Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-15588403-20140526232147/@comment-679780-20150121200300

I want to bump this thread because I never noticed it before.

My main headcanon~ Rings are a lot like Chaos Emeralds. The main difference is that Chaos Emeralds are a source of power while rings merely hold charge.

Rings are indeed made of gold which is a non-magnetic metal. However each ring is imbued with Chaos Energy which magnetise them so much that due to the worlds magnetic polarity thats why they hover. This power isn't directly from the Chaos Emeralds but it is the source of it.

When Sonic or any of his friends are hurt they loose their collected rings and only have a brief moment to recollect them, after awhile they seem to vanish. Why? Because the power of those rings have dispersed and thus they're warping back to the Special Stages to be recharged of chaos energy. After a non-specific time in the Special Zone these rings will return to Earth to be scattered across to various zones and such (just like the Chaos Emeralds, when not directly collected from the Special Stages). Super transformations also doesn't "consume rings", merely the power within those rings which warps them back to the Special Zone.

While if someone was to count each ring, from each zone or stage, from each and every one Sonic games, there is perhaps hundred-thousands of rings in totals, when really there could be a total of a few thousand rings in Sonic's world and that each ring that Sonic has lost or used as Super Sonic, he will find those rings somewhere else in the world. For all we know some of those rings we see in modern Sonic games are the very same ones since the classic era.

Thats my headcanon on Sonic lore logic to why rings are a reoccuring gameplay element in Sonic games. I further theoried that due to the magnetic nature of gold rings, they spin opposite rotation below the equator, however Sonic Unleashed prooves me wrong.