Come and leave your mark
Thought I’d list and clear up some misconceptions about the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Sonic's speed does not come from his shoes. The English manual for the first game does say that Sonic's shoes make him go faster (a fact which was not mentioned at all in the Japanese manual), but this is most likely referring to the High Speed power-up (known as Power Sneakers in English), which makes Sonic temporarily go even faster than normal. Notably, Sonic wears different shoes in Sonic Adventure 2 (as part of a sponsorship deal by SEGA with Soap grinding shoes, hence why Sonic gained the ability to grind on rails in that game) and he's still just as fast as usual. Sonic's speed is just an innate ability he has, not tied to his shoes. And by the way, they're not even shoes. Naoto Ohshima, the designer of Sonic, confirmed on Twitter that Sonic actually wears boots, and the white part that was assumed to be his socks is actually just the top of the boot. No, Shadow the Hedge