Did Majora's Mask 3D change the story? Anyway, the remakes and Mania are basically the same from a "classic canon" standpoint. Both were made twenty years later without the original teams. Regardless of any of that, you can't pull a "I only adhere to the original team's vision" and then ignore the implication they made that Sonic 3 follows after Sonic 2.
Now that I remember to ask, @BlackHole... What's your basis for that finally you push to the discussion? Are you following the western synopsis of Sonic3? Because the japanese synopsis clearly states "A few days after this event (Sonic2's finale)". You can read it here: http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_3#Story
Of course Sonic 3 follows Sonic 2. But the fact is there's a gap in the timeline between them, how big is ambiguous. It's like Kingdom Hearts. II follows I, but there's a game between them. (or two). The story hasn't changed, Sonic destroyed the Death Egg in 2 and the plot follows up on this in 3. Just because there's a few more adventures between them doesn't change that the Death Egg still crashed after Sonic 2 and lead into Sonic 3. Read this one, it's a direct translation: http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_3/Manuals#Translated_from_Japanese
If that's what you've been referencing, the word "finally" has nothing to do with the Death Egg. What it says is this:
I totally trust @Windii's faithful translation. She's done a lot for this community. Still, it does little to back up your theories. The finally refers to the island, and doesn't specify a timeframe it took to fall. I also don't believe the island would take days to crash into the ocean. Sonic Team also didn't help, by making it a bit ambiguous...
Yeah, I know, that's my error. I mixed up finally and just starting. Same implication of time passing, not as... urgent? (There's a word I'm looking for, just can't recall it.) Noted. Shall we just agree to disagree: it's ambiguous, there's no set amount of time between the events, so you can just leave the crazy Brit to his ambiguous abusing timeline and go with direct links between 1, 2 and 3 with ambiguously small gaps between them.
It does? "The kettle is just starting to boil", implication time has passed before it has begun to boil.
Not the same context, and I deleted that part of my post as not to confuse matters. To simplify: After Sonic 2 (the previous adventure), the Death Egg was just starting to crash towards earth. It refers to what the "previous adventure" is, and what happened in it. Then it goes on to what is happening afterwards to start Sonic 3's story. It doesn't make any implication that a great deal of time has passed. It implies that this is the next thing to happen after "the previous adventure".
I didn't put so much effort in looking for ambiguities in the manuals, except maybe for Chaotix. But I will always disagree with the idea of any game between Sonic 2 and 3 because Sonic 3 was made as a immediate sequel. It's not the same case of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, because Sonic 2 does not imply that it happens right after Sonic 1. But Sonic 3 does that in relation to Sonic 2. The short ammount of time and Sonic's arrival as Super are enough evidence that this game was thought as a immediate sequel. Trying to place any game between Sonic 2 and 3 feels forced, because it looks like we are shoving things in a box they don't belong until they fit. I made a timeline in which those 8-bit games come after Sonic 3K and it still fell forced, even if there is plenty of time after 3K, because they simply don't belong in there. They were not thought that way.
I could probably argue that the previous adventure is ambiguous due to the direct "After Sonic 2's Adventure" and that's what the "the" refers to: the previous adventure we've pointed out." However, I am not, the argument's gone on long enough. You don't like the timeline I've suggested, fine, done, let's move back onto the subject of fixing continuity instead of what games would be canon.
I haven’t played a new Sonic game since Generations (besides Mania) so I’m not sure of exactly how fudged the continuity is by this point, but I’ve seen most of the cutscenes of Forces and I’m just gonna say, since Adventure, Unleashed, and Forces all depict a very very different take on Sonic’s world and they all contradict each other (anime humans vs. Pixar humans vs. no humans), the continuity is beyond fucked and there’s no fixing it. So to answer OP’s question, yeah they should just abandon it. Personally I think they should just return to the Adventure continuity and pick up after Shadow/06, but tone down the edge. Salvage whatever can reasonably fit in from the “happy Sonic” continuity, such as Orbot and Cubot - I think they can stay.
Yeah, the real bad thing about this all is wasting that many post in this discussion. I'll just say I can accept some minor adventure could have happened between Sonic 2 and 3, but eight full games for something worded as "several days" is keeping Sonic extremely busy. How much time do you think it takes for a huge unfinished space station to crash on earth after exploding? I think the extra time between both adventures is the gap between Robotnik camping in Angel Island and Sonic and Tails arriving to the place. EDIT: I was answering to BlackHole, but I was ninja'ed.
This reminds me, the 8-bit games weren't made by Sonic Team. They weren't involved at all to my knowledge. I'd bet Yuji Naka and co. never considered the 8-bit games a part of mainline continuity, but that's speculation. At the very least I doubt they considered them important to mainline continuity. Nah, screw 'em. Screw it all! :p
You know, Sonic really suffers from a problem a lot of long-lasting kid's media have: it was originally made by people who did not give a flying fuck about maintaining any kind of consistency or canon, but accidentally created a bunch of fans who do, and the result is these fans going to immense lengths to explain bad writing and inconsistencies and wishing the series would actually maintain a consistent canon while the creators themselves still absolutely do not give a damn about that at all and are probably mystified that anyone would. See the Zelda timeline debacle for this thing happening in the Big N's backyard.
Speaking of Angel Island... Now, talking about it with my twin brother, we noticed a couple things... 1. Shouldn't Death Egg's crash simply have ruined the whole island? Ruins blown off, forests decimated, mountains demolished... At least, SA1's verdant appearance shouldn't have been possible. 2. How the flying heck can Angel Island have an inner area filled with lava (Lava Reef / Inner Red Mountain)? It's a floating island, for goodness' sake... High in the skies for centuries, at best... At the present time, all the lava it could have would've dripped into whatever was below or something...
I think Angel Island is more akin to a continent. Perhaps Launch Base Zone was once a nice big forest area before it became a water filled crater. Not to mention the Chaos Emeralds restored the plantlife of South Island in Sonic the Hedgehog's ending, and Angel Island has the Master Emerald, so perhaps plants just recover quicker on the island?
I don't see it as a continent. A huge-ass island, for sure, but not THAT huge xD Well... True Story. They could've made good of that plot element from Sonic1.
Angel Island does have a massive desert on it, an entire water system hidden underneath the land and an active volcano, forests galore, etc. I think there was something that actually called it "the lost continent" but I'm not sure if it was from a comic or a game.
Not games, as far as I know. And I don't count comics, they have their creative freedom. Hydrocity, right. I also forgot about that one. Game logic, at the end of the day xD
