I'm genuinely not saying you're wrong, but reasoning like this is where stuff starts to get weird... How about Spinball? We now have Veg-O-Fortress as a Menu in Origins with Naoto Oshima styled Sonic Tails and Eggman there. Does that mean the events happen, but not as visually presented in the American art style?
Yes Spinball is canon now too. This was confirmed by Ian Flynn on the Bumblekast right before Sonic Origins released.
...Which current SEGA? Or old SEGA, for that matter. If your criteria are retroactive, then it may or not be mainline today, but you can't go all essentialist about it: Wikipedia listing it as mainline is part of the very process that makes a game mainline over time or not. If they aren't, what SOA said at the time and the fact that main Sonic Team did have a huge contribution to it should matter. Which is it?
Is there anyone at Sega or Sonic Team, past or present, whose word everyone here will take as definitive? We’re all talking in circles. I personally don’t consider it mainline, and mentally group it with Spinball and R. Even if it had Yasuhara and other JP staff, so did Sonic R which no one would argue is a mainline title because the gameplay is too far removed from what Sonic is known for. If Naka ends up using his one phone call to let us know it is indeed mainline, I’ll change my tune. Iizuka concurring would help too, but seeing as Naka was pretty much in control back then, I’m primarily interested in how the game was understood to relate to the series upon release.
Let me rephrase my post. Sega and Sonic Team never treated it as mainline, always skipping it when referencing core games. It didn't get any levels or bosses in Generations or Mania, it wasn't mentioned in that "bibliography" list from the SA2 files that was posted here, and nowadays it's not mentioned by them any more than spin-offs like Spinball. The MD version was skipped in Japan, and the Saturn version was released there two years late to coincide with Sonic Adventure International's release. The most you could say is that SOA advertised it as the biggest Sonic game of 1996, like they did to obvious spin-offs like Spinball and Sonic R. As for Wikipedia, if their source-less claims shape Sega's (or anyone's) stance on anything, then that's just messed up.
I deem games like 3D Blast, Spinball & R as spin-offs or side-stories, not part of the mainline games. Same with the IDW Comics, to me it's also a side-story series derived from 1 mainline game, Forces. But to me, Battle, Advance3, Rush series, Rivals series and Riders series fall into a more grey area...
I personally feel that citing SA2 text documents for this kind of question, which are 20 years old, isn't currently relevant as the company can just wake up and say yup its a mainline game. Sonic Team now is much different than Sonic Team back then. Maybe at the time you could consider 3d Blast just an odd spinoff but 20 years on I don't think there is a way to definitively say one way or the other outside of personal bias. I think there are really only two things that are important to the question of is or isn't? - If you want to go with the argument of game-play, why would 3d Blast not be mainline but Lost World is? They both play drastically different from any other Sonic game out there. - If you want to choose the narrative side. If it isn't mainline then why would 06 be considered mainline by Sonic Team. It has a plot that has nothing to do with the rest of the series outside of assumptions, which can be said of 3d Blast. I understand mainline and canon are different, however I feel that narrative can be a strong factor of if something is relevant to a series or not.
That's a weird argument. If Sega treated it as a spin-off back then and haven't done anything since then to imply they changed their mind, then what reason is there to assume they did? Not to mention that they're still treating it as a spin-off these days.
