The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Saw the website.

Note that it does not feature every game. Titles like Advance 1 are not shown, despite obviously still being a "modern" era title that happens.

So if your favorite more obscure title is "missing" don't think about it too much. Fang is in Superstars but we know it's not his name of origin, and Sonic 1 and 2 are mentioned as having "unique stories that don't require you to play the mega drive version" to enjoy.

Japan also doesn't tend to be as rigorous about canon details as the west, so trying to figure out whether any one part of a japanese IP is "canon" is also a fool's errand. It may get contradicted or overwritten in some way, but companies don't like permenantly declaring any entry in their IPs as "never happening" for a variety of reasons.

Also, Sonic 4 being before Adventure makes sense to me, and always has.

 

I think Emerl was always "The Gizoid" because we only knew of that one. The door was theoretically open to more, if I recall correctly, and that's what Sonic Chronicles ran with.

I know all that, it's just...why bother with the timeline if you leave giant glaring obvious gaps? Who does it inform, what's the point? We already knew the order that most games happened, and the updates this gives to certain ones hardly makes much difference.

 

I think it makes enough sense that a lot of random spinoff content was left out.

But I don't get why Sonic Shuffle and the Riders games are there, then. Especially Shuffle.

 

Cheated its way in like it always does

 

Hahah, I forgot about that.

I don't care what you all say. I cheered when Shuffle was mentioned. Even Chaotix has gotten more "canon" love than that game. I still want my Steam Shuffle port, damn it.

 

I can see it play out clearly in my head.

"Mr. Iizuka, is XY a main title?"
"Yes, XY is a main title."
*adds it to the timeline*
"Mr. Iizuka, is XY a main title?"
"No, XY is not a main title. It's what we call a spin-off."
*doesn't add it to the timeline*

Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, SegaSonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic The Fighters deserve a mention IMO! Friends have been made, adventures have been had, so why not include them? But besides that I'm quite happy with what we got. It'll be fun to go through all the new stuff they've added. The site looks cool too btw.

Gotta love Sonic Channel.

 

I can hardly imagine him saying that about Advance 2 and Shuffle, but not Advance 1. I think this is clearly laid out according to someone's idea of "necessary plot beats", that person just has really skewed priorities.

 

The Japanese manual mentioned Mobius back in the day and it looks like they just copy and pasted what was in it.

This what the lore manager said too

Also put me down for being glad Shuffle was put there. It's such a fun game and the little tidbits of establishing the "current" lives of the core 5 (Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Knuckles and Amy) gives it this charm of a nice side story and gives you more insight into the characters.

 

Gotta be the same person who left out Blaze from the characters page for Sonic X Shadow Generations. Skewed priorities indeed!

 

That's why I don't understand Shuffle there. It didn't add anything to Sonic's world's backstory the way Unleashed and Frontiers did, and it doesn't introduce any characters of plot threads that get picked up later the way Advance 2 and Battle did. Like I'm hardly complaining about it, but it's just random as hell.

 

So the lore team was on this and it still turned out this way? What the heck was their intent? Who is this meant to actually inform about anything? We learned a couple things about a couple games, but the lack of distinction between Non-Canon and Not-On-This-List-Just-Because is just confusing the shit out of people!

 

I was going to say that maybe they put Shuffle to create a link with Dream Team... but there's no Dream Team in the timeline.

 

I don't think the lore team had any involvement with this. afaik they just handle the games and western media, could be totally wrong on that though. Rather, this was the lore team popping in and saying "Before you psychos start making crackhead theories and screaming at us, here's what this is". Any normal person would be able to separate the timelines from the game history, but not western Sonic fans. This timeline wasn't even meant for western Sonic fans to begin with, it's a Japanese exclusive site that uses Google translate as a bare minimum for the people that are extremely invested in this stuff. I just wouldn't think about this too hard.

 

Having watched Dragon Ball Daima, somehow I don't feel too bad about the missing games on this thing...

"Everything is canon", as much as it's memed on (and it did itself start as a meme), is a decent rule of thumb. "If something seems intuitively canon then it is unless otherwise stated." is a sensible enough approach. Chaotix? Yeah, it works well enough, throw it in. Pocket Adventure? My lawer told me to ask "What's Pocket Adventure?". And so on, so forth. Granted, none of this is to excuse the bizarre sloppiness of this timeline, my point is moreso that an absence on this site clearly isn't a death knell for a game's continuity status.

 

Yeah, I don't want to sound like a jerk but I do think it's apparent one is a game release timeline and the other one is the in-story timeline hitting some key events.

 

The Sonic Adventure description had a bit that made me laugh... then over-analyse.

"Sonic smelled evil in Chaos"

I know that this is either just a mis-translation on google... or a literal use on that phrase (fun fact, the Ghostbusters 2 novelisation claims that the 'Statue of Liberty could smell the evil'.

But part of me... REALLY sort of wants it to be an off hand reference to Sonic's old sneezing power.

 

It's worth highlighting this addendum from the lore manager:

So it looks like the timeline as we have it right now isn't complete.

 

Sounds like damage control
Not that I'm genuinely accusing that. Just feels like it's a reactionary statement made in response to the community freaking out on Twitter, when it was probably just meant as a one-and-done page just to recap for newcomers, rather than being a bible for diehards.

 

Eh, when you reveal a timeline, it's going to cause chaos to those interested in the story. Look at Hyrule Historia, and the damage that timeline did in The Legend of Zelda's fanbase.

 

Timelines are a bad idea. Sonic's already full of plot holes and inconsistencies that can't be resolved. It's best just to accept that and move on, especially because this isn't a franchise that has ever or should ever put story first. Don't get me wrong, because I love me some good Sonic lore and stories. But the story in this series is pretty loose and non-important. There shouldn't be a spotlight shined over the entire timeline, just like their shouldn't be an established layout for the planet/world/Earth. Just keep things simple and let stories stand on their own.