Sonic's a surprisingly weighty hog in Sonic Colors: Ultimate
Large and in charge
Leafing back through my life, I realise I've never held a hedgehog before. I've locked eyes with one, though, as it scurried across the garden. For a couple of seconds, we were just bros being bros, then it moved on to eat worms or kick dirt or whatever hedgehogs actually do. I hope wherever that hog is now, it's doing well.
Whenever I've watched a Springwatch presenter hoist on into their arms, I always imagined a hedgehog weighs as much as maybe two sun-dried tomato, feta, and salad pasta pots. So fairly light, then. But having played Sonic Colours: Ultimate for preview, my theory has been trashed. Sonic's a weighty hog, which is something I hadn't expected.
There was no mention of Sonic's density in my preview, because otherwise it would've been all I touched on. I needed a whole separate article to focus on the important stuff: just how heavy this hog really is.
Now, there's a fair amount of platforming in Sonic Colors: Ultimate. The classic Sonic selection: springing off red buttons, bouncing off door-stops, and hopping between platforms with that spinny jump he does. These sections are usually wedged between stretches of front-facing action that feel akin to something like Mario Kart, only without the kart and with more repeated slapping of sneakers on tarmac.
It was in the platforming that Sonic's heftiness struck me. Jumping wasn't clunky, but it was less snappy than I'd expected. This wasn't the jump of a lithe hog who might, if he found himself suddenly transported to Africa, join a gazelle in a quick leap through the savanna grasses, oh no. This was a jump akin to a small cannon being fired. You know, like in Worms, when you might fire a cannon upwards, but you time the power wrong on the slide-o-meter thing so the ball just does a tiny arc in the air.
And just like how a cannon ball might land on the floor and roll for a bit under it's own weighty momentum before coming to a stop, so did Sonic jump and then jog forwards. I suppose this does make sense. Sonic's main priority is to go fast, so that little run after landing lets you rebuild momentum quickly. But his beefiness proved problematic when going for those precise jumps. I had to tweak the thumbsticks with the subtlety of an elite equestrian to achieve maximum speed and control while piloting this complex hog.
Cue a montage of scientific research: me putting on glasses, parting a bush, finding a plate of that blue Sonic curry and plopping a sample into a petri dish. My rigorous inquiry has informed me that a healthy hedgehog would weigh between 450g to 750g, but no more than 800g, otherwise it's too much of a heckin' chonko wonko (from the Latin). This means that if your average hog were an ant, it would be able to carry three full school bags, or would weigh the equivalent of 30 kings in chess, if you prefer.
Sonic, though, is no average hog. Going by my current hypothesis, he's likely the weight of a civil war cannon ball, so that's around 42 pounds. For context, this means he's about one tenth as heavy as the heart of a blue whale. This makes sense. The blue whale is blue, Sonic is blue; they clearly share a genetic bond.
The takeaway from all this is that Sonic is an unmatched hog, and would also make perfect ammunition for toppling medieval fortresses.