Honestly, the idea of a timeline split is the theory that makes the most sense given the information we currently have. Classic Sonic saw his future and even attempted the homing attack years before he was supposed to As stated above, Dr. Eggman inadvertently convinced Dr. Robotnik not to follow through with the Time Eater plan, much less any of the plans he saw because he knew they would all end in failure In Generations, Classic Sonic, Classic Tails, and Dr. Robotnik are stated explicitly to be past incarnations of their respective modern counterparts Most importantly, in Forces, Classic Sonic is stated to be from Mania, from an alternate dimension, and the same Sonic from Generations Using Occam's Razor and what we know of time travel in fiction, the simplest, most plausible explanation is that the timeline split during the events of Generations. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before in this thread, so excuse me if I'm repeating myself, but my brother actually came up with a theory that neatly explains why there was a timeline split in Generations and not any time Silver travels through time. White Space seems to be a limbo for people, places, and events that have been wiped from time as explained by Dr. Eggman by his motivation to "erase [his] past defeats". With both Classic and Modern Sonic both erased from the timeline at different points along it, you have a paradox. Either Sonic disappeared at some point around Sonic 2, or he disappeared years later during his birthday party. If the former is true, Modern Sonic should cease to exist and vise versa. The same goes for the Eggmen and two Tails as well. The only way to resolve that paradox is for the timeline to split at the point Classic Sonic was taken. Now if the characters from the past weren't keyed in on future events, this timeline would still be split off into another "dimension" with marginal change, but foreknowledge of the future has radically changed how events will continue to play out. In Silver's case, no paradox of the sort takes place, so his timeframe is simply rewritten instead.
I've actually been trying that on as my head-canon as of late. Or rather, maybe its events are canon (or at least as "selectively canon" as Sonic Team ever gets), but that the way it presents its story is actually meta. It's a video game about the legacy of a video game series. So when Classic Sonic is described as being the character from "the past," it's alluding to the real-world context. Classic Sonic is the character as he was pre-Adventure. Forces, then, provides the NON-meta, in-universe explanation: Classic Sonic hails from a different universe from Modern Sonic.
Classic events still happened for Modern Sonic, so in the end i'd say it hardly matters unless discussing stuff like "Mania" that didn't happen for "Prime(?)" Sonic. Both versions have lots of common history.
This is absolutely due to the fact that I’m a kid who grew up on Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who, but I really don’t think there needs to be a timeline split. The aforementioned era of DW often flouted the “rules” on time travel with the excuse of time not really being a strict progression of cause and effect. Your past has happened from your perspective, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to go back in time and have influence on a past without creating what you perceive to be changes. And this ties into something Ben Bates, one of the artists from back in the Archie Sonic days, wrote in a deviantART post. You shouldn’t worry about applying realism to works like this too much. The specific example he used was Tails’ tails. There is no realistic way Tails could possibly fly with his tails, but we don’t worry about it, we just accept that he can because it makes for an interesting trait. Likewise, Sonic Generations has a very simple and lighthearted plot, to the point of there almost being none. And that’s the point. What happens in Generations doesn’t need to have lasting ramifications on series continuity because it’s just an excuse for us to take a trip down memory lane and to manifest a facsimile of the Mega Drive gameplay in a distinct iteration of the character’s design. It was never explained how Eggman escaped from White Space, and it doesn’t need to be. We accept it because we know Eggman is Sonic’s arch nemesis and he’s always going to come back. Likewise, why do we need a split timeline when there’s nothing really stopping an untold number of stories happening between S3&K and Adventure (or Pocket Adventure, if you really want to get granular)?
The whole "alternate dimension" thing is just a huge misunderstanding. For starters, "alternate dimension" is very much a term that can and has been used to describe alternate timelines. Dragon Ball Super even does just that. Second, Modern Sonic even recognizes Classic explicitly when they meet up and lampshades his encounter from Generations by saying "It's been generations since I last saw you". Lastly and most importantly, the word "dimension" was not used in the original Japanese script. The word that was used was, if i am remembering correctly "sekai", which translates to "world". The term is loose enough in japanese speaking to encompass everything from alternate point in time, a different dimension or even an alternate timeline as is the case with Classic Sonic. It surprises me that the confusion around this is this major. Regardless of the terminology used, Tails, Sonic, Eggman and the rest of the cast very overlty recognize Classic Sonic from Generations. The game isnt pretending this is a diffetent person. While im generally of like mind, there is nonetheless a certain limit to which most people's suspension of disbelief can withold before things start getting to messy. I agree Eggman doesn't need an explicit explanation for how he escapes white space, but when it comes to Generation's story itself, it very much goes out of its way to tell us it happens after the events of Colors and that he found the Time Eater in space after the amusement park colapsed. So as simple as its story is, it still wants us to respect it as something that happened and matters. As for the split timeline in particular, while I have been pretty adverse to it in the past, as time has gone on I do think it would be a more than fine thing to do. The reality is, simply leaving it as 1 timeline would severly limit the kind of things Classic would be able to do as well as inhibit it from expanding in its own ways and direction. The last timr they tried something akin to just adding more numbered classic titles in the interim, we got Sonic 4, and to put it lightly, its a huge mess that i'd rather forget. And seemingly so does SEGA if the termination of the sites and the assertions to the chronology that came with it are anything to go by. Really, Classic Sonic is like most anything else in this series. Its just a question of handling it properly. In the case of Forces, my issue with Classic being there is more what was done with him moreso than him being there at all, even though I was admittedly put off by his reveal when the game was first announced. I enjoyed Mania wholeheartedly and I do think it would be rather lame to restrict the possibility of its expansion for, as far as im really made to think at this point, the insistance of it on the face of it. Because really, if you are gonna give yourself the room to let Classic do a bunch of whatever it wants, what reason is there NOT to let it become its own timeline? Likewise for Modern. Maybe we can get away from Green Hill Zone finally.
Classic Sonic's character profile says: 別次元の世界で活躍する The 次元 (jigen) part translates to "dimension". It's not a misunderstanding, just like Sonic's world and the human world being different planets wasn't a misunderstanding. It's a change to the story. Just like Eggman Nega was changed from being a resident of Blaze's world to a descendant of Eggman. The Modern Sonic cast don't recognise the Phantom Ruby in Sonic Forces because the events of Sonic Mania happened in Classic Sonic universe.
Time is a dimension. Classic in Generations is Modern's past self, the alternate timeline thing is needless. Sonic merely got it wrong in Forces as to where his past self came from. =P
Maybe I'm looking too deep into this, but is the "dimensional" trait of Classic Sonic just a play on words referencing the 2D games he came from? Does that pun work in Japanese, too?
This is gonna sound silly, but uh. I think we cracked the code here. "次元" to my understanding is "dimension" in the mathematical sense. I think its a play on being 2D vs 3D. Which is..kinda funny to think about. Was it though? I suspect this is the same thing going on here and Nega was never overlty stated to be from Blaze's dimension in Rush in the original Japanese. Do we have the means to fact check? Why would they remember the Phantom Ruby? Even in Generations, the time travel doesnt ever seem to be opperating on any form of causality system. It doesnt seem at all that there is anything contradicting that its an alternate timeline as a result of Generations, and the Phantom Ruby event didnt happen in their timeline. Well, I'm glad im not the only one to see this. Feel less silly now. :x
I dont know if im amazed or annoyed that Sega potentially threw the canon into confusion by making a meta pun of the kind you'd find in a Metal Gear game that was liable to be lost in translation.
I really doubt it's a pun. During Sonic Generations they talked about Classic Sonic being Modern Sonic's younger self and the distinction between the two focused on it being one Sonic from different times. Then during Sonic Runners it changed. In Sonic Runners, Classic Sonic is described as a character from a different era who collaborates with the modern Sonic (Rather than being Modern Sonic's younger self). Interviews at the time talk about the Classics having their own world with their own set of characters, some of which only exist in one world. And then this is reflected in forces where they start mentioning another dimension. I know it sucks, but they are separate characters from different dimensions.
"Dimension" can refer to different things based on context, and it looks like the same thing holds true with this word in Japanese: https://twitter.com/Herms98/status/1062143874003435520?s=20 While it may be possible to read between the lines and come up with other theories (and fan theories are great!), I find that Sega's intent is unambiguous. Regardless of what the devs intended in 1998, regardless of how much or how little sense it makes to you, the current canon explanation is that Classic Sonic is, and always was, a separate universe from Adventure and beyond. This is backed up by official material released over the past half decade. I don't know why there's so much consternation about how they don't REALLY mean it. But if you DON'T think it makes sense, the good news is that "SegaSonic canon" is so malleable (as @Pengi said, Blaze and Eggman Nega changed from being from an alternate dimension to a different part of the timeline, the OPPOSITE of Classic) that it'll probably change again eventually, anyway. "Adventure is a new canon" itself started out as a fan theory in the late 90s. (And I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Things were just as heated then!)
Jigen 次元 is also used in Sonic Rush Adventure: https://greenyvertekins.tumblr.com/...the-jp-version-of-sonic-rush-adventure-do-the And the Japanese title of Sonic Chronicles, ソニッククロニクル 闇次元からの侵略者 (Sonic Chronicles: Yami Jigen kara no Shinryakusha), which translates to Sonic Chronicles: Invaders from the Dark Dimension. Blaze reverted back to her original status. In 2005's Sonic Rush she's a princess from another dimension. In Sonic 2006 she's Silver's friend in the future, who seals herself in another dimension at the end of Silver's story (before Sonic and Elise reset the timeline at the end of the final story). In everything since she's back to being a princess from another dimension. Sonic Colours DS alludes to Sonic 2006 having happened, but no longer being remembered by either Silver or Blaze: As for Eggman Nega, he's now officially Eggman's descendant, and just happened to be causing trouble for Blaze's world in Sonic Rush: http://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/comic/25th/20161014_001182/ Google translated: This seems to be the approach they're taking with Classic Sonic and Sonic Generations (but in reverse). The story of Generations still happened, but Classic Sonic was actually from another dimension.
I just think itd be confusing if someone went from Gens to Forces, saw the change/retcon and got confused. I sont think its a good change if it needs other knowledge (like the mechanics of time travel stories) to understand. Cant wait for the 2023 game to come out and say "the entire last game was a phantom ruby illusion, it never happened". Wouldn't that be the dream?
The solution to this problem is to stop putting classic Sonic into 3D Sonic games as a separate entity from modern Sonic. If future games stop doing that, the phenomenon can be ignored. It's a can of worms that doesn't need to be explored or explained anymore, because in Generations it didn't make any sense in the first place. Another can of worms I wish Sonic Team had never opened was the two worlds nonsense. If they just didn't explain anything it would be better than a blatantly contradictory explanation.
It's kind of frustrating seeing the back and forth on this, since there is no retcon. As Overlord stated, Time is a dimension, the end of Generations shows that the timelines have shifted onto another path. None of this is even subtext, it's just text. The term 次元 (Jigen) when translated means Dimension, but it has the connotation of being more to do with metaphysics or a physical plane in the context. Classic Sonic is from a realm removed from Modern Sonic's, and would be considered "from another dimension" even if there were no timeline split. But even if we ignore the Japanese dialogue and go straight for the English, where he is "that Sonic from another dimension", I still don't understand how it is a retcon when the previous game literally had us have a hand in the new dimension's creation... It seems like an awful lot of semantic bickering that is designed to create division of opinion where there shouldn't be any.
We went through all of this before with the Sonic's World/Human World divide. "They don't mean it literally!" Then it turned out that they absolutely did mean it literally. Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic existing in different worlds has been the official stance since at least 2017: https://www.gameinformer.com/b/feat...he-sonic-the-hedgehog-franchise-answered.aspx
can I get the statements that make you believe this? I haven't seen anything to suggest any such thing. Thanks for the clarification. But as I said before, "dimension" being used to refer to alternate timelines has regardless been done before. In particular, I remember Dragon ball Super doing just that with its explanation of Future Trunks existing simultaneously alongside Kid Trunks. I pretty much am in full agreement.
