This has been going on for almost exactly a year by now, so I'd imagine a dedicated thread for it would be good. Sonic Channel (official series Japanese website) has a long history of uploading desktop and phone screen wallpapers every month. (Lots of good stuff here~)These last few have been accompanied by some short stories. General premise is Sonic travelling to past game locations, and checking up on another member of the cast, sometimes finding a Chaos Emerald with them. Either take a gander at the on-site Cover Story gallery, or use this quick searchable link set right below... Spoiler: Links to individual Sonic Channel Wallpaper Cover Stories [FULL] 2020, December - Sonic & Tails - - Green Hill (Sonic 1) [FULL] 2021, January - Sonic & Knuckles - - Angel Island (Sonic 3 & Knuckles) [FULL] 2021, February - Sonic & Amy - - Twinkle Park (Adventure 1) [FULL] 2021, March - Sonic & Vector - - Apotos (Unleashed) [FULL] 2021, April - Sonic & Cream - - Music Plant (Advance 2) [FULL] 2021, May - Sonic & Metal Sonic - - Speed Highway (Adventure 1) [FULL] 2021, June - Sonic & Shadow - - Mission Street (Adventure 2) [1]..[2] [AW] 2021, July.. +August - Sonic & Rouge - - Eggmanland (Unleashed) [1]..[2] [AW] 2021, August.. +September - Sonic & Wisps - - Windy Valley (Adventure 1) [1]..[2] [AW] 2021, September.. +October - Sonic & Silver - - Kingdom Valley (Sonic '06) [1]..[2] [AW] 2021, October.. +November - Sonic & Blaze - - Coral Cave (Rush Adventure) [1]..[2] [AW] 2021, November.. +December - Super Sonic & Dr. Eggman - - Space Colony Ark (Adventure 2) Spoiler: Template for easily editing new things in later as they come [FULL] [1]..[2] [AW] 202x, M.. +MM - Sonic & X - - ZZZ (GGG) Since these are written in Japanese, you'll probably want Windii's wonderful translation of both the main story parts and afterword sections on hand. If there's anyway to directly link to individual Pastebin lines, let me know and I'll add them in! There's also this 2 minute video where the storywriter, Eitaro Toyoda, briefly reminisces on about his role in supervising Sonic scripts for various projects. (i.e. games, web videos, movies, comics...) That's all I can think to put here, for now.
I've been following them since they started them. I think they're really good, I love the tidbits of Easter Eggs and callbacks without them feeling too much in your face. It's such a shame they're not getting shared in the official U.S./Latin American social media channels as well. I think they would work as short animations or webcomics as well.
Definitely check out Sonic Channel if you haven't already. It's like peeping into Sonic's secret hideout or something, where everything is hunky-dory. It gets frequently updated too, so yeah, if you're looking for the good stuff, it's probably here.
I’ve been using these to practice reading Japanese off and on and I’ve enjoyed them for the most part. Windii’s translations up-thread are a little bit stiff/direct for me but that’s just probably just me being nit-picky. They seem accurate. A couple interesting notes: 1. They seem to ignore the whole “two worlds” thing. The emeralds have scattered to locations in both “worlds” and the presence of Wisps in Windy Valley is explained by some of them remaining on “Sonic’s world,” suggesting that all these locations are part of that world. 2. This is the first canon(?) time Chip (or rather Light Gaia) has appeared since Unleashed, although indirectly. He isn’t named and doesn’t appear in the flesh, but the light from the Gaia Temple that saves Sonic in the Rouge story is implied to be his doing. 3. According to a stream he appeared on, these stories are written by Eitaro Toyoda, who appears to be in charge of the franchise’s story writing nowadays. He wrote the 20th (25th? I forget) anniversary comics and his most recent writing credit is Sonic Forces. While I don’t believe he’s credited for it, he did the Japanese localization of Colors, Lost World, Forces* and I’m assuming Team Sonic Racing. Despite popular belief, Pontac and Graff write the actual script based on Sega’s cutscenes and/or outline and the Japanese version is the localization, not the other way around. *Forces has a second writing credit so I’m assuming that the original is actually Japanese in that case, then Pontac+Graff’s rewrite, then Toyoda’s localization.
Chip actually appeared in the story of the Sonic Runners 26th Birthday episode, although fans have differing opinions if that counts as canon, especially as Chip appears without a concrete explanation (he is simply revealed to be keen to celebrate Sonic's birthday and we just have to assume his keenness is how he returned).
Yeah, I don’t really count those bonus events as canon. I could be wrong and Puyo Puyo’s Satan did help Eggman try to conquer the world though. :p
All parts of the finale seem to have gone up by now, so any new readers have the full Cover Story to read through, afterword sections and all. enjoy egg
There's an interesting bit in Eggman's afterword about his business ventures: http://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/coverstory/20211210_002755/ From Windii's translation: https://pastebin.com/cGLqXZZf This is something that's only been touched on a little bit in the games. Sonic Battle has the Guard Robos (grey mass produced Chaos Gammas) that Eggman sold. In Sonic Riders some of the Extreme Gears were manufactured by Robotnik Corp., presumably operated by Eggman. Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity has MeteorTech, which was secretly run by Eggman. Cool to see this aspect of Eggman acknowledged in a character overview, even if they don't get into the specifics.
These little stories are so *fun!* it's pretty nice to see all of the characters that are usually off in the periphery getting some love - especially Blaze. Surprised that they pulled a dimensional switch for that one.
