Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2221250-20140822020300/@comment-2221250-20140828173250

VenomTheEchidna wrote: I might add that no one really seems to use the fake Emeralds that both Tails and the Meterex created in Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic X, respectively. Despite the fact that these Emeralds are weaker than the genuine Emeralds, they still are a great source of power. I feel these fake Emeralds are even more underused the the genuine ones. I think this is because of how bothersome it'd be to write it all in.

First off, the idea can easily drown into ludicrousness of having so many power sources. Then there's the process of making them, which isn't explained (So far, the games have given no explanation as to the origin of the emeralds while the two long runners Fleetway and Archie have).

As for having so many, I'd say it's the same reason Akira Toriyama disliked the concept of power levels ("The only reason they were used was to show how pointless they were") since havng so many fake emeralds will lead to so many stupidly large numbers, etc.

Finally, some say the 16 emeralds in Sonic Spinball were all artificial emeralds.