Hydrocity or Hydro City

About

Hydrocity or Hydro City is a viral debate within the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom pertaining to the correct pronunciation of the name of the level "Hydrocity Zone." One side of the debate insists that as the level is an underwater city, it should be pronounced as "Hydro City," while the other side argues that the name should be interpreted as "hydro velocity" and therefore pronounced "hai-dross-ity."

Origin

On February 2nd, 1994, the platform game Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released in the United States.^[1] The second zone of the game is Hydrocity Zone, a large, mostly underwater area of underground waterways on the Floating Island (gameplay video shown below). The Zone is divided into two acts.

While it's unclear when exactly the debate over whether the name of the level should be interpreted as "Hydro City" and pronounced that way or as a portmanteau of "hydro" and "velocity" and pronounced "hai-dross-ity" with the same accentuation as "velocity," one of the earliest discovered posts about the debate was made on June 17th, 2006. On that day, Sonic Retro^[2] forum user Skaarg created a thread titled "It must be decided," creating a poll for the proper pronunciation. While the results of the poll are no longer available, the thread gained over 80 replies in 16 years (screenshot shown below, left). On November 2nd, 2011, Chao Island^[3] forum user ShadouZaHejjihoggu created another poll, with "Hydrocity" beating "Hydro City" with 20 votes against 12 (screenshot shown below, right).

Spread

On October 5th, 2017, Twitter^[4] user @DaPatMac posted the earliest found meme about the debate, a meme comparing people using each of the pronunciations. The post (shown below, left) gained over 130 retweets and 480 likes in five years. On March 3rd, 2018, Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter^[5] fan page @sonicstadium posted a Change My Mind meme that gained 270 retweets and over 830 likes in four years (shown below, right).

On October 16th, 2020, Twitter^[6] user @bodaciousbats posted the earliest viral meme about the debate, which referenced Megamind's peculiar pronunciation of Metro City as "metrocity." The post gained over 4,100 retweets and 26,200 likes in two years (shown below, left).

In the following years, more memes of various formats that referenced the debate were posted online. For example, on March 24th, 2021, Twitter^[7] user @Jassbec posted an Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer meme that gained over 1,100 retweets and 7,100 likes in one year (shown below, right).

On April 25th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user @ThatSoni posted photographs of pages from the 2022 Free Comic Book Day issue of Sonic the Hedgehog comic that was acquired early by him. On one of the pages, Sonic and Tails have a brief argument over the correct way to pronounce Hydrocity, failing to reach a consensus (panels shown below). Later that day, Twitter^[9] user @CrafterArmys posted a cropped panel of Tails and Sonic arguing, with the tweet gaining over 6,000 retweets and 52,900 likes in two months.

On June 11th, 2022, SEGA's official Twitter^[10] account launched a poll for the correct pronunciation of Hydrocity, with "Hydrocity (like velocity)" beating "Hydro City" 50.5 percent against 49.5 percent of the votes and a total of nearly 100,000 users voting (shown below).

The tweet gained over 1,100 retweets and 7,700 likes in five days and reignited the debate, with multiple memes about it posted on Twitter in mid-June 2022.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References