Which Sonic Games are Mainline?

Sonic Runners is an interesting case. I want to say it doesn't count but I think I am just being biased because I never played it, lol.

I'm curious, what was the explanation for Knuckles and the M.E.?

 

Sonic Runners is not mainline because I literally forgot it ever existed.

Sarcasm aside, it doesn't fit my definition as listed above, so imma say no.

 

Leaning toward "I gave Secret Rings a pass, so fuck it." It was a complete failure and thus didn't influence anything going forward but otherwise fits all my criteria

 

That the local animal friends and Omochao guard it while he's away.

I didn't say it was a good explanation.

 

Okay, here's the relevant bit in the Japanese Mega Collection:


Google Translate gives me this on the last sentence:

So yeah, it sounds like this was just a bad translation.

EDIT: I think the history of Sonic video is a little bit different for Sonic Jam! I wanted to see if the Japanese version was also misleading about Jam, and it is. The first thing it says in both versions is, "Sonic has evolved into 3D!" with no implication that this was just a museum mode in another better compilation.

But they differ in their next lines. The English version says, "Take a look at the new Sonic, now more real than ever!" Whereas the Japanese version seems to acknowledge that the version featured in Jam was *not* the new Sonic:



This is something to the effect of, "He looks a little cuter running than he does nowadays, doesn't he?"

 

Also, random tidbit- CD peel-out aside, isn't Jam the game where the Naruto run became the Sonic standard?

 

Yes. Although Jam predated Naruto by more than two years, so really, it's Naruto doing the Sonic Run.

 

Wasn't that specifically a single event that ended up failing? correct me if I am wrong. I'm not super robust in regards to my Runners knowledge.
in general I find the prospect of insisting Runners is canon kind of silly if the argument is the info in regards to Wisps.
information can be present within a game without it necessarily being canon. Info exists in whatever documents Sonic Team supposedly have in HQ. Whether or not we get access to it and in what form is kind of up to them.
Info exists in the Olympic games for example, but to my knowledge those are explicitly not canon.
Not speaking one way or the other necessarily. just disagreeing with the logic being used to say it most certainly is.

 

And Dragon Ball predates all of those, so Goku enters the chat.

Back on topic, considering the most evident cases and what seems to be Sega's usual reasoning, "mainline" games would be the ones starring Sonic the hedgehog as the main playable character that were designed for the main hardware of the time under the criteria of what was the "standard" gameplay of the era. Prior to the Dreamcast, that was classic Sonic gameplay on Mega Drive because its add-ons never became the main thing or popular enough, and Saturn never got birth to it's version of Adventure or even X-Treme, So, while Sega still had hardware to go with, that means 1, 2, 3/K (probably split), SA1 and SA2. After that, anything for the most powerful and relevant hardware of the time, or, at least, the most powerful Nintendo hardware, but never alternate takes like Boom or Mania, which means Heroes, '06, Unleashed, Colours, Generations, Lost World, Forces and Zap/Rangers when it's released. Of course I'd have included Shadow because it was a piece of the Shonen era and the gameplay's based in SA2, but it doesn't meet the criteria. The rest, canon or not, it's a spin-off even if it was better than the main thing or the only thing at its time.

 

Not to be an ass, but who still calls it Sonic Zap? It literally went on record that that's not only not what it says, but also that we supposedly won't be able to decipher it outside of the in-game context.

 

Sonic Fuckers

 

Haven't most main-line Sonic games not been full-price since Unleashed? I might be wrong on that, but I remember someone in the Other Knowledge thread proving that Unleashed was released at a lower price. And I remember Generations being less than $60 too, but it's been a while since then.

 

Yeah, that was me, and you're right - after Sonic 06, the only mainline game that launched at full price was Colors:

• Unleashed - $49.99 (technically, I think the WiiS2 version was full price, but this was $10 off the standard MSRP for HD systems)
• Colors - $49.99
• Generations - $49.99
  
• Lost World - $49.99 (Wii U games also retailed for $59.99)
  
• Mania - $19.99 (or $24.99 for the version that included Mania Plus)
• Forces - $39.99
• And if you want to count it, Colors Ultimate - $39.99

Actually, I need to check if that includes spin-offs... I think all the racing games launched at $40 or $50, too. I'm 99% sure TSR did, anyway. I *think* Boom might have launched at $60, but I never got that one. The handheld version of all these games always launched at full price as far as I know, though.

 

Sure, but there's a clear outlier in this list. Unleashed, Colours, Generations, Lost World all $50, Forces $40, Mania... $20. There's a clear difference between "maybe not actually full price but not far off" and "literally 1/3 of full price".

 

Imagine if X-treme was a mainline title, and canon. The timeline would be a bigger mess than it is already.

 

I'm very uninterested in the topic of which games are "mainline" but I will contest that pricing shouldn't be a factor at all. Games are priced and advertised differently in different countries. I also think we should look at the game itself.