We do literally have multiple pieces of LW concept art which use Classic Sonic specifically. It would be fascinating to know at what point they changed their mind.
Concept art doesn't really mean anything about the story's setting, but really it's just that there would be absolutely no reason to make such a decision. If it uses the modern designs, you put it as the next modern game because that makes sense. If you use the classic designs, why even bother debating where it is in the timeline? Could go anywhere if you're already willing to overlook the existence of wisps (not Orbot and Cubot, though).
You can’t really explain away the Wisps because Sonic taunts Eggman with the Baldy McNosehair line near the start of the game, a name that he specifically learned from the Wisps in Colours.
If someone suggested that, I'd point out that the reporter asks a question about Shadow the Hedgehog, so it's gotta be after Sonic Adventure 2 at least. Most likely after Sonic Heroes, did the media ever get a heads up about Shadow after the whole ARK Incident?
Just checked, I'm tired and wrong, my bad. I need to get more sleep, despite my hating that whole process.
The only reason 06 would need to take place before Rush is if Silver's ending were tied to the Sol dimension, which is a popular fan theory...but not actually true. Blaze is natively from the Sol Dimension, and her existence in 06 has basically been chalked up to a mistake. However, her response to the "blue hedgehog" comment (which is in both dubs, I checked) and her referencing Doctor Eggman by name suggests that she definitely knows stuff about specifically Sonic's era. So, absent an official explanation, Blaze knows about Iblis (somehow), travels to Silver's future (somehow), seals Iblis (somehow) and...dies? Maybe? But when Sonic resets everything, none of it ever happened, neither she nor Silver had any reason to go hopping across time and space. So they never met, but she's okay. I haven't played them yet, but a cursory glance at the scripts shows the only tie between Rivals and Rush is the presence of Eggman Nega, but nobody who was in Rush even knows that Nega is there, so it doesn't contradict anything. I don't even know where you got this idea, to be honest. Battle would need to take place after Shadow for it to make sense, but that doesn't mean it was supposed to. It followed Heroes, which introduced Shadow's amnesia, but probably wasn't crafted with basing a future game around it in mind. Shadow references things in the ending such as Super Sonic that he shouldn't know unless he regained some memories, and if you play Battle right after Heroes, it looks much more like he simply regained them gradually, which makes it make a LOT more sense why nobody told Shadow anything directly. It's Shadow's title game that makes that mistake. I think the amnesia was ambiguous enough to pick up in a future game, but that was decided after Battle decided it was settled. Retroactively placing them like this doesn't work too bad, but it's clear that was never the plan. I don't know which "many people" you're talking about, but wildly speculating that Unleashed takes place before 06 and wildly speculating that Lost World takes place between the classic games and Adventure or whatever are both equally silly. I mean, yeah, if you just say "besides all the obvious contradictions it works", then of course you can place a given game anywhere you want. Sonic games generally take place in release order. The times they don't, the times we have these discussions, are typically when there are glaring holes in continuity where it wouldn't make sense for a game to happen at a certain point. But you're kinda doing this in reverse. You're just saying "what if game goes here" and dismissing the problems that would exist if that were true. Why? I don't get it.
I feel like this is severely overcomplicating it. I would maintain my headcanon that Blaze simply knows of Sonic from researching methods to stop Iblis, since she also knows of the Chaos Emeralds and Sonic is a noted world-renown Hero in Sonic Adventure 2 minimum, and the entire story takes place pre-Sonic Rush. Shadow also very clearly knows who Maria is and her wish to protect the world. Which he only learns of via Shadow the Hedgehog. To say otherwise is removing his entire motivation, character and plot from Sonic Battle. We also have other people saying it takes place pre-Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive), and there's the Tails cameo saying "see you next game!"
I don't want to retread what I'm sure has been discussed before - but isn't it now understood that Blaze's contemplative reaction to Silver's exclamation of "blue hedgehog" is meant to be in relation to Silver himself, not Sonic? Aoi is the Japanese word for both "blue" and "naive", in a similar way to English users calling someone "green". Blaze explicitly refers to Silver with the the same word "aoi" in the scenes in which she calls him naive. The wordplay is reflective of the fact that, were Silver to succeed in killing Sonic, Elise would cry and release Iblis - in effect making Silver the Iblis Trigger, in his naivete for trusting Mephiles.
To be honest, I don't find all of those arguments entirely convincing. Granted, as a non-Japanese speaker I can't comment on the inflections or the deliveries of the lines, but the dialogue I would argue is not as clear cut as portrayed. I'm not sure the interpretation of aoi as blue in this case is definitive. Blaze could be wondering if it's really true that Sonic could be the Iblis Trigger, or she could be considering that Silver also fits the description and could himself be the Trigger. Either way, when she does find Silver, she doesn't follow up on either of these points. She calls him naive [aoi] and insists they need to complete their mission. If anything, I would argue the latter interpretation is more strongly supported. As Plorpus notes, in the cutscene immediately before Blaze's gameplay quote, she's contemplating Silver's naivete. For full context, the scene as translated by Windii is as follows: "So, this is the past world. I don't think I should let Silver run wild on his own. The Iblis Trigger. [Aoi], hedgehog..." With that leading immediately (load times aside) into Wave Ocean, wouldn't that suggest she's still contemplating Silver as the naive hedgehog, and how that may relate to the Iblis Trigger? Not to mention that her reaction to being in the past doesn't really suggest that she's been there before. I'm actually most convinced by the punctuation utilized in this first usage of "aoi". I concede that the emphasis with which she repeats Silver could support the argument that she is acknowledging Sonic. That said, I don't think it is the only reasonable interpretation. It's also possible that she's expressing surprise that the Iblis Trigger that Mephiles has been building up is merely a blue hedgehog, not something of comparable power to Iblis itself. What's more, Mephiles then proceeds to send the three of them to the past - and Blaze appears in Wave Ocean, leading to the aforementioned quotes. These three "aoi" quotes take place within a few moments from Blaze's perspective. She reacts to Silver's description of the Trigger, gets sent to the past, continues to reflect on the description, does so yet again as Wave Ocean begins, finds Silver, calls him naive... and at the end of the game, in her final act, calls him naive as she seals herself away. In the context of the full game, I think there's a clear arc between Blaze and her relationship with that word. The period on Silver's story emphasizes his naivete. To say most of the lines refer to Sonic I think misses the big picture. The alternative is that Blaze remembers Sonic, then reflects on how Silver also could fit the description of Iblis Trigger, then worries about Sonic again... and then never even speaks to him, leaving the plot point completely unresolved. As far as the unimplemented line where she references Sonic - I'm not sure how much credence it should be given if it's not in the final game. Even some content in the final game doesn't reflect the actual final story (e.g. the Book of Darkness). Sonic 06 was constantly being rewritten, even while voice lines were being recorded, and unused voices files could just easily be leftovers from a previous draft. In fact, that's ultimately what I believe this whole thing comes down to - the sloppiness with which Sonic 06 was created. It's entirely possible, as Maekawa once stated on Twitter, that he wanted there to be some sort of connection between 06 and Rush. That may have been the origin of this reference to Sonic, but between the other writers/scenario creators on the game potentially unaware or contradicting this intent, and the final game not containing any truly indisputable evidence for Blaze knowing Sonic, I think at best there is a remnant of an idea that was never fully implemented, much like everything else to do with the game. What did end up in the game was an emphasis on Silver's naivete, and potentially botched reference to Rush aside, I think that is the primary purpose of this deliberate usage of wordplay.
Honestly, Dragon Ball was overly complicated as well during the Future Trunks Saga. I have no idea how many universes spawned from that chaos, especially since there were two universes involved. You were arguing the game didn't need to take place after Shadow the Hedgehog. I was pointing out it kinda does, since he was well aware of Maria. It's incorrect, the most people have as evidence for that idea is that it has a car in the picture, which is probably more Tails' love of technology (see: the Tornado). If we look at the respective games' release dates: Sonic the Hedgehog CD: September 23rd, 1993 Sonic Drift: March 18th, 1994 Then the games released between then: Sonic Chaos: October 25th 1993 Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine: November 1993 Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball: November 23rd 1993 SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter: May 1994 Sonic the Hedgehog 3: February 2nd 1994 I'm not sure why Sonic Drift would be prioritised in advertisement over Sonic Chaos, Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Pengi has also argued quite well that Sonic Team, at the very least Yuji Naka, did not really know much of the 8-bit games. Of the Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Mega Drive, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive) is Tails' debut, and Sonic the Hedgehog CD was more of a port of Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive) not Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive) according to this Sonic Stadium interview: The fact they were developing the games in tandem and exchanging developmental information between the two teams, to the point where Sonic the Hedgehog CD adopted Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)'s abandoned time travel gimmick, suggests to me it's far more likely to be a developmental nod to the latter's game that missed the deadline, rather than to Sonic Drift.
Eh, I think they had the general idea for Shadow's story going forward, since they also have the Omega reference in Sonic Battle, despite the game being released before Sonic Heroes and Omega's debut... Too bad they messed up the E-100 numbers with E-121 Phi (should be E-120, since Alpha was E-100, so Phi being the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet should drop down one number like the 24th, Omega). Also, Rouge already knows of and references E-123 Omega when seeing Chaos Gamma, but then Robotnik builds the E-121s? Apparently that's just confusion on the fanbase's part. And like I said, he did say they exchanged information, so it's likely that concept came from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive) and was likely transplanted when it was dropped and Sonic the Hedgehog CD grew.
He came from the ARK, I think in the Japanese Supplementary Materials it's mentioned multiple capsules were launched from the ARK during the Incident 50 years ago (Sonic X incorporated that with the two capsules during their Sonic Adventure 2 adaptation, though they should've been clearer one of their two was Emerl since it became a thing that Sonic the Hedgehog was another project of Gerald as a result). I checked, the only instance is of Emerl saying Metal after Sonic, but not Metal Sonic. It's... a bit weird given the context... Could possibly be a mistranslation, perhaps I should check the Japanese script... The instance is at the end of Sonic's story, after Tails has realised giving Emerl Chaos Emeralds makes him 'grow':
