The Ultimate Guide to Turning in Cyber Space

Don't you hate it when you come up to a turn in Cyber Space, and instead of turning, you slam straight into the wall? I can't relate. But thankfully, there is a way, and all you have to do is follow these easy steps.

You can turn in this game?

A wise man (or woman, I don't quite remember) once said, "So it's like driving a car, the more you rotate the stick, the more you turn."

I thought that was a nice analogy. Anyways forget that because you're not driving a car, you're driving Sonic!

But before I tell you how to turn, lets start off with what turning is. Turning is the act of deviating from a straight course, typically by going left or right. You may not know this, but turning was invented in 1898. Before that, people had to go straight! Can you believe it? I hope not, because I made that up.

Anyways, how does turning work in this game? Well, you turn the stick left or right. Sonic will rotate to face that direction. How fast Sonic rotates is dependant on your turn rate, which is influenced by your speed. To put it simply, the faster you go, the harder it becomes to turn. This is why it's much easier to turn while not boosting. Remember that for later. So how do you turn while boosting?

How to turn

Lets look at exhibit A as an example:


Here you can see that Sonic doesn't turn left fast enough to make the turn. You're holding left as hard as you can, but alas, Sonic runs into the wall, and have to skill issue your way to the faster dash ramps.

Now look at exhibit B:


What the hell? Sonic can actually turn? Sonic CAN TURN IN CYBERSPACE!? But how? Remember that analogy I told you to forget? You can go ahead and remember it now. Sonic's turning is dependant on how far the stick is rotated.

...

What? You didn't get that? Basically, rotate the stick further than 90°. Do be cautious though, as rotating the stick too far will cause Sonic to brake and turn around (at 170°), which is not what you want.

But why tho

Why does this happen?

Sonic's boost speed is 40m/s in Cyber Space, and 30m/s at level 1 in the Open Zone at the max setting.

Sonic's turn rate is 1050°/s at 10m/s in Cyber Space, and goes up to 1850°/s at 0m/s. For comparison, Sonic's turn rate in the Open Zone is 500°/s at 15m/s (at the lowest setting), which can go up to 1000°/s at 0m/s.

But that's strange, according to the numbers, Sonic should be turning FASTER in Cyber Space. Well that's because there's a few more things that influence your turn rate.

First off, the minimum turn rate is not actually 0°/s. Rather, it's 30°/s in Cyber Space, and 60°/s in the Open Zone. If your turn rate goes lower than that, it will instead be capped to that speed. This should happen at around 78m/s, but it actually happens at around 47m/s (63m/s in the Open Zone).

Secondly, your turn rate decreases even further by 200° every 20m/s. This is the rotation decay, which is only used in Cyber Space. Looking at the math again, this makes your boost turn rate less than in the Open Zone. Lets see what happens when we set it to 0:


And as expected, you can now turn just like in the Open Zone. This is also why it caps to 30°/s at 47m/s, and why it's much harder to turn after a Dash Panel. So now that we know why your turn rate is so slow in Cyber Space, why does turning the stick further than 90 fix this? Well, remember that your turn rate is still dependant on how much the stick is rotated. When you rotate the stick 180°, Sonic will turn at a rate of ~100°/s at boost speed. When you rotate the stick 90°, it drops to ~50°/s. Yikes. But if you rotate the stick 150°, your turn rate is ~83°/s, which is enough to make those 90° turns.

Important to note that since Sonic will brake and turn when the stick is rotated 170°, you'll never actually reach the highest turn rate.

Also, Sonic will automatically turn to face the camera, which is why some turns don't require you to turn or turn as much.

There are also several more ways to turn outside of just holding left/right. Lets take a look at them:

You have to go slow to go fast?

The first of which is to just go slow. I'm serious. The faster you go, the harder it is to turn, so make sure you lift that finger off the Right Trigger if you're having trouble.

Okay no, I'm just joking. But Here's a little fact for you: Sonic will instantly turn to the direction you're holding when you start boosting. This can be useful to make sharp 90° (or 180°) degree turns.

Sliding is a real move with real, practical applications

Another way is by Sliding. Sliding has a much faster turning rate than boosting. Additionally, Sliding will also slow you down, which makes it a lot easier to turn.


Oh yeah, Sliding keeps your momentum™, so it's very useful when there's an enemy in your path. It's also much faster than trying to jump over or homing attack the enemy, so try it some time. But I'm getting off-topic.

Bro what is this Quick Step

Of course this is all meaningless, since speedrunners will know the true king of turning is by holding Quick Step. For some ungodly reason, you can Quick Step in rapid succession just by holding down the button. This makes turning a cinch since you can pretty much glue yourself to the wall. Not only that, after Quick Stepping, Sonic will instantly turn to the direction you're holding.

Drifting sucks lmao

Also don't drift. If there's a Drift Panel, go around it. If you can't, then jump over it. If you for some unthinkable reason are drifting, you may as well finish what you started. But remember, your mistake has lead to countless Kocos dying. Look at how sad they are :( You monster.




Anyways Drifting is slower than just turning normally. The time you lose from jumping over the Drift Panels is less than if you just drifted. Not only that, but the drift's maximum turn rate is only 75°/s, which is less than just rotating the stick 150°. This wouldn't be so bad though if rotating the stick further than 35° did anything. Drifting looks cool at least.

Spindash but "Spin" is spelled "Drop"

You can Drop Dash btw. It has a slower turn rate than boosting, and also disables turning at 50m/s. Honestly, there's no point in using it since you have to be charging it for 1 full second just to get to boost speed, which ends up being lost not even a second later. You might be thinking you can use it on hills, but most of the time they end in a loop or a corner, both of which the Drop Dash sucks at doing. It does have it's uses in 2D though.

The Skill issue * * * * Banner

Lastly, Power Boost. It functions a bit differently, and does actually decrease your speed when turning, so it ends up being easier to turn with it. Spindashing also has a much faster turn rate, but you will slow down massively if you try to go in circles with it, not that it matters though since you accelerate super fast and can just fly over the level regardless.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

Hope I didn't get the explanation entirely wrong lol, that would be embarrassing. I did test my theory and it seems to be consistent. Anyways, make sure to hit that like button and subscribe, and ring the notification bell for more content.

[Bababooey]

hue hue hue

[Misterc20111]

genius

[Skyro]

Just the fact that you have to write an entire guide just to explain how to turn shows how Cyberspace really was an afterthought lmao

[hypersanic945]

que genial

[HEIL_super_hedgehog]

thank you

[HEIL_super_hedgehog]

that was amazing

[dolly]

no u

[Dante]

nerd

[Chqnces]

Genius

[Blacksmithtony20]

Never knew any of this until now. Thank you!