The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Same shade, but Sonic 3's plastic sheen on the arms, with a matte quill finish?

REEEEEEEE. I demand a public apology from Takashi Iizuka himself! (As well as free Sonic games for the rest of my life, because behind the rage, I'm a shameless consumer)

 

Hey!... that'd be a private apology!

But seriously, I've mentioned somewhere in these near 40 pages that I view story and world-building as a gauge for passion and how well the work is going on the project. The continuity heavy, carefully handled Sonic Generations, best game of the modern Sonic Team. Sonic Forces, where they changed and faffed on with a bunch of things, a mess to play through. Sonic Mania's plot is simple but carefully built to explain the level jumps, one of the best Sonic the Hedgehog games in recent times. Boring characters and plot in Sonic Lost World, some bad gameplay choices. (They really should have had Sonic run normally and button press to walk, rather than the other way around).

It's down to it being, as plenty of people keep helpfully reminding me, story and plot being the least important aspect of action games, and thus the first and most obvious thing to suffer when passion and quality start to drop. I'm not saying the older Sonic Teams made nothing but great games, they gave us Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) for crying out loud, but I feel more enjoyment with their games than I do with half the current ones.

I just want a Sonic Team that cares again. One of the older teams threw in the Robotnik logo into Sonic Adventure because the designer liked the classic design, they liked the craft and worked elements they liked in: I like that, I enjoy playing something someone enjoyed making and celebrates the works before it.

The modern Sonic Team doesn't. They don't care about consistency: even Super Mario has a better consistency to it. Yoshi references Super Mario World in Super Mario 64, the F.L.U.D.D. runs through Mario's mainline adventures in Super Mario Sunshine, etc. It's subtle but it's there.

That's why I've such irritation with the lack of continuity and the mangling of the past continuity with Two Worlds retconned in, alongside a feeling of disrespect for the hard work of the older teams who crafted a single world where anthros and humans lived on the same planet, instead of however many worlds now exist with Classic, Modern, Human, Silvers, etc.

(I'm sure Ian Flynn was joking with the Silver World being an alternate dimension, but raise of hands who doesn't think the current Sonic Team would do that?)

But still, let's move on from this. It's clear there's a difference between then and now, no point in going on and on about it.

So in-game callbacks, those are fun. The Sonic Adventure Robotnik logo's a neat little callback to how the designs and continuity were up to that point. Anyone else have any continuity references they enjoy in the games?

 

One from the original trilogy of games, which is especially nice when you remember the different people who worked on said games.

I enjoy the visual consistency of certain BG blocks in Hydrocity Zone in Sonic 3 resembling those from Labyrinth Zone in Sonic 1. They weren't identical, but the ones in S3 were almost definitely a callback to the ones in S1 which lent themselves to a sort of world-building consistency, as much as can be done in the medium of story-minimal 16 bit platformers.

 

Indeed, a minor connection between the two Zones that makes me ponder the history of the ancient civilisation that existed once.

 

Exactly! It's not something that needed to be outright stated, and either Zone would still function perfectly well without any unifying stylistic elements, but given the weird divergence of Sonic canon from it's very inception, the fact that this was even a thing showed some kind of shared idea of what the game universe was conceived as.

Like you said, it highlights some kind of connection and shared history within the framework of the universe, and makes you wonder about the history. It's not some lore-heavy paragraph about how the Echidna tribes and Angel-influenced civilizations co-existed, but it's enough to get the observant mind to wonder and enjoy it on a level that didn't even need to be there.

 

Yes! This is what I think the lore of the series should be like to a tee: subtle and in the background, but consistent and telling its own story. It suggests to me that South Island was once a part of Angel Island, or at the very least was part of a civilisation that inhabited it.

They tend towards birds on these islands, which makes me wonder if the Echidna were once involved with a bird-based civilisation (glances at Sonic Riders' Babylonians) in some form, be it as enemies or simply successors to the group.

 

Indeed, looking at the S1 blocks, they kind of resemble bird faces. Maybe it ties into the Babylon Rogues. Now, you could possibly tie it all in with the weird Angel statue in Sonic CD's Wacky Workbench, and connect it to Angel Island's origin. There's an overt Biblical-type connection between the existence of Angels, Angel Island, the story about the Chaos Emeralds coming from Angelic beings, and the fact that the main anthropomorphic Bird race are known as the Babylon Rogues. You could even tie it in with the existence of Chaos Emerald-reactive Flickies and the Flickies of Flickies Island.

It doesn't need to be spelled out, but there's so much to work with that ties in together, that it feels like they're working from some vague Story Bible concepts that are never explicity stated and are only half-remembered by the people working on the series.

It could also be why both the OVA and the movie went with Owl-figures.

Heck, if you really wanted to tie things together, you could tie in the ancient bird races with the fact that Robotnik is an "EGGMAN".

 

Oh, that's a fair point. Though whoever they were, they had some relation to the Hedgehogs, since they have Sonic statues in Hydrocity Zone.

 

I postulated a theory about this earlier in the thread.

This is why the Sonic statue appearance updates in Mania to fit Sonic's new sprite. It confirms that it's actually Sonic and not a random hedgehog of the past.

 

To be fair, this is three threads mashed into one overall continuity thread, so...

Indeed. The Echidna did seem to be getting some form of future warnings, with the mural of Super Sonic and the Final Weapon fighting over the Master Emerald. Tikal also seemed to be able to drag people into visions of the past throughout Sonic Adventure...

 

But aren't the Riders series set on Earth and not on Sonic's world?
The Babylon Rogues are aliens after all, the planet they arrived could be Earth.

 

I think it's been established that Riders takes place in an alternate continuity and isn't considered canon.

 

Well if you really want to blow your mind:

A) Sonic Riders is set in the year 7002: http://www.theghz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2533&p=91229&hilit=riders#p91229
So maybe there's time-hopping between world hopping.

B) In Sonic Jump, Sonic visits zones such as Green Hill, Blue Sky etc. So it must be set on Sonic's World.
But then as the story progresses, Eggman is building a base in South America.
So that must mean Sonic's World has the same countries as Earth
(or South Island used the dimensional ring to move to Earth (like it must have done in Sonic Forces) and so Sonic Jump takes place on Earth).

 

The species are aliens, the Babylon Rogues are their descendants. They were stranded on Earth when they couldn't control the Ark of the Cosmos, which doesn't really indicate dimensional travel, just space travel.

Had a look at the Japanese of that scene, make sure it wasn't originally "fastest one in the world" since I prefer to have accurate information (yey The Legend of Zelda theorising), and...

Well hell, Sonic Riders outright sets itself on Earth. Neat.

I keep hearing conflicting stories on this. Some say canon, others say not, who knows.

Interesting, when is this scene exactly so I may go have a look?

On that note, Team Sonic Racing features Spagonia as a stage, with no mention of dimension hopping, so...

Honestly, still not buying the dimensional ring idea, but what am I going to do?

 

The game says Dodon Pa has the ability to travel/communicate/whatever between dimensions.

 

As far as I know, the only indication is Silver and Blaze receiving mysterious invitations, not the how or when they get them. I must have missed when it was mentioned, where does it say that?

 

Right after that, someone (I don't remember who) gets impressed by that and states this as a conclusion.

 

It's Tails, found it and looked for the Japanese line:

The surprise and saying object-transference indicates it's nothing the cast are being put through, but who knows.

 

There's a photo of the scene in the post I linked to, but I can't remember exactly when the scene is in the game. I think it's in the Hero story, maybe after the third level? I haven't played Riders since 2006, so I could be way off on that!