I'll cover them all in case someone wants the information. I don't think I'll do the mobile games because I don't have enough information for them. I don't know if I should do Sonic Mania either, what with either it all or a significant chunk being an illusion... lllusionary Days, perhaps?
I think currently no one knows what was illusion and what was real in Mania. Green Hill and Stardust Speedway look more illusionary than the rest, and I would bet they are the only fake ones, but all the levels might be real. I don't think they are all fake because since the Hooligans were the real ones according to the Encyclo-speed-ia, it would be weird for them to show up in an illusion.
The Encyclo-Speed-ia also says Orbinauts fire projectiles from claws and says the Flying Battery is why Angel Island Zone catches alight, so... The entire game might be an illusion. The Robotnik constructions are way too close to the Hidden Palace Zone...
But I asked Ian about the Hooligans being real and he confirmed this was intentional. This was not one of the mistakes that slipped through.
Didn't he just say that he wrote that and Sega never told him to change it? It could just be something that slipped under their radar, like all the other goofs.
I just don't buy it. They just turn up, shoot you down, then leave? While fighting the Heavy Magician? The most I can think of is they're 'real' as in real illusion-wise, much as Metal Sonic, Chaos, Shadow and Zavok are 'real' in Sonic Forces. Phantoms, basically. Same as the giant caterkiller the Heavy Magician summons: it's 'real' in the illusion.
Yep, that was dubious on my part. What I meant is he understood Mania's scene as the Hooligans being real, it was not a mistake or something. It might have slipped under Sonic Team's radar, if they did not pay much attention, but from Ian's perspective that interpretation was intentional.
He said that was his understanding because it’s how he took the cutscene and when he put it in the book wasn’t corrected by anybody. That doesn’t mean it’s actually canon, especially since the book just said they appeared as a cameo which would technically be true even if those were just illusions (which, according to the actual Mania developers, they were)
Idle thoughts, but if we consider the Game Gear games "canon" to the timeline, would that mean Robotnik learned he could break Chaos Emeralds via Sonic Blast and use that knowledge later for Sonic Battle? He accidentally shatters a Chaos Emerald in the former, and then goes ahead and does it deliberately in the latter. Just an amusing continuity thought.
The emerald that’s shattered in Sonic Blast is some big rainbow flashing one that shatters into the usual emeralds. I don’t think you can comfortably fit it into canon. Then again I don’t think you can fit any of the other Game Gear-only games with only six emeralds into canon either, so don’t let that stop you! I double checked the US and JP Blast manuals before posting this and it’s really weird that the plot in the US is just about an island shaped like Eggman’s head appearing. There’s nothing about the emeralds despite them being the first thing you see in the game. Was there even any reference to an island in the game itself…? I never got far enough to tell.
Actually, it shatters into five 'jewels'. So it's not five Chaos Emeralds, but just one as five 'jewels'. The Special Stage screen also says Chaos Emerald, singular, since there's only one in play. 40:43
If Sonic 1 gets retconned in Origins in order to show seven Emeralds, as if there were always seven, I think we can retcon any GG game for them to have seven Emeralds as well.
Why do we even need to retcon that? It's conceivable that some adventures wouldn't involve all the emeralds. It also makes sense for those games, as Super Sonic wasn't in them. In fact, I bet that was the very reason they kept it 6 emeralds in the 8-bit games. If players were able to get all 7, they'd expect to be able to go Super Sonic. They never implemented Super forms in those games, so they avoided misleading players by leaving the 7th emerald out. Classic games were consistent about that. 7 emeralds = Super Sonic is in the game 6 emeralds or less = no Super Sonic (Not counting Sonic the Fighers, which had 8 emeralds)
That Ian Flynn is involved with the story mode and the insistence that it’s canon has been noteworthy to me, because it’s the Mega Drive games. What can a story mode really add or change with these? I think the answer is that there’ll be hard and fast confirmation that there are only the one set of seven Chaos Emeralds. Seems odd since that’s a persistent thing these days, but weren’t the Mega Drive manuals pretty ambiguous about each island maybe having it’s own set of emeralds? I think that’s what the shot of the emeralds flying is; them going over to Westside Island after Sonic 1.
I'd be more interested in Angel Island specifically and how they explain the Emeralds there that since the translations I've seen did have that ambiguity. Seems like by story it's really just akin to expanded level transitions in animated form. Wish somewhere in the museum they'd expand on the actual emerald lore with murals or possibly integrate Sonic's band in somewhere for sonic 1 like the Story Manga.
Personally, I like to headcanon that Sonic is usually keeping a hold of the seventh Chaos Emerald in the Game Gear titles due to Sonic Blast establishing he had one in his down time, so you're just collecting the other six. He promptly stops that when Robotnik proceeds to shatter it and he and Knuckles have to go fix it. EDIT: also, Ice Cap Zone in Sonic Adventure has a town with hot air balloons. Since this is supposed to be the same one from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles: eh? Twitter Link on Image:
Don't you access adventures Ice Cap from the Mystic Ruins? I realise there's room for artistic interpretation with regards to the inconsistencies in the depiction of Angel Island between 3&K and Adventure and even between the cutscenes and gameplay within Adventure itself, but I think this can be reconciled. Sonic Origins' Angel Island model depicts Ice Cap as being towards the back of the island (from the perspective we see its Sonic 3 sprite), right on the northwest edge. My suggestion is that this northwest edge was the line along which Angel Island split from the Mystic Ruins. Ice Cap on Angel Island could be a small portion of what was previously a larger area, also called Ice Cap, when the two shared a landmass.
Kinda. The Mystic Ruins are part, well, Mystic Ruins and part Angel Island: the wall where the hole opens up? That's Angel Island, where it fell. I'm personally headcanoning it as a town that suddenly had an island drop in front of it. The big drop you go over? That's where Angel Island stops and the mainland returns. Either 1:35 or 2:20, debating on which one would be better, 2:20 is also where the town appears... Of course, this also suggests Angel Island very nearly crushed a town when it fell, which means those people were very lucky.
