The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

"Sonic" said he was 15 years old in this interview with IGN Japan last year: https://jp.ign.com/sonicpocketadventure/55200/interview/

The Vtuber Sonic made a similar comment in a 30th anniversary stream.

 

I didn’t mean they got rid of the ages completely, just that they didn’t put them in profiles very often after 2010ish. Either way it might just have been my imagination.

 

Yeah, as far as I recall, the Sonic Colours manual didn’t list any ages for the characters.

 

Got a #knowingsmile from Ian Flynn for it, so something's going on....

 

Exciting times we're living in.

It won't stop people from citing invalid sources if they end up without ages at all for the foreseeable future, but nature is healing.

 

I might go through the Japanese manuals and see when they actually cite the ages. I know Sonic Heroes didn't, while the English manuals did, while I recall Chaotix had ages, so I kinda want to see what says what.

 

Looking through some manuals, it doesn't seem like English manuals ever had a consistent trend of detailing character ages in the manual. In fact, Sonic Heroes is the only one I've found that does it out of the ones I've looked at (Jam, Adventure, Adventure 2 Battle, Advance, Heroes, Battle, Shadow, 06, Rivals, Colours and Generations), which makes it all the more strange that the JP manual apparently doesn't do that.

 

Indeed. I've gone through them all to have a check, double checked with the scans where I could in case the age was off to the side in some "special fact" thing Windii may have missed, just to be safe (also because I had an existential break and had to distract myself, sorry if I'm erratic the next couple of days), and found the following of them:

Spoiler

Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
No ages given

Sonic the Hedgehog (Master System)
No ages given

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Master System)
No ages given

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Tails: 8

Sonic the Hedgehog CD
Amy Rose: 8

Sonic Chaos
No ages given

Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball
No ages given

Sonic the Hedgehog 3
No ages given

Sonic Drift
No ages given

Sonic & Knuckles
No ages given

Sonic Triple Trouble
No ages given

Sonic Drift 2
No ages given

Chaotix
Espio the Chameleon: 17
Mighty the Armadillo: 16
Vector the Crocodile: 16
Charmy Bee: No age given
Knuckles the Echidna: No age given

Tails' Skypatrol
No ages given

Tails' Adventure
No ages given

Sonic Labyrinth
No ages given

Sonic 3D: Flickies Island
No ages given

Sonic Blast
No ages given

Sonic R
No ages given

Sonic Adventure
No ages given

Sonic Pocket Adventure
No anything given

Sonic Shuffle
No ages given

Sonic Adventure 2
No ages given

Sonic Advance
No ages given

Sonic Advance 2
No ages given

Sonic Pinball Party
No Scans on the Wiki

Sonic Battle
No ages given

Sonic Heroes
No ages given

Sonic Advance 3
No ages given

Sonic Rush
No ages given

Shadow the Hedgehog
No ages given

Sonic Riders
No ages given

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
Elise: 17

Sonic Rivals
No Japanese Manuals: Never Released in Japan

Sonic and the Secret Rings
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Rivals 2
No Japanese Manuals: Never Released in Japan

Sonic Rush Adventure
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
No ages given

Sonic Unleashed
No ages given

Sonic and the Black Knight
No Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Free Riders
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Colours
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Generations
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II
No JP Manual Scans on Wiki

Sonic Lost World
No JP Console Manual Scans on Wiki
No ages given in 3DS Manual

Sonic Mania
No ages given

Sonic Forces
No ages given

Team Sonic Racing
No ages given

tl;dr, the only ages in the Japanese manuals I could see were:

Classic Era
Miles "Tails" Prower: 8 years old
Amy Rose: 8 years old
Espio the Chameleon: 17 years old
Mighty the Armadillo: 16 years old
Vector the Crocodile: 16 years old

Modern Era
Princess Elise: 17 years old

Of course, I might have missed something still, there might be something in the missing Japanese manuals, in-game details and concept artwork might provide them, like Sonic the Hedgehog CD's concept of Robotnik noting he was born 1931, so 60+, and the Sonic Jam profiles, but ages seem to have been an external detail otherwise.

Also, the wiki is missing a lot of manuals...

Also also, might be a good idea to see if anyone can go through and translate the Japanese manuals entirely: they tend to have Zone details that we can't read since, y'know, can't read Japanese, which means we might be missing cool details.

 

BlackHole, wasn't it Sonic Jam that had profiles and ages back in the classic Era. That might not be a manual per se, but it was Sonic Team related and in game.

 

Not big news but Daniel Barnes (writer of Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island) is also saying "Classic Sonic is the distant past" https://xcancel.com/Danny8bit/status/1576967761259270144

 

Already covered, bud.

I was only covering the manuals, really.

 

He claims such move makes more sense that way (to whoever wants to advocate that mindset), to keep the ages stuff ambiguous.
I sincerely hope that such move has more reason than that alone (since Flynn hinted at it being related to Frontiers or so)...

 

He's done no such thing. People need to stop making these huge leaps without any real basis. This isn't a matter of whether or not #KnowingSmile irks you, but it's important to understand that Ian drops the line in a variety of contexts in relation to a variety of IPs. Of course, that's going to be Sonic a lot right now because that's probably the single biggest IP he's work on and it's putting out a lot of content right now with a major product release next month. Not everything is related to Frontiers and it's frankly baffling to see people assume that it is. Ian even says in this tweet that #KnowingSmile is just that - he's signifying that he knows about something. It doesn't mean he's responsible for these things (not that people here are claiming this but it's a claim I've seen made), nor that everything is immediately relevant. There are plenty of reasons why Ian wouldn't be able to divulge loads of information on this stuff. The removal of ages likely corresponds to the general tightening of the canon that we've seen started in TailsTube and Origins. TailsTube #3 aside, these probably exist for the sake of bringing the audience and partners up to speed on what the status quo of the series is, what's on the table and what's been retired so things can go forward with a more informed perspective on the setting.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...I completely agree with Barnes' assessment. Shuffling the classic era to the distant past allows for a soft divide for those who want it without overly convoluted explanations to facilitate that while also leaving the door open to revisit classic concepts in the modern setting. The fact that they have committed to making it all one timeline while designating classic as the distant past strongly indicates to me that there won't be a leaking of modern concepts into the classic setting, for those worried about that.

 

I think taking away the ages is just a way not to limit themselves and to get around the whole issue where more than a year passes yet they don’t age.

Speak for yourself :p
I’m not going to translate the entire things since it’s too much work and the only interesting stuff IMO seems to have been translated accurately already (though most of Windii’s translations are very dry/direct for my tastes), but if there are any specific parts of a specific manual you want to know about just let me know.

 

It's the Zone pages I'm mostly curious about. Pages like these:

Spoiler

Where I'm not sure if there's extra little lore details we're missing...

Would you be alright translating them?

 

Kinda a general question, what can the Time Stones do exactly? What sets them apart from the Chaos Emeralds? Like Shadow can use the emeralds to freeze time and with two Hedgehogs using Chaos Control at once you can create portals in time. Give me some Time Stones facts please.

 

Obviously we don't have a lot to go off but they seem to be able to alter the course of time, at least on Little Planet. After Eggman had created a bad future with his abuse of technology, Sonic was able to grab the Time Stones to turn that into a good future without having to go back in time to destroy the robot generators. Of course, Archie Sonic had Silver use them for time travel at will and that may be an ability they possess, but given that Archie is a defunct AU, we won't know that either way until it's confirmed in official texts.

 

Despite three games focusing on the Little Planet, the Time Stones only feature in one of these three: Sonic the Hedgehog CD.

The Time Stones have made a return recently, however: Sonic Speed Simulator. In this Roblox server that's officially licenced by SEGA, so they have some say on things, Robotnik has used the Time Stones in Green Hill Zone to merge two different eras together: Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic.

Assuming Sonic Speed Simulator is supplying canonical information, even if the server itself is non-canon since that's just how these things go, then the Time Stones do affect the world outside the Little Planet.

They do appear to have a greater control over Time compared to the Chaos Emeralds, merging eras and simply overwriting a timeline entirely based on the user, if Sonic the Hedgehog CD is any indication with the Good Futures only after you claim them without needing to do anything more to ensure them. This is in comparison to the Chaos Emeralds, that let you warp timespace, and time travel when two Chaos Controls occur next to one another or a convenient Time God is nearby, but I've never seen them overwrite a timeline entirely.

EDIT: I should note the Time Stones have shattered in Sonic Speed Simulator, but I'm trying to find if they shattered 'naturally' or from Robotnik's antics. He has a small habit of breaking mystical gems.

 

I'm not counting on anything from Speed Simulator being very canonically accurate, or having any inside knowledge. I don't think they're as tightly regulated as basically anybody else using the franchise.

One reason is they seem to use Metal Sonic "Mach" 3.0 as if he's an updated version of Metal Sonic created by Eggman when he's an Eggman Nega creation.

 

I’m pretty sure the Roblox game is just a fan game that Sega decided to license and not something developed under their supervision, so I wouldn’t take anything in it as canon.

That’s a lot of work to translate all of them. The pages you posted are just gameplay information (how to play the special stage, green hill’s obstacles, etc), so if the other similar sections of the manuals are like that then there would be no new info anyway. I’ll skim through the manuals on the wiki when I get a chance to see if there’s anything interesting and translate it there is.