Yeah I think in the absence of an official designation from Sonic Team or Sega, it's ultimately up to personal interpretation as to what classifies as mainline and what doesn't. I count 3D Blast, the Advance series, and the Rush series as mainline because they were conceived and designed by Sonic Team despite programming and implementation being handled by another dev but it could be different for others.
FYI we already had a thread about this: https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...nsiders-3d-blast-a-mainline-sonic-game.41410/ The concept of "mainline" is arbitrary and made up by fan wikis and websites to better categorize games. Wikipedia's metric makes sense to me, especially since 3D Blast was promoted as a flagship title, with Sega only downplaying it much later on because 3D Sonic evolved in a completely different direction. But the Retro wiki doesn't use the mainline/spin-off divide and I feel arguing about it is really just about if 3D Blast is good or not :P Like sure, 06 was bad, but it at least still used the structure of SA1/2, so at least people can go "well, it COULD have been good..." as opposed to 3D Blast being its own unique thing
My mainline definition? If I spent money on it. It's mainline. Dark Chronicles is the only commercially released non-mainline game.
I'd like to add that Yasuhara designing stages for this game and it still being a platformer (and not just a racing title like Sonic R) very much pushes this title up into mainline territory for me, and it should for more of you as well. The man's design work was a crucial foundation for S1/2/3K, and his map work on 3D Blast was still very good, even vastly underappreciated. I especially love how it all comes to life with the Saturn/PC visual upgrades and still gets the classic Sonic visual vibe down pat in those versions. By contrast, Sonic CD's maps were not designed by him, and we still throw it into the mainline title pile with Naoto being the only main dev from the other games onboard. By that standard, I can use Yasuhara's designs as a reason to boost this game's status too. Taylor's reasoning is also dead on.
I think the greatest example of how the mainline/spin-off divide is kinda silly and arbitrary is Sonic 4, which was designed as a very low-budget mobile only game until it got slapped with the "Sonic 4" name and brought to home consoles. We're supposed to see it as more of a landmark title than like, the Sonic Advance games solely because of the marketing and because it came out in a time of gaming where handheld-console porting was much easier
They say Sonic 4 is mainline when the game doesn't even actually exist and it's just the memory of a part of a collective fever dream that some people bring up from time to time smh
I think you're referring to "sonic the portable". When I look up "sonic 4" images I find some that say "sonic the portable"
Personally I think it depends on how strictly you want to adhere for what makes a mainline Sonic title. - If we were to keep it to strictly home console platforming Sonic titles starring Sonic, developed by Sonic team. Then Sonic 3D wouldn't count, but neither would titles like Sonic 4 or Sonic Mania. - On the other hand, if we do count home console platforming Sonic titles starring Sonic, but not necessarily developed directly by Sonic Team. Then Sonic 3D plus Mania and Sonic 4 would count.
I don't really like the whole "mainline" debate but, when I was a kid 3D Blast was one of the cartriges I had. It was a Sonic game like all the others to me. I guess I didn't really have the concept back then of a spin-off or whatever. Not really part of the question, but I liked 3D Blast then and now. When I was younger I was bad at it like all the other games, but I recently went back and had a serious crack at beating it and had a pretty good time. It wasn't even that hard, really. Didn't bother with the chaos hard candies, though.
