So I heard the Super Emeralds were a gimmick...

They appeared in Sonic 3&K, and with the definition of canon being along the lines of "being proven to be part of a field of study in a subject"... well, in all honesty that's an awful definition, but it basically says that if it's in an official product, it's official, and therefore canon, no matter how many fanboys/girls say otherwise.

This fast reply sucks, I have no idea if I've mispelled anything. =/

 

Yeah, pretty much the accepted definition of canon is anything that happens within the realm of a fictional universe that was created or endorsed by the origonal creator(s) of that universe, more or less.

So if it was created or licenced by Sega, you can pretty much call it canon, but if it was a fangame, fan fiction or something Sega didn't create or endorse then it's non-canon.

But I think this goes back to the issue of continuity in Sonic games; there isn't any. I personally don't think it's worth worrying what is and is not canon in the Sonic universe because you'll never get things to make perfect sense, ever.

 

Continuity and being canon have a fuzzy similarity line at best. For example, Evangelion. The show itself is canon, but since the story was integrated into the Super Robot Taisen Alpha series, that could also be considered canon Evangelion material. It doesn't make Gundams canon in the Eva universe, but it does make their interaction with them canon.

Sort of a paradox, I guess. Or not. I dunno.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much what I ment when I brought continuity up. Just because something's canon it doesn't mean it nessasarily links between two games (or episodes or movies or books etc.) in a franchise, it just means that idea was endorsed officaly by the creators or owners of said franchise.

In my opinion, anyway.

There have been many examples of a franchise contridicting itself for example, but you would have to consider both versions of events canon. Usually these things are minor, but like I've said before, Sonic is hardly well-known for the awesome continuity in it's relatively non-exsistant story ark.

 

Yasuhara told me. (No lie)

Thread over.

 

What.

 

Sorry I didnt bring a tape recorder with me

 

Senn was with you, wasn't he? Can you have him confirm, somehow?

 

Super emeralds being a gimmick? At least the super emeralds were remembered. I believe quite a bit of people may have forgotten about that yellow 8th emerald. :P

 

Nope, which is why I regret not recording anything.

Here's how I think he said off the top of my head:

"The way I remember it, it became apparent that simply getting the Chaos emeralds would be too easy of a task, so we decided to expand the concept of how the Master emerald works by creating the Super emeralds, whereby you will lose your chaos emeralds in order to get access to them, so there would be a bigger challenge. As a reward, the hyper forms were born.

Me: So they were really supposed to be canon to the game storyline?

Well, yes and no. They were supposed to add to the Sonic 3 story, but from a gameplay aspect, we just wanted to add some more challenge to the game."

I don't think I'm even supposed to be telling you guys this shit but I'm just too sick and tired of hearing fanboys bitch about this shit, so I won't go on from here.

 

Well, from an observational perspective, it doesn't surprise me that they were intended as a gimmick - it was a nice way to make use of both game's sets of special stages, and it gave you a nice bonus for beating them all together - Hyper (and Super Tails) forms. With little improvements, and a bit of eye candy, how could it NOT be a gimmick? :P

But I digress. The whole concept of "locking on" was a gimmick. But, had they allowed you to connect S3 and S&K, and only had the standard Chaos Emeralds, it'd cause you the inconvenience of having to unlock the two games to play the special stages in S3 or S&K, respectively. And, as a result, you got the "true" ending for collecting them. It was certainly a gimmick, but they managed to make it work, which is more props to them.

Too bad it spawned a bunch of shitty fanfictions, though.

 

Fanfictions are the downfall of society D:

I always thought the Super Emeralds were a gimmick. A way to make Sonic 3 and Knuckles more challenging due to the extra length, and to add more super and hyper forms (Nothing wrong with that). But the game and plot are canon. Why? Knuckles was introduced in it, and if the game wasn't canon, Knuckles wouldn't exist.

 

Aside from continuity being non-existant in Sonic games, it's clear it was a gimmick. Pretty much everything is. The Chaos emeralds themselves were a gimmick. In Sonic 2, the prize of Super Sonic was an easter egg if anything. To younger gamers, which the game was targetted to, getting the emeralds was no easy task, so as always it's just an added challenge.

The Complete Sonic 3 is a long game, and keeping emeralds accessable via the special rings but not making them too common would have made 7 emeralds simply too easy to get. So they just added the Super Emeralds as filler, as Saz quoted above. It just adds to the challenge of the game. It fits in especially well once they decided to split the game. You know many people got all the emeralds in Sonic 3, and those saves would carry over to S3K on the first lockon, so they needed another surprise.

As for the super emeralds not showing up anymore, that's really a non-issue. Every Sonic game has its own unique emerald count, different shapes and different colors. The sizes of the emeralds change in the game itself due to the programmers simply changing the size willy nilly to fit the crappy camera. Sometimes the emeralds fit in Sonic's hands, the very next scene we see Sonic standing next to an emerald and they're practically the same size.

Heck, in Sonic R, the models and even colors changed once you obtained them.

So a summary, that can really apply to ANY continuity question in a Sonic game: Who the fuck cares? It's Sonic.

 

How true. I mean if Sonic team wanted continuity, they might realize that Knuckles can't be Sonic's bitch because he has a job to do. Guard the Master Emerald, not follow Sonic around. But wait, there is Knuckles waiting for Sonic by the pier in Soleanna.

Sonic : "Knuckles, shouldn't you be guarding the Master Emerald?"
Knuckles :" The what you say?"

 

Hahaha, Imagine that. Sonic and Knuckles the gay adventures. That must be why he's never been interested in Amy :P

 

...

No.

 

I'm joking...