They really have to stop with the anniversary emphasis though. It's kept them trapped in this cycle that literally no one cares about. Do we need this every 5 years? Like Mario celebrated 35 years, Kirby 20, but franchises don't celebrate every 5th anniversary. Just Sonic. 10 - SA2, 15 - Sonic 06, 20 - Generations, 25 - Mania. Anniversary anniversary anniversary. The games never even come out for the anniversary just the vicinity of it. It's dragged on for too long, too over hyped, and then we're all just disappointed, like now. Just make the games good please ffs.
I think they only talked/showed about that stuff at that year's E3. I'd have to look. But it was billed as an anniversary.
Nintendo celebrated Super Mario Bros.' 20th, 25th, 30th and 35th anniversaries, to varying degrees. I don't think Sega cares about having Sonic games release in 5 year increments as much as people think they do. SA2 was 3 years after SA1, and needed to ship before the Dreamcast died. It would have happened with or without the 10th anniversary. Sonic 2006 was likely more about getting a "next gen" Sonic game into the world, in time for the PS3 launch window, with the 15th anniversary being a nice bit of promo. Sonic Mania was announced on the 25th anniversary, but wasn't released until over a year later. There were no major Sonic games released during the actual 25th anniversary year, just Rio Olympics and Fire & Ice. Sonic Generations is the exception, rather than the rule, being an anniversary celebration game from the get-go. There's never been a 5 year wait between major Sonic games. There's always been releases inbetween.
Since we're talking about anniversaries. I have a feeling that the emphasis on Anniversaries was only supposed to be a thing for the 0th year, so, 10th, 20th, 30th etc. The 25th was a really weird celebration year, did you ever get the feeling that it wasn't really planned for? Or that at times it was oddly over-hyped or scaled back? Well I have some logos in my possession which lead me to believe it was initially planned to be a VERY big thing, similar to the 20th. Only it was then scaled back... But not all the projects were cancelled or scaled down, e.g. the conventions, some of the bigger merch tie ins and of course Mania's reveal. In fact, did you ever feel that the 25th was literally the Mania hype train and not really much of anything else? Yeah you could say that for the 20th and generations, but they did dig up Yuji Naka from whatever he was doing, flew Iizuka and Naka all over the world for events, it just felt bigger and not just confined to the games. So my theory on the anniversaries is that initially some people did plan for a big 25th celebration, the logos I have certainly point to that, and some of the larger events also pointed to that... But in terms of what was actually produced and how it was handled, it felt like a much lower key affair. Before someone asks... Where are these logos? 1: They're on my old machine. 2: I... Kinda promised I wouldn't show them just yet. I will do one day but... Can't just yet. What were the logos like? Kinda like some of the 25th anniversary logos. But with other characters.
So if I understood that right, the Chaos Emeralds have been in their Super Emerald form since S3&K, but Sonic Team doesn't want to deal with having multiple stages of Super transformations in lore, so Super and Hyper Sonic are treated as being basically the same thing lore-wise? I guess that also serves as an explanation for Tails being able to go Super in Mania.
https://segaretro.org/Go_Sega#Weekly_Content_Drop Now available faff-free. Of course ... Japan got theirs months ago.
Apparently Roger Craig Smith also voices Snorpy in bugsnax. I didn't realize it until it was mentioned on a Joel Vinesauce stream.
3 months later - scanner is here alongside one box of issues and I've completed one test issue of fleetway STC (not a classic issue by any means) for you to judge if its improved quality? Can someone DM me an email address (or several people if they want them?) and I can send the issue over to (it'll be easiest if I can upload to wetransfer where the link will stay live for a few days and send it that way)
I don't particularly remember seeing this discussed before, and I'm not sure where else to put it, so here we go... This Sonic 1 concept art: It seems to show a two-player split screen view. The handwriting is messy but I think it says something like 「宇宙のステージ。。。。ジャンプ力がアップする。図では、２人同時プレイを永現している。」 ("Space stage... Jump power goes up. In the illustration, two people are playing simultaneously.")
Worth a couple corrections since I know this stuff always ends up getting wives' taled out of hand. 1. Taxman doesn't say this is the canon, he specifically uses "I think". It's his opinion. 2. He's not saying the Emeralds have forever become super, he's saying their design has become like the Super Emeralds. 3. Then he's saying Sonic Team doesn't want to deal with the lore implications of varying levels of power, so flattened it all down to Super. So what's being said isn't that Taxman provided an explanation about the canonicity of the Super Emeralds, or that the Chaos Emeralds are now the Super Emeralds. If anything he's saying kind of the opposite- that the Chaos Emeralds and Super Emeralds got merged (irl, not in-universe) into the same concept, and all power-level stuff got forgotten in favour of a simpler "Everyone is Super, and that's that". He thinks Hyper Sonic happened, not the same as Sonic Team says it happened.
1.Actually he specifically says "I think you can say it happened", regarding Hyper Sonic. The "I think" only applies to that sentence, and said sentence is written in a "I guess you could say that, in a way" sense, rather than in a "this is how I see it" sense. The rest of his tweet is independent of that part and is presented as fact. 2.Well, his words were "Visually the appearance of the Chaos Emeralds changed to a diamond shape in S3K and have remained so in subsequent games." It's ambiguous whether he means in or out of universe, but since the question asked was about canon, it sounds to me like he meant it in the former. 3.That's what I said, Super and Hyper Sonic are considered the same thing in terms of lore.
The question was "Hyper Sonic happened? Is it canon at least for Sonic from Sonic Mania?". "I think you can say it happened" is a pretty literal reply to that- Taxman thinks so. Taxman doesn't get to pull the shots on canon, and he's specifically positioning this as what he thinks, not what he's relating on having learned, unlike with the second sentence of the tweet. Again, the sentence he's literally saying is "visually the appearance of the Chaos Emeralds" etc. He's just stating a fact anyone can- that the chaos emeralds started being depicted with a diamond cut design after S3K. And "Super Sonic and Hyper Sonic are the same lore-wise" isn't the same as "they just consider everything Super now for simplicity". One is an active element of lore- "these two things are now the same"- the other is a rejection of lore- "we're not even acknowledging this thing". I'm sorry if this seems nitpicky, but repeatedly this sort of statement being taken for what it isn't has then gone on to snowball into huge rumours and annoyances- just look at nearly anything Ian Flynn says and how it gets filtered through the fandom, for instance. So please take what's being said by anyone, especially someone who's not even a primary source, as literally as you can.
Again, I feel you're taking "I think" too literally here. In the context of his sentence, it reads more in an "I guess" sense to me. Not that it matters either way. I'm not championing for Hyper Sonic being canon if that's what you think I'm doing. Or, he could have meant that the Chaos Emeralds' transformation into the Super Emeralds' diamond cut shape happened, but it was just a form change as far as canon/lore goes, rather than a power upgrade. That's not what I meant. I wasn't implying that lore dictated that the two forms existed but were identical or anything like that, I was simply saying that Super and Hyper Sonic are the same form as far as lore is concerned. ie, Hyper Sonic doesn't exist in continuity. I apologize if it was unclear.
