The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Alright, let me clarify:

Multiple Metal Sonic bodies are a known concept to Sonic Team. The same Metal Sonic core programming is shared between the Metal Sonic and Metal Sonic Kai platforms.

Incidentally, does anyone know if Kai means anything special? I did a google search and found Kai means "Shell" in Japanese, so was it meant as "this is a new Metal Sonic shell"?

 

Multiple Metal Sonic bodies like in the Chaotix manual makes sense and I assume would count as the same character, but in Mania and Sonic 4 it seems to be the whole package that was left behind on the Little Planet, CPU and all.

 

I understand that it basically means revision, change or reform. Basically Metal Sonic Kai is a revised, rebuilt or upgraded Metal Sonic.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/改#Japanese

 

But now the "Kai" refers to the big Metal Sonic boss from Knuckles Chaotix and Mania, not the new regular body.

 

Well, referring to the giant boss as "Metal Sonic Kai" was started due to confusion within the fan community decades ago. There have been some attempts to try and clear up the confusion, but it kinda persists still. I think we went over this in the thread some time back but I'm not sure where to find it to quote it.

 

I feel like this has been brought up before, but: was the lore originally supposed to be that there were multiple sets of Chaos Emeralds, not just 7? According to Sonic 2's manual, the Emeralds were "sealed inside the island by the gods" due to an ancient disaster, and if this was the case, then surely they would never have wound up on South Island. And in Sonic 3's manual (which I assume was written before the game was finalized), apparently the Emeralds had always been in Knuckles's possession and only disappeared, for the first time, right before the DE crash-landed. So then how the hell did Sonic get his hands on them for two games in a row? The only explanation must be that originally, there were more than 7 Emeralds and they didn't just travel from place to place like we see in Origins.

If that's the case, I wonder why the idea was changed so late into development that it even made it into the manual. I can't imagine the Lock-On split would affect that at all.

 

Just a guess, but maybe, just maybe, the plan was for the full locked on Sonic 3 to have two sets of emeralds for a total of 14, allowing them to use all 14 special stages? So in one half of the game you would collect the Westside Island emeralds, and in the other the Floating Island emeralds, ultimately gaining access to Hyper Sonic. But between the releases of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, they changed their minds and decided to have a single set that would get upgraded into Super Emeralds in the S&K half.

 

That sounds plausible, but the issue is given all the development info we have, and the original "Surfin' Sonic" intro, I'm inclined to believe that Knuckles originally wasn't going to steal Sonic's Emeralds and that he wouldn't have entered the island carrying any.

 

Well, I understand that they only came up with the idea to have 14 special stages and a more powerful form than Super Sonic after they decided to split the game, in order to add a bonus exclusive to the locked-on game. So it makes sense that the original surfing Sonic intro didn't have Sonic bringing the old emeralds. When they implemented it, there would have been only one set and Super Sonic. No Hyper Sonic or Super Emeralds/2nd set.

 

Yet, the US Bible establishes that there were seven Chaos Emeralds right off the bat, with Kintobor simply unable to locate the seventh 'control' Emerald.

It's a curious thing, but three islands seems to have the same "this is where the Chaos Emeralds lay dormant" legend associated with them.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3's manual seems to suggest that it's a surprise that there's Chaos Emeralds on Angel Island, whereas Robotnik isn't surprised each time he finds the island where the Chaos Emeralds lay dormant.

He noticed that there were some Chaos Emeralds on the island. Knuckles' story later affirms there's seven Chaos Emeralds on Angel Island:

The way I see it, the Chaos Emeralds of the surface have various legends spawned around them, since no one was really sure what happened to them 3000 years ago, but that's all they are: legends. Sonic Adventure 2 also has a Chaos Emerald aboard the ARK around 50 years ago, meaning at least one was still active.

Honestly, if their were meant to be multiple sets, this is one of the revcons I like, limiting the Chaos Emeralds down to seven in total.

 

The US Bible is not the best source for answering this question, since it also says that most of the world's evil was packed into the Emeralds and that's what gives them their power, and the term "Chaos Emeralds" was invented by Kintobor. And it also makes no mention of South Island: both it and the manual imply Sonic 1 takes place around the planet, not just one island, so in that regard it makes more sense why they would say there are "only" six/seven.

While it is true that they're all legends and may or may not be true, that doesn't change the fact that the Emeralds that Knuckles knows have never been disturbed for the entire time he's been guarding them:

If the Emeralds on AI have been undisturbed until the events just prior to Sonic 3, then how did Sonic ever manage to get ahold of them? There simply isn't any explanation for this if there were always meant to be only seven in the world.

Where do you get this? It's been a while since I played SA2 or looked at its various supplementary plot documents, but I don't recall anything about an Emerald making its way onto the ARK 50 years ago. It says the Emeralds were researched, but that doesn't necessarily mean they must've found their way to the ARK.

I kinda don't like it, because it opens up plotholes that could easily be filled if there were multiple sets. The way Emeralds behave is inconsistent across all games because of this.

 

What I mean by this is that they established the seventh Chaos Emerald before there's seven, which makes me wonder if they saw something internally establishing that there'd only be seven.

Well, since Iizuka has established the Super Emeralds as separate entities (being in an alternate dimension at present), they could be the Chaos Emeralds of Angel Island.

It was in some supplementary Japan-only documents, but Sonic Battle backs it up:

He had at least one, which explains how the Eclipse Cannon's input slots fit them perfectly...

But then that raises the question of why they only ever attempt to collect seven Chaos Emeralds: what happens if Sonic pulls a Super Transformation with...
6 on South Island, 7 on Westside Island, 7 on Angel Island, 7 on Flicky Island, 16 in Mt. Mobius...
43 Chaos Emeralds.

 

Honestly I just see this as another point against being overly reverent towards the manual stories. No matter how you slice it, S3&K's manual story makes no sense with either option. If there are emeralds per island, then it raises the question of how Sonic got his hands on them and how they disappeared in the first place. If not, then the story breaks, but only in the manual. Meanwhile, Adventure, Unleashed and so forth give us altars and Gaia temples and such, showing that civilisations fervently coveted these gems. I think that history becomes diminish if they're dime-a-dozen.

 

The manual stories are still better than the crap we got in Sonic Origins. I have also always maintained that I don't mind necessary revcons, and I view the change to seven Chaos Emeralds only, if it is a change depending on if we get an internal document confirming their were only meant to be seven from the start as the US story has it, as necessary since it streamlines things properly. Still not hearing an answer to what Sonic Origins provides that justifies the new stories.

Actually, might be a good idea to ask Yuji Naka/anyone else working at Sonic Team at that time if each island was supposed to have their own, or if there's a different explanation behind it.

 

I really wish this topic was about us laying out for certain what's canon, rather than spending most of it trying to reverse engineer non-canon information / make a case that it's better the old way. I feel like the latter has been most of the convo.

 

Unfortunately, the actual issue is that we can't be certain what's canon at all.

Iizuka seems to have a very indifferent relationship with Sonic canon, as can be evidenced by his haphazard answers to any questions of continuity, the whole Two Worlds things, the Super Emeralds are in an alternate dimension, etc. Even when they're "focusing on it", we're getting answers like "don't think about it too hard" instead of actual answers.

We now can not use the manuals as canon. Any of them. Tails' Adventures looks to have been shoved into the Game Gear pile and reset to go after Sonic Origins, rendering its Japanese manual non-canon. If we look to use the US manuals instead, then the island of that game isn't called Cocoa Island, but Tails Island, and Sonic has been on Mobius on and off. On the plus side, apparently they're making stuff up as we speak.

We can't even be sure what games are where, other than obvious the mainline titles and even then, they're happy to make up canon that interferes with the mainline titles: see Two Worlds and the issues that causes with Sonic Adventure and such. We can consider and rationalise certain placements, but thanks to the current up in the air status of canon, we can't definitively say.

And being completely blunt, the fanbase doesn't help with its own indifference towards the canon. It's quite clear it's in a "anything SEGA says, goes" mentality for the majority, where the ones pointing out issues are the ones in the wrong, no matter what. "Two Worlds can't work with Sonic Adventure!" "Yeah, but SEGA says two worlds, and it's their canon, so...", "The four prequel comics contradict Sonic Forces, how can they be canon?" "SEGA says they are, and it's their canon, so...", "Sonic Origins' cutscenes contradict in-game details" "SEGA says it's canon, and it's their canon, so..." so it's not like any of this will be changing any time soon. Probably going to get a lot of people angrily yelling at me for that, but hey, what's new?

 

To put it simple but not very short:
In the beginning there was meant to be only South Island and its Emerald set, but, when Sonic 2 failed the time travel story, that island became Westside Island and the multiple sets started. Later, they more or less could do what they wanted since the beginning, but previous islands were not usable for this purpose, and we got Knuckles as the guardian of Angel Island instead of Sonic as the guardian of South Island, with yet another set again. Despite all of this, they wanted a single set since the beginning, so, when Sonic Adventure kicked in, they established explicitly that there would only be a set of seven plus the master and nothing more, not even time stones which at least were a clearly separated set with a different role.

How does it reflect in the canon?
Well, as they've said, by carrying over emeralds from one island to the next: in the first game, South Island created a dimensional distortion that allowed the emeralds to hide from the world, but they never said a word about gods and wiped out civilizations in its manual, so, once released, they going back to the other island is rather acceptable, though no explanation about the missed sibling there is a bit of a cheat, but it was supposed to be sealed in the hidden palace of yore, and not even that zone made the cut. Sonic 3 starts talking about the emerald pillar, which we assume is the master, so it's yet again another single emerald addition for the next game, with Sonic bringing in the rest. We also assume (headcanon, of course) westside island could have been part of the echidna empire so they shared the legend despite only angel island being subject to what happened back then.

Plotholes everywhere? Maybe, but I'm more worried about why they left their pocket dimension so random people (not adventurers or researchers) could find them lying on the ground.

Now you're doing to others what they do to you. If they want to agree with Sega even if that's shit, because canon certainly belongs to the company, you should respect them like they should respect your position too. You're also playing the victim here a bit, which won't help your case at all. Sonic Team would do the same thing or a very similar one even if the whole fanbase complained, anyways.

 

That's patently untrue. Two worlds was so controversial that the fanbase reaction to it has evidently been driving factor in the current upheaval we're seeing, with it being the very first issue addressed once TailsTube rolled around. And that TailsTube exists, that Origins exists in the form it does, making an effort to tie the Mega Drive quadrilogy together, shows that canon is indeed being given some attention right now, even if not in the way you or a portion of people want it to be.

And let's just think about what we're being told to not think about too hard. The Chaotix not knowing Eggman in Heroes despite their eponymous game now being defined in canon as having happened in the past and the Chaotix we see in Heroes being the same characters as we saw in that game. Quantities of Emeralds being off in Spinball and Fighters. These things quite frankly extraneous. Unimportant. They are either contradictions that have arisen due to the long span of this franchise and the evolving intentions of what is and isn't canon at different points in the series' history or inexplicable oddities that were wrong even at the time they released. In either case, they cannot be reconciled without bending over backwards and resorting to copious amounts of fanwank and getting bogged down in trying to justify things that don't need to be justified when we could just accept "yeah, this presents a contradiction, but I recognise the context in which this occurred and that, in order to legitimise this game within the canon, changes need to be made and things can't have played out down to every piece of minutia presented in any given game". It's the aversion of trying to have one's cake and eat it too, and I fail to see how this is a bad practice.

Still haven't heard how Origins deciding not to fully adapt overhyped flavour text robs these games or the canon of any real value beyond the allowance of CinemaSins styled "gotchas".

 

I've tried, then I get accused of crap by other anyway as you've seen, so hey, may as well join the indifference party. I'm also simply pointing out all the continuity issues where I get shot down as "SEGA's choice in the matter".

That was an example of one of the several issues I've brought up that got shot down with that reasoning. Yes, it got changed later, but doesn't mean it wasn't shot down by people before as being outside our control.

Incidentally, I like how now, people are saying we can change Sonic Team's direction by raising out voices enough. Shame it won't happen with the continuity crap, but hey,

Ah yes, characters forgetting a person who attacked and imprisoned them, happens every day, I can see why we shouldn't think about it too hard.

It's almost like people are saying they need some sort of... comic, or something, to relay this information to us. I mean, people mean it in the context of telling us the new stories (I can't wait to see how they tell these stories in comic-format with no speech after the cast's lobotomies), but it's not like the comic can't cover the plotholes for us.

Out of respect for the mods, who I'm sure are getting tired of the constant fight, I'm going to refrain from this one for the time being. Wait a few months and I'll respond: rest assured, I won't forget this.