The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

I actually asked HariHari, author of Japanese fan site Act Select about this back in 2005. Here is his reply:

Although not written about the difference in Chaos emeralds...
In Sonic 1， it is called "Precious stone" and it is called "Mysterious stone" in Sonic 2.
Similarly in Sonic 3， it is called "Power stone".

Probably， they are the same basically but have the history which is different from the legend which is different in each place.
Possibly， an element and purity may be different. ^^;

So yup, for the Japanese fans for the longest time it wasn't clear if there were different sets of emeralds, although I belive Iizukia cleared it up at a con.

 

Iizuka certainly alluded to some change between the "Classic series" and "Sonic Adventure" when he answered your Super Emerald question. It might be useful if someone with a good ear for Japanese could provide a literal translation.

The current stance is definitely that there is only one set of Chaos Emeralds, but it's much more interesting to know what the stance was during the Mega Drive era. I think someone would have to ask Iizuka about the Floating Island's 7 Chaos Emeralds that Knuckles was guarding in Sonic 3's backstory to get a proper answer.

 

There was an earlier con, where he answered (another question of mine!) and said there is only 7 Emeralds (and he made a joke: that's why Sonic can't go Super in Sonic 1 because it's missing one).

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the video for that one has been taking down.

 

You might not notice on casual play...or at all since we keep using the Earth models and give absolutely no indication whatsoever of it being separate, and regularly indicate it's still one world.

My translator friend is of the thought the use of "real Human World" means it's set on a world similar to Earth but not the real Earth, akin to Pokémon's use of different alphabetical characters despite being set on a not-quite Earth.

 

It's obvious what he meant, otherwise he wouldn't have mentioned humans at all.

No amount of arguing or nitpicking is going to change the fact that this is the official setting Sonic Team is working with, and has been for at least 10 years now.

 

I'm simply relaying what my translator friend thinks. The use of "real" is what makes them think that, as opposed to the "fake" human world.

 

We know that Sonic Forces isn't set in a fake human world either, so that's moot. It's set in a world of cartoon animals.

 

So, Sonic Loreposting on Twitter did a translation of a 2011 Russian interview with Izuka and Naka which is where the responses we've been talking about seem to have come from. You can check out his full thread here, but I'll go ahead and post the relevant translations for reference. We may want to consider adding the PDF of the magazine he pulls this interview from on the wiki in some fashion.

Naka-San:




Izuka:


This seemingly debunks my theory about Naka's position changing during Sonic X, but it also raises a question: If Naka held this position in 2011, why does Ian Flynn believe the Two Worlds concept was something Izuka inherited from Naka? There's such a tangled mess here that it would make sense that some sort of miscommunication happened down the line somewhere.

(Btw, you guys really should check out Sonic Loreposting on Twitter, he puts out some really interesting content.)

 

It's set on an island, if Green Hill is accurate. South Island, specifically, same place as Sonic the Hedgehog (MD). We really don't get much else to place it, but the map isn't exactly depicting a full planet.

From what I've been told, the word "world" is used very loosely in Japanese media. Which makes sense when you compare the instances of 'world' in series and you get time periods involved. Super Mario Bros. also uses world to indicate the level/land you're in (World 1-1), fairly certain he's not travelling between planets or dimensions until Super Mario Galaxy.

So most likely, it's as I said, a trip up in communication between Naka and Iizuka, which has in turn be relayed down to Flynn (and possibly Sonic the Hedgehog 4's dev team).

With the presence of Earth as the planet in literally everything but aforementioned Sonic the Hedgehog 4, I'm opting to maintain it's simply Earth.

Also, a continuity thought:

Where the hell is Amy Rose living, then? Didn't she live in apartments in Station Square and then Central City? Aren't those the Human World?

 

The game's level select/map screen is a globe. Eggman has conquered 99% of the world. Sonic Forces' depiction of Green Hill is inconsistent with Sonic 1's South Island setting.

She was living in Station Square at the time of Sonic Adventure. It's unknown where she lives now. In Sonic X she lived in Station Square temporarily, before returning to her own world.

 

Can you do a full rotation of the planet to get back to the other side?

That total only applies to said island, unless we're assuming Sonic and co. abandoned the rest of the planet, whatever it is, to Robotnik in favour of focusing on this particular landmass.

Doesn't Sonic make comments about the changes, indicating he's familiar with the area and thus the same one as from the prior games of Sonic the Hedgehog (MD), Sonic Adventure 2 (maybe, do we count that unlockable level as canon?) and Sonic Generations?

Only the localisation, I think I've annoyed my translator friend enough lately.

Actually, these comments seem to imply the change was recent during the first level. I'm still thinking the Sandy Green Hill is all a Phantom Ruby illusion, changing the water to sand, but who knows.

 

The game's story is that Eggman has conquered 99% of the world. Green Hill is depicted as part of a large continent, rather than an island. This is inconsistent with Sonic 1.

 

It is fairly large on the world map, but we don't have a scale of reference, since the Death Egg is not that large in the game.

Actually, it's just occurred to me: Egg Gate has a shot of the planet. The problem is a lot of it's obscured by foreground events and the wider shot I've found online tends to be very artifact heavy. Textures-Resource also lacks anything from Sonic Forces, so I can't grab it from there.

Spoiler

I really need to learn how to rip textures. I've got Sonic Unleashed, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I and II, and Sonic Forces all having something I can't access due to now knowing how to get them.

 

SA2 map hardly looks like Earth, specially considering the same landmass repeats three times in that globe. Btw, even if they call it "Earth", it doesn't need to be real life Earth, so they can use that name with any map and it would be ok.

Now, the important thing is there's no consistent map for any world in Sonic games, whether it is a single world or a collection of them. But that's no news, they just put up some world together to fill the gap, the issue being they've done that so many times in modern games the lack of consistency is evident and has no excuse. Still, this is a usual thing to happen: first final fantasy games had a somewhat consistent map, where the world map could considered slightly evolved through ages, but later started making maps that suited the needs of the game they wanted to make instead of sticking to previous maps (and all those worlds were called Earth, btw). Phantasy Star Online has Ragol looking like pseudo-Earth too, but Episode 3 has a small map that doesn't fit in what we see through the window of Hunter's Guild in Episode 1.

Back to Sonic, I'd say there's a valid chance for two or more worlds and dimensions to work beyond the sloppy explanations Iizuka gives us. Let's put together some science-fiction concepts here:

1) About dimensions and multiverses, the same world or universe could exist twice in the same space, each "copy" occupying that space on a different dimension. Sort of what you'd say of the astral plane and stuff like that, but in sci-fi terms.

2) Since they're different instances of the same template, they can actually share the same landmass distribution, as it's quite a general trait and not as specific as Station Square or Spring Yard Zone.

3) In this multi-facet world, classic Sonic's world and Blaze's world could be additional layers that haven't been connected to the two main ones of the modern canon, so breaking those boundaries is more surprising and needs more specific technology to be replicated.

4) Lack of synchronization between similar timelines from similar universes is weird but still acceptable enough, and the same goes for landmass distribution not being always the same in all known iterations.

5) We're not entirely sure about how Giant Rings work, but we've seen them transported inside something that moves like Flying Battery, or well, the whole Angel Island. May be they could be used as power sources for dimensional hopping, or big things can be transported fi using many Giant Rings at once. Either way, what I'm saying is you don't need titanic rings to transport the biggest things, just figure out a way for the standard ones to affect something more than human-sized travellers.

6) Occupying the same space in two different dimensions also allows for interdimensional communications without altering their range, they instead alter the frequencies to cross between both. Open giant rings could be a way to make those transmissions, but it could be even easier make that jump.

With that all in mind, canon could keep changing even if it doesn't make sense and the answer would be we're dealing with new iterations of the same worlds which are almost identical to the previous ones but don't follow them accurately, the official canon being more like "We're working with universe number 489 this time" than "Chaos energy cast a wave through the whole timeline which caused stuff to change randomly". Even if you mix both approaches, you have an excuse to have classic Sonic on a far dimension and Blaze on even a farther one.

 

Honestly, I just despise the multiple worlds idea. Which is weird, I grew up with Mobius in Sonic the Comic, but the games always had a single world to them. And then Iizuka came along and Miyamoto'd the franchise.

I've used a Free Cam mod with Sonic Forces to get a better shot of the planet. It's not Earth.

Here's a collection of the pictures I took, brightened to see the lands. I'd assemble them into one, but apparently the planet warps with camera movements.

Spoiler

If I were to try and defend it, I'd say it could be a fictionalised North America, but I'm not going to. I'm good.

 

More like Pangaea, in this case. Robotnik used tectonic displacement to have easy access to the whole world, hence the presence of Green Hill in the continent. It's smart on his side, considering he used to be defeated every time he tried to control an island; now everything is his island.

 

I wouldn't mind the dual world thing so much if it wasn't for the fact it introduces glaring issues and is contradicted by the games themselves. Like, why were Angel Island and Mystic Ruins in the human world in SA1? And there was the whole thing with Gerald having researched Angel Island's history and the Chaos Emeralds. The only way that makes sense if is the island, the Knuckles Clan and Knuckles were from the human world, but then it's not a human world anymore, but a human/anthro world. This would by extension mean that S2 and S3&K were set in the human world, even though Iizuka claims that the classic games took place in the anthro world. It also means that Tails was likely born in the human world. So why does the anthro world even exist if nearly everything that matters in the story is in or comes from the human world, and both have native anthros?

 

I wouldn't mind the single world, single dimension thing so much if it didn't cause such glaring issues and contradictions. Like, where was G.U.N., the president, Commander NoName, or literally any humans at all when Eggman took over the world in Forces? How did Amy age up by several years, while nobody else did? How come the emerald altar looks completely unrecognizable between S3K and Sonic Adventure? What the crap happened to the Super Emeralds? How come Sonic had grown fluent enough with the Chaos Emeralds that he no longer needed rings to maintain his super form in Sonic R (the last chronological story in the classic timeline), but suddenly NEEDED RINGS AGAIN in Sonic Adventure? Clearly, these are meant to be two separate universes.

Spoiler

That Sonic R explanation was legit what I treated as smoking gun evidence when I was 14, haha.

And heck, how come Knuckles just completely FORGOT about guarding the Master Emerald starting in Heroes? I bet it was that nefarious Yuji Naka, he just doesn't CARE anymore, I wish he'd just leave and let someone better take the reigns, it's all been downhill ever since Ohshima left!

I hope it's clear that I'm not being serious, these are all rhetorical questions, and what I'm really saying is: Time is a flat circle. The fandom has been wringing their hands with these issues going back at least as far as SA1, and probably well before that. (See, it was Sally who sent Sonic & Tails to Angel Island, and here's my proof...)

The problem with Sonic Team trying to give ANY kind of explanation for these contradictions is that the series has SO MANY OF THEM that trying to reconcile things will raise at least as many questions as it answers. If there's "two worlds," and Classic Sonic is from another dimension, then that contradicts a lot of in-game evidence. If there's "one world," and Classic Sonic is from the past, that contradicts plenty of OTHER in-game evidence. I think the only thing for sure about Sonic is that nothing's for sure, and Sonic Team's approach to fuzzy continuity and not getting bogged down by this stuff is almost certainly by design.

But y'know, if you look at it from Sonic Team's perspective... I don't think that's really what these latter-day explanations are even meant to do. They're not trying to reconcile decades of lore in a way that makes any sort of sense, because they can't. They're just clarifying how Sonic stories and characters should be presented going forward, so that things DON'T get so wacky and inconsistent again.

So, suppose you treat Unleashed as the start of the "modern" era (since this was treated as a "reinvention," being the first game largely developed without Naka, with a lot of new blood on the dev team, and in the aftermath of 06) with everything before it maybe-or-maybe-not existing in a fuzzy continuity. If only the past 12 years of games carry "real" weight, then most of these contradictions don't hold as much water.

 

If I had to guess the two worlds thing was probably something that started becoming a thing after Sonic Adventure.

That's around the time the old guard started to leave and new faces were joining the team.

And when Sonic X started production then perhaps they felt it was a good outlet to show that piece of lore.

Why is this stuff never shown in the games? Well it takes time and resources.

For example, why waste money and time on showing Sonic and the cast going through a ring in Sonic Heroes when they're already on deadline?

I totally understand the need to see it from a point of view from a fan. But from a production point of view I can see why they just don't bother to spend time on it.

It's also a good idea to keep a loose continuity in some aspects since Sonic is going to outlive us all.

Maybe in the future the Sonic Team of 2091 is going to bring Madonna and the Sonic The Hedgehog band back and say they've always been around.

And the fans of that era are going to be discussing on whatever thing they have in the future on how it doesn't make sense.

And while I understand the frustration, idk it's fun to me.

There's always been these weird behind the scenes lore elements ever since the Classic era, some that even some of the members of Sonic Team had no idea.

So it's always neat to discover new things and talk about it.

 

When Sonic Unleashed was released, people were asking "Why wasn't Dark Gaia released when the planet was split apart in Sonic Advance 3?".