Wisp


 * For the Badnik, see Whisp.

Wisps (ウィスプ) are creatures from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. It is a diminutive, yet playful and powerful alien species from Planet Wisp, although they can be found on many other planets across the universe. During one of Dr. Eggman's plots, the Wisps were enslaved by the doctor, but were freed by Sonic. While most of the Wisps went home after that, some had come had to like Earth and decided to stay. Now, in remembrance of his deeds, the Wisp are ready to offer Sonic help whenever he needs it.

There are numerous breeds of Wisps, each with its own special ability and personality traits. When a Wisp enters a person, they bestow upon them a certain Color Power that grant them new and powerful abilities.

Concept and creation
Takashi Iizuka stated in an interview that the Wisps were added to Sonic Colors to "expand and strengthen the platform action gameplay" without forcing the player to switch to other playable characters. Another goal was to encourage players to revisit already-played levels; Sonic Team accomplished this by adding segments requiring certain types of Wisps to levels preceding their first appearances.

Following the success of Sonic Colors, Iizuka has stated that he now considers them a staple in the Sonic series. Since then, the Wisps have appeared in multiple Sonic titles following Sonic Colors.

Anatomy
The Wisps are similar in overall appearance and motion to underwater cephalopods, such as squids, and their bodies are composed entirely of Hyper-go-on. Regular Wisps come in fourteen known natural breeds, each with their own unique skin color, body shape and number of eyes (ranging from one to three). However, regular Wisps all share certain common physical characteristics, such as having a mouthless head with three tentacles stemming from the bottom and being not much taller than half a meter. The Nega-Wisps, however, while having a head with three tentacles and same size as regular Wisps, lack any eyes and possess wide mouths with sharp teeth.

Mother Wisp is an unique breed of Wisps different from the regular ones in terms of anatomy, being almost eight meters tall and resembles more that of a jellyfish with four very long tentacles.

Characteristics and culture
The Wisps are a halcyon and social species, and are as much sentient beings as the dominant races on Earth, such as humans. While each breed of Wisp tend to lean towards certain characteristics, the Wisps are overall peaceful, playful, non-hostile and friendly of nature, and enjoys spending most of their time playing with others. If a Wisp has its Hyper-go-on take however, it will revert to a primal and savage state referred to as a "Nega-Wisp."

The Wisps appear to possess no form of technology and only have an extremely minimal level of urbanized civilization, such as simple tree slides. Instead, they live a simple and naturalistic lifestyle that is completely in harmony with the nature of their homeworld.

The Wisps have their own unique verbal language, which comes off as an incomprehensible, warbling sound to those on earth.

Powers and abilities
Though small and harmless of nature, the Wisps are an extremely powerful race when working together. All Wisps are able to levitate at will, which serve as their main method for movements.

Each Wisp has the natural ability to generate and store Hyper-go-on, an extremely powerful energy source, inside their own bodies, which is their life source. Each breed of Wisp generates it own unique version of this energy, with each breed having its own effects. When combining their collective Hyper-go-on, the Wisps are capable of unbelievable feats, such as carrying objects through levitation, move at nearly unreachable speeds, undo the mutation on Nega-Wisps, restrain and extinguish black holes made from negative Hyper-go-on, and even teleport planet-sized objects.

Color Powers
The majority of the Wisps possess unique powers known as Color Powers. Using their Hyper-go-ons, the Wisps can phase into the bodies of other beings and lend them a fraction of their power to temporarily grant them special abilities that depend on the Wisp's breed. However, the user can only carry one Wisp at a time to utilize a Color Power's full potential.

Origin
The Wisps live on a lush planet known as Planet Wisp, which was created by the progenitor of all Wisps: Mother Wisp. This being gave life to all known Wisps and raised them as her children. In time, the Wisp would populate other areas in space, such as Sweet Mountain, Starlight Carnival, Aquarium Park and Asteroid Coaster.

Enslavement
A short time prior to the events of Sonic Colors, the Wisp race came under attack by Dr. Eggman and his forces. The doctor (whom the Wisps refer to as Baldy Nosehair), having discovered that the Wisps' Hyper-go-on power could be used by him to create a Mind Control Ray that would let him enslave Earth, managed to kidnap the entire population of Wisp on their planets by dragging their entire homeworlds to Earth with his tractor beam generators, and chained them to the Tropical Resort to make Dr. Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park, leaving the Wisps trapped in the space above Earth.

With their homeworlds no longer safe, the Wisps were overrun by Eggman's forces, and they were scattered all over Dr. Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park in the following frenzy. The Wisps were then slowly, but steadily, captured by Eggman's forces. so they could be drained of their Hyper-go-on in the doctor's base on Asteroid Coaster, to create fuel for Eggman's global Mind Control Cannon. The process of harvesting of Hyper-go-on from the Wisps, however, created a new sub-breed of Wisps called Nega-Wisps, a violent type of Wisps that were forced to carry out Eggman's plans.

In the Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors, it is revealed that Mother Wisp was captured and drained of her Hyper-go-on as well, transforming her into the Nega-Mother Wisp. However, the Nega-Mother Wisp was too unruly to be controlled. She eventually managed to escape captivity and went into hiding.

Sonic Colors
At the beginning of Sonic Colors, countless members of the Wisp race had been captured in Wisp Capsules and thousands of Nega-Wisps had been created. Fortunately for the Wisps, Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles "Tails" Prower arrived at Dr. Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park to foil whatever evil plan they thought Eggman was up to. When Yacker and a Cyan Wisp were about to be captured by Orbot and Cubot, Sonic managed to save the two Wisps, before the Cyan Wisp granted Sonic his first Color Power.

After having been saved by Sonic, Yacker came into contact with Sonic and Tails, with Tails attempting to turn his Miles Electric into an translator for the Wisps' language, while Sonic went out to rescue more Wisps and discover Eggman's plans. When Tails had his translator more or less ready, Yacker informed the two heroes of what was happening to the Wisps, while pleading them to save them, to which Sonic and Tails agreed to.

Sonic, Tails and Yacker began traveling across the trapped homeworlds for the Wisps. looking for clues to Eggman's plan and how to free the Wisps, all the while freeing any Wisps they met along the way. In turn, the Wisps aided Sonic in his quest by granting him new Color Powers. After inadvertently destroying two tractor beam generators that kept two of the kidnapped Wisp worlds trapped, Sonic learned from Yacker that destroying all the generators would cut Eggman off from the Wisps, thus allowing the Wisps to escape captivity and go back home with their worlds.

After discovering the factory in the Asteroid Coaster that produced Nega-Wisps, Sonic managed to destroy the generator and free the trapped planet, ensuring that no more Nega-Wisps could be created.

After all five tractor beam generators were destroyed, the Wisps regrouped in Tropical Resort where they met up with Sonic and Tails, now celebrating their freedom and expressing their gratitude to Sonic and Tails for saving them. As soon as the Tropical Resort began to implode due to a black hole created from Eggman's malfunctioning Mind Control Cannon, however, the Wisps quickly escaped.

When Sonic was later caught in the Hyper-go-on induced black hole, Yacker and a small group of Wisps managed to save Sonic's life and bring him back to Earth, while the rest of the Wisp race joined their powers together to keep the black hole from expanding. Yacker and his friends then joined their kind in returning all the Nega-Wisps to normal and in extinguishing the black hole, before it could destroy the Earth. Yacker and few more Wisps then quickly returned to Earth and exchanged some heartfelt farewell to Sonic and Tails, before rejoined the rest of the Wisp race, as they all returned the kidnapped planets to their original place in the universe.

In the Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors, the Nega-Mother Wisp appeared and went on a rampage after Dr. Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park was destroyed. Fortunately, she was stopped by Sonic, who used the Chaos Emeralds to become Super Sonic, and was returned to normal.

Sonic Generations
In Sonic Generations, Wisps appear in both Acts of Planet Wisp/Tropical Resort. On the console and PC versions, the only playable Wisps are the Orange Wisps (Modern Sonic only) and Pink Wisps (Classic Sonic only). In the 3DS version, the only Wisps that are playable are the Cyan Wisps (Modern Sonic only) and the Red Wisps (Classic Sonic only). Both Wisps are used in almost the exact same way as they were in the original Wii/DS version. White Wisps also make a cameo in the opening of Planet Wisp.

Sonic Lost World
Wisps return in Sonic Lost World. The Cyan Wisp and the Yellow Wisp are in the Wii U and the 3DS versions. The Red Wisp returned for the 3DS and the Orange Wisp could be used in the Wii U version. New Wisps include the Indigo Wisp, which allows Sonic to transform into the Indigo Asteroid, the Crimson Wisp which transforms Sonic into the Crimson Eagle,  the Magenta Wisp which transforms Sonic into the Magenta Rhythm, the Ivory Wisp which transforms Sonic into the Ivory Lightning, the Black Wisp which transforms Sonic into the Black Bomb, and the Gray Wisp which transforms Sonic into the Gray Quake.

Sonic Forces
The Wisps are scheduled to make a reappearance in Sonic Forces where they serve as Wisp Capsule power-ups for the player to use. The game also introduces the Wispon, a weapon for the Custom Hero that harnesses the Wisps' Color Powers in new ways by enabling their abilities without triggering a transformation and using them as firepower in combat.

Trivia

 * The Wisps' name comes from Tails' translation of a word in their language; other characters in the game simply refer to them as "aliens".
 * In the Wii version of Sonic Colors, the Wisps are only referred to by name in the Hint Rings and once by Tails in a cutscene.
 * The Red and the Violet Wisps are not shown in Sonic Colors ' announcement trailer. This is most likely due to the fact that those two Wisps are only exclusive to the Nintendo DS version.
 * On the cover of the Wii version of Sonic Colors, the Blue, Green, Purple, and Pink Wisps are shown. On the Nintendo DS cover they are replaced with the version exclusive Red Wisp and Violet Wisp.
 * According to Cubot, the Wisps "smell good".
 * According to Dr. Eggman in a deleted voice clip, the Wisps' Hyper-go-on power is even more powerful than the chaos energy. As chaos energy and Hyper-go-on have never been compared, this has never been officially confirmed.
 * In Sonic Colors, certain Wisps allow Sonic to use abilities similar to past abilities that he was able to do in past games on his own. For example, the Green Wisp allows Sonic to do the Light Speed Dash, and the Pink Wisp allows Sonic to perform the Spin Dash.
 * The only time they appear to speak native Earth languages is in the cutscene "A New Sonic Legend Begins" when Yacker is telling other Wisps about Sonic (Nintendo DS version only). However, this might be Wisp language translated for the player, as Tails is not there.