Indeed, it's actually quite interesting. 17:47 for the reference to South America. (Also, video is quite loud, heads up headphone users)
Well that’s probably a big point as to why the game is non-canon, another being relative obscurity. There’s no point in trying to set hard and fast rules about it because there’ll always be exceptions.
Imagine if South America and Japan (from Shadow the Hedgehog in English) actually exist in Earth's Sonic.
Shadow the Hedgehog mentioned Japan in English? That's news to me. Was the reference only in the localization?
Some consider the Hard Mode a canonical test (some even think it's the test mentioned in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)) But it is a localisation-only thing. It's the Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Japanese script. Edit: also, hey, golf! Perhaps Shadow played some games with the President, and made Sonic Golf canon?
Are we keeping track of all direct mentions of real life Earth locations in Sonic games and lore? So far we seem to have: Christmas Island/Kiritimati, the Pacific, San Francisco, South America and Japan (localization only). Not counting the stuff from SoA's Sonic Bible drafts, did I miss any?
Yes, but those characters that you mentioned actually had a presence in Forces. They didn't solely exist in lines of dialogue.
I'll have a look after tomorrow: I know the mobile port of Sonic Unleashed says Apotos is set in Athens, Greece, so... I'll list things and note if I have reason to suspect the reference, like in this instance its status as a mobile port of a console game.
There's something hilarious about recognizing that Apotos is very obviously Greek, but not taking it far enough to just say "Mykonos".
Which didn't warrant this reaction when that same child was kidnapped at the end of Sonic Rush, where everyone but Rouge was present.
…What were you expecting? This isn’t the mid-90s where they could make something like Tails Sky Patrol for the characters. Any solo adventures were always bound to be off-screen or in some sort of comic. Most Sonic fans want to see and play as their favorite characters in a game. No kid wants to hear “Sorry, you can’t play as Tails because of his arc in a separate game you might not have even played.” Plus, there’s always space between games for other adventures to happen, so it’s not like the characters couldn’t have had individual adventures between Frontiers and Dream Team.
1) Simply set it before Sonic Frontiers on the timeline. There's nothing specifically suggesting it's after, and it would instead make some sense: the 'last time' he interfaced with an ancient device directly (Sonic Dream Team), he ended up stuck for a bit, so he made Sage to avoid that issue... and ended up stuck for a bit. 2) If there were time before release and as it's a dream, a simple rewrite of "Cream thought of them and they were brought into the dream world in their sleep" for the story. Though I do find amusement in the fact that they picked now, of all times, to make multiple characters after developing an actual plot reason for having Sonic-only games...
