I don't know if I'm just misunderstanding what you're saying or not, but it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine people when say '06 "excised itself from canon". 06 had to happen in order for it to be wiped from history. You get the entire Sonic timeline up to Elise blowing out Solaris' flame, and then time is reset so everything happens again but instead the main events of '06 you just get the ending cutscene instead. '06 is too important a game to just disregard, especially when it introduced Silver. But the events that happened are just lampshaded as being mysterious. + - Plus there's also Rivals 2 wherein Silver's future is one again is basically the same as 06 with a different fire monster.
Honestly I feel like Sonic 06 has never been meaningfully referenced in the games after Generations. Silver and Blaze just appear with no explanation. But that is also part of the series' general approach to move away from an expanded universe (until Frontiers). I do find it interesting that Frontiers never mentions 06 (I don't think). 06 gets memed a lot by the social media team but only as self deprecating humour. I think Generations was honestly brave if baffling in celebrating 06. Don't think Sonic would do that now despite the constant ironic references to 06 in social media.
I think it's fine and reasonable to reference 06, but the way it's suggested to be some hazy lingering memory for everyone has some odd implications, especially given that thisn't actually alluded to by anyone in-universe. I mean one of the key figures of that same social media team gave the game a spot in the symphony concert that she spearheaded the organisation of. I think it's difficult to reference 06 in the current climate of the series right now due to humans more or less being off-limits. Even when Spagonia made a surprise appearance in the latest issue of IDW, not a single (distinguishable) human was in sight and their presence was only implied with Sonic referencing Josef's restaurant. As such, revisiting Soleanna just doesn't seem to be on the cards right now for reasons other than there being no love for 06.
Hazy, lingering memories or outright clarity? I'm not being facetious, but how do we explain this one? Generations clearly put a higher priority on gameplay and setting over the story and continuity (and rightly so for what it was aiming to do). There's also this: And I think there may have been some lines in TSR too? I can't remember. Either way, it's a nonsensical mess of contradictions and plot holes that really shouldn't exist, but unfortunately they're crucial to at least two major characters and some major events. I think the right approach is to just vaguely reference it and go no deeper, because any sort of further explanation is only ever going to make it worse. Even Elise was implied to have some lingering consciousness of the events at the very end of 06.
Because Time is currently immensely screwed up in that instance, she remembers the events while in the White Space. Team Sonic Racing later shows Silver, who similarly remembers Crisis City in the White Space, has no clue about the events of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) when Sonic makes reference to it.
Nobody “remembers” 06. The Colors DS and TSR references are just winks and nods to the audience, and the Generations Blaze dialogue seems more like an oversight than anything else.
You don't have to look to other games. Both Sonic and Elise have that "lingering memory" moment in the ending scene of 06 when we see Sonic arrive to Soleanna again during the festival. It's a common trope and helps as a wink to the audience.
Probably because the characters don't remember 06, so it's kinda hard to insert references of it. You can't have Sonic in Frontiers saying "oh this beach reminds me of Wave Ocean" if he's never been there. Even if you assume he has (after the end of 06 or in other unseen occasion), people would go insane asking "SO HE REMEMBERS 06???"
Okay yeah that’s on me, memory’s hazy. Still, I do find it odd that, in something like the comics, SEGA asks for overt references to past games to be minimised (I realise that seems very strange given what we’ve seen in the comics), yet has no problem referencing probably the most convoluted plot in the entire franchise, tied to the nadir of the series. Just seems like a lot of baggage that I would normally expect them to be all to happy to avoid.
I think it's clear SEGA were referencing Sonic 06 until Generations but I'm pretty sure they never have done since in the games. Unless they did in TSR? Generations was more than ten years ago.
Sure, and Sonic could reference being there because he actually went there at the end of 06. But that Soleanna Hotel in Unleashed is just a silly thing, it has nothing to do with the actual Soleanna. I think there's a newspaper in Unleashed referencing Soleanna. There's a line in TSR (Japanese version) where Sonic talks to Silver in a way it references their battle in 06 but Silver doesn't remember.
It's the newspapers in Empire City, they've got Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)'s boxart compressed onto it. Here's the tweet.
I think you're probably joking by using that scene but looking at it I don't think that is a very good explanation of Blaze's dimension either. It's already kind of weakly explained in The Flash (just good enough to where you don't really question it through the story but why is Andrés Muschietti's Christina Hodson's Tim Burton's Michael Keaton's Sam Hamm's Bruce Wayne an expert on time when he's still using retro-futuristic gadgets against modern-computer-scifi devices) but the way Sonic and Blaze's dimensions were merging, it can't be the future because both times Blaze's dimension appears, it's explained more like jumping from a different piece of spaghetti (or fusing them together in Rush's case), while Silver's time travel is explained like the basic, linear Back to the Future timelines, being able to hop back and forth on the same spaghetti. In each scenario (except the one that somehow explains Blaze managing to go through time in Sonic's dimension from a different dimension) the spaghetti remains rigid and uncooked.
Yeah, it was a joke, don't worry. The explanation in The Flash (which, incidentally, no one watch), is that when someone changes the past, everything before that point also changes, as well as the future. Spoiler: The Flash Movie Spoilers Ben Afflick Batman got replaced with Michael Keaton Batman, Aquaman and Wonder Woman don't exist, Superman was killed as a baby, Supergirl survives to the present, etcetc. So, by that logic, Blaze's world could be an alternate spaghetti strand from some unknown timeline jump that changed everything before and since, including how the resident Emeralds came to be. And I'm also sure Solaris wants lotsa spaghetti!
Team Sonic Racing, The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Forces prequel comic give explanations for why they appear in those later games.
So apparently, there's something going on with Shadow and his reasons for protecting the planet, regarding his memories of Maria. It's not just a continuity issue, but something legitimate going on.
