The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Ooh, and I'd hate that about as much as you hate the idea of putting the Game Gear games after Sonic 3 & Knuckles, haha. I can relate to your dedication to all this via stuff like that, even if we're often on opposite sides of the discussion. I know it's super silly and it shouldn't really matter, and I know it doesn't really, but I don't guess we'd have 179 pages of this if we didn't care. xD

 

To each their own. I'd prefer SEGA properly unite the brand and bring the Classic and Adventure worlds closer, but I'm not running the brand, so nothing I can do... yet...

 

That doesn't track. Sonic Adventure features one item introduced in Sonic the Fighters (Amy's hammer). Sonic Adventure features several items, characters and concepts introduced in Sonic 1.

But that's beside the point. Sonic the Fighters has largely been ignored in the Modern Sonic series, hammer aside. The rest of it wasn't part of the mix when they codified Modern Sonic. During that Sonic Adventure through Sonic Heroes era they scraped off the barnacles and established new standards for the series.

 

Sonic Heroes features characters introduced in Chaotix. You have made clear your opinion that just because it's the source of characters or concepts, it doesn't make that source game canon. There is no evidence of Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive) in Sonic Adventure, this is an assumed fact.

Basically: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because the games don't refer to them doesn't mean they don't happen.

We are not Sonic Team. Neither of us can say what Sonic Team's intentions were. They might have considered them canon, but irrelevant and didn't put in a mention. It's not like they were completely unaware, what with the Bridge Zone / Tails' Theme Connection and aforementioned Piko Piko Hammer and Fighters Feather. It may have simply been a soft reboot akin to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where they just didn't mention anything of the games prior, but they all still having occurred. Or it might be as you've said, they're non-canon. But we can't say what the intention was because me and you weren't part of Sonic Team at the time.

Out of curiosity, do you have a source for the interview where Iizuka mentions Chaotix's redesigns? I keep seeing it brought up, but I've not seen the actual interview.

 

That's not really the point.

What I was saying was, when Sonic Team revamped the Sonic brand with Sonic Adventure and the next few games, they scraped off a lot of the barnacles. They decided which things to keep, which things to change, which things to clarify and which things to leave behind. They codified what Sonic was going to be going forward. The games they didn't make weren't a priority for them, so 99% of that material wasn't folded into the revamped Sonic. They weren't touching that old Sonic material.

But since Classic Sonic came back as an ongoing part of the brand, they're now willing to use that old material again, strictly within the confines of the Classic Sonic universe.

https://info.sonicretro.org/Takashi_Iizuka_interview_by_EGM_(February_3,_2004)

Also of relevance:



15:02

"Fang and the other characters you mentioned are previous to Sonic Adventure, and we don't really actually use these characters anymore."

Sonic Adventure was a line in the sand.

 

I'm not sure how you've gotten this information from Sonic Team, but alright.

Thank you for the interviews.

So were they brought back or...

Ah well, at this point I've given up with Iizuka after the whole "Two Worlds since Sonic Adventure" thing, so never mind.

 

I don't know why we've been going in circles for the past two years when Zephyr's already got it figured out. (Srsly I love this post and think of it often <3)

 

A thought occurs regarding the Game Gear, Arcade, etc, games: why don't we just ask the Sonic Team members of the time? We've got Twitter, we can just ask them to save the argument instead of assuming based on personal bias.

I'll go see if Yuji Naka would be willing to answer.

 

The biggest blight on this timeline (and some others I've posted since) was me forgetting that Silver's time period was 200 years in the future, and not 50 years.

 

I really appreciate someone finally calling out Sonic for lying about his age. Stuff like that is far too often overlooked.

 

So fun fact, Classic Sonic does have representation with the Sonic Mega Collection and Sonic Gems Collection games...

 

Well yeah, the entire point of both collections was re-releasing games he starred in.

Oh, you mean he got new models on the PS2 memory card screen. Yeah, that was cool too!

 

Yeah, a point of argument is that Classic Sonic's design was completely replaced with the Adventure design, including in the collections. Evidently, that's not 100% accurate.

 

So apparently the latest BumbleKast confirmed that SegaSonic takes place quite later in the timeline, after R, 3D Blast and the like.

Can’t say I’m a fan of that personally. Up to now I’ve headcanoned that it took place sometime before Sonic 1 and part of the reason why Mighty and Ray stopped popping up was simply because they only got swept up to Eggman Island with Sonic by chance and didn’t really keep in touch with him after the fact (I mean how *would* one keep in touch with Sonic?). At any rate, I guess that’s the canon now.

 

Hm, it's got to be before Sonic Mania, since that makes reference to their adventure together.

Then again, SEGA are currently ignoring the original stories and just slapping things wherever, so probably doesn't matter much at present.

 

That's extremely poor faith and you know it. SEGA isn't just slapping anything anywhere, they've largely kept to framework of the original stories while changing details here and there for the sake of presenting the backstories of the Mega Drive quadrilogy in a practical and cohesive format in Origins. It very much matters because they've done this for the sake of codifying those stories within the games themselves in order to establish a new, concrete canon, presumably to be adhered to going forward. We are well aware that you don't like the changes made to S3&K's backstory and the further confirmation that Sonic 3 & Knuckles takes place after Sonic 2 (16-bit) with nothing in between, debunking your headcanon of Triple Trouble taking place between the two, but you ought to compartmentalise these things because it's evidently affecting your mindset towards the direction the setting is beginning to commit to and it's just coming off as petty and rude towards those working on this stuff.

 

I'm not disputing the placement of the Mega Drive games, I've agreed Sonic the Hedgehog CD is an interquel. I'm disputing the Game Gear titles where now everything takes place after Sonic Origins. Can't wait to see the justification for Tails' Adventure no longer being a prequel, since Tails didn't start flying until that cutscene in Sonic Origins.

So yeah, there's my evidence they're basically throwing out the manual plots.

Actually, I dislike it for all of the games in Sonic Origins. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles is just ground zero for my ire since it's my favourite game and I hate the bastardisation of the plot, as you've mentioned.

They've now rendered Sonic as a completely uninteresting nice guy: in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, he didn't pay much mind to Tails at the start, bar 'watching him out the corner of his eye', making him aloof but not unwilling to hang with this new kid keeping up with him, but now it was buddies at first sight, cheering him in on when Tails takes flight after their first meeting.

Also, Sonic the Hedgehog CD, apparently Amy spent the entire month there waiting for Sonic, since she's there when the Little Planet approached, and the game ends with its leaving. Assuming they've not removed that tidbit of the Little Planet from canon as well.

The only one I'm neutral on is Sonic the Hedgehog, though I have to wonder why Robotnik turns his attention to Sonic, since they don't see one another until that first boss fight, versus the manual which establishes prior history and their being aware of one another.

I'm not going to pretend to like what they're doing, nor am I going to stop raising complaints. They're throwing out a lot more than you're giving credit for, and I refuse to 'just accept' completely unnecessary changes when it was so easy to fit everything into a place without these significant overhauls. A couple of small retcons, sure, but not all this crap.

I can't wait to hear how Chaotix takes place after Sonic the Fighters, even though that disrupts Espio's storyline.

 

For the record, it's at 49:59.

- For Ian related to Origins itself, but since the classic canon is being straightened out just a bit, do you know or have a theory as to when SegaSonic takes place?

- Without going into too much detail and potentially getting myself in trouble, we will say after Sonic R.

- And where does Sonic R take place?

- Sometime after 3D Blast.

- When does 3D Blast take place?

- Sometime after Spinball.

- When does Spinball take place?

- Sometime after Sonic 3 and Knuckles.

- When does Sonic 3 and Knuckles take place?

- Sometime after Sonic 2.

 

I mean, I don't really see an issue with taking place further in the timeline.

From what I understand, it's not like SegaSonic says that's the first time Sonic met Mighty and Ray. And nothing in Mania Plus/Adventures hint at them already knowing each other.

So now it's just an adventure that they had together after Mania.

The game definitely lends itself either being before Sonic 1 or after the main Classic games.

 

This Mania's manual says SegaSonic happened before Mania. Of course considering manuals mean something.

(edit because I've uploaded the wrong file)