest instead that 50 rings are necessary to harness the Chaos Emeralds to transform Sonic into the Super-ready state, where he may use rings to actually be Super. But, as noted, he's Super for a second before he actually uses any rings; perhaps this could be the flow of energy from the Chaos Emeralds cutting itself off after a second? Like how electricity through a wire will heat up the wire and increase the resistance? So he's Super for a second on the power of the Emeralds alone, but then that wears off and he has to burn rings to remain Super. Of course, when he hits 0 rings, he needs another full 50 before he can transform again, so if there is a Super-ready state, he has lost it. I would suggest that the rings connect Sonic to the emeralds, and that Sonic must remain connected to the emeralds in order to maintain his Super-readiness - thus, perhaps, if he were to detransform when he had only 1 ring left, he would be able to go Super again without collecting 50. If this is true, and Sonic knows this, this means yet again that Sonic *cannot* detransform while he still has rings remaining; he *must* continue to use them. But then, this raises the question of why 50 rings are necessary to transform to Super-ready in the first place, if all the rings do in that process is connect Sonic to the emeralds, and 1 is enough for that. Perhaps a better connection is required to make the transformation than to simply maintain it, but I would suggest a different explanation: The Super-ready state is itself harmful when not actually Super. This would explain why Sonic *must* continue to use up his rings as long as he has any. He needs 50 rings because that is the minimum required to not only go Super-ready, but also to get that one-second burst of Superness from the emeralds themselves; presumably he cannot transform to Super-ready and burn a ring at the same time, and thus he must have that initial burst to avoid hurting himself.

Also, am I the only one who saw "Ring Theory 101" and wondered why there was a topic about algebra on the GHZ?

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Post by Kai-Kakoon »

In Sonic Heroes, the Rings' rotation completely changes after a while. For example... they rotate to the right, slowing down progressively, until they reach a brief halt. After that, they start rotating to the left. The process repeats itself.

With that said, the Rings in Sonic Heroes have a few phases:

Start of rotation to side A -> Progressive speed increase in rotation -> Speed apogee -> Progressive speed decrease in rotation -> Halt -> Repeat previous phases with side B -> Repeat the whole process

A bit of an odd change. As far as I know, Sonic Heroes is the only game where this happens.

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