Nestor

I don't really think that the Star Wars franchise is even in the same ballpark as Sonic; even at its lowest ebb, the Star Wars prequels made a ridiculous amount of money and while their stories may have been desparately mediocre, they still managed to effectively world build and allow for a large amount of far better spin off material to be created, keeping audience interest. The Sequel trilogy meanwhile has been extremely successful in comparison both commercially and critically; even the more controversial The Last Jedi was only so mainly among Star Wars fans who disagreed with Luke Skywalker's character development. Despite all of this, Star Wars has never had a low like Sonic '06 - the majority of Sonic's titles since 1998 have been ok to awful (with the exception of Mania and possibly Generations). For Star Wars meanwhile, even Solo, the one film that wasn't a huge commercial success, was still fairly decent; for Sonic fans, the next game being somewhat ok would be considered a huge step up compared to what we've had from Sonic Team historically.

Short of sending him to the Phantom Zone or something, Eggman is always going to relatively easily escape, either using his own technical ingenuity or by something like Metal Sonic breaking him out; it's kind of a narrative necessity, just as Sonic will always escape whenever he gets captured. If you had to show something more secure to give at least some suspension of disbelief that he was seriously imprisoned, I suppose some sort of GUN supermax style affair would be the way to go.

The problem is.... even with this redesign, he still doesn't look particularly realistic; he's very much like a mascot or furry. They could have avoided this issue entirely if they'd literally made him hail from a different plane of existence, bearing in mind that Sonic crossing over from another dimension has already featured in other Sonic media and the setting even routinely revolves around a number of reality warping gems. If it's part of the plot that he's supposed to be a somewhat fantastic being, his cartoonishness wouldn't damage suspension of disbelief too much (see Detective Pikachu as an example). If they'd taken the movie design's head (possibly reducing the slight chubbiness) and given him a more game proportioned body, I suspect people would have reacted better to the design.

The stats in speed battle are somewhat insane; they change them every so often to try to balance them if one character starts gaining an edge, so you end up with completely arbitrary stats that have almost nothing to do with the actual characters.

.... ....Thank you, now I can never un-see that. I mean.... the shape and positioning compared to the upper torso makes the Master Emerald's housing quite obviously a pelvis analogue, with the Emerald itself right in the centre.... I can't believe that didn't occur to me before. I suppose it does at least mean that Master Overlord has the dubious distinction of being possibly the only villain to have a source of unlimited power in his crotch. I await with anticipation next issue's story presumably revolving around an all out assault on Master Overlord's groin - he may potentially also become the first villain to lose his source of limitless power by being repeatedly punched in the dick.

Not to mention repowering the fallen Death Egg in Sonic & Knuckles.

While I imagine they do have a dedicated robotics team, GUN also had the services of Professor Gerald Robotnik and the ARK research team at their disposal at one point who I would assume made some major advances in their robot tech.

Or Big is lighter than he looks! Or filled with helium...

Guess so - it may be a thing affecting a number of people though, I just spotted a few negative reviews on the appstore saying it was in constant server maintenance. I'm on android, not sure if it's specific to that or just a random error. EDIT: I contacted SEGA's support team and, somewhat worryingly, received the following feeback: Hi [Nestor] Thank you for contacting SEGA Mobile Customer Support,Unfortunately, the latest Amazon update is currently waiting to be released and this update needs to go out before you can connect to the server.We do not have a time scale for when this is out.Sorry for inconvenienceMany thanksSEGA Soooo.... they've just randomly disconnected all Amazon based games until they release the update.... for which they have no time scale. Another triumph for SEGA's strategic planning!

I thought I was - it isn't giving me any options to update it in game or in the appstore.

Is anyone else getting a constant Server Maintenance message? I haven't been able to play the game for four days now, every time I start it, it says it's doing maintenance.

You're right - while there are potential explanations that would make sense with what's been revealed, they're cumbersome and inelegant from a storytelling perspective. SEGA should have decided on a backstory and stuck with it instead of this vaguely defined mess - indeed, despite having the idea of two worlds since at least Sonic Colors, they still haven't gotten around to defining it properly.

Indeed - hence the possibility of one potentially being an ancestor. We haven't witnessed the mechanism yet, but we do know it can be done - until (or if) additional detail are given about how the gateway works, there's no reason to assume that the travel is difficult until it's implied or stated to be. Indeed - but it's the activity of Angel Island after it goes skyward that determines its ability to travel between worlds; as it's been shown moving geographic location to and from its initial starting position in the Mystic Ruins, it's a possibility that its flight path travels through the 'gateway' and allows it to swap between worlds. Of course, we've had such a dearth of information about the gateway mechanism that it could be almost anything, but until they actually clarify it further, this theory is a possible explanation.

I don't think there needs to be a whole anthro community on Earth for Silver's parents to have been on Earth - after all, the main cast travel between worlds seemingly without difficulty (and indeed, the possibility exists that one or more of the main cast are Silver's ancestors). The island's been present in both Sonic's world games (e.g. the classics) and Earth games (e.g. Sonic Adventure), and we know it's mobile and travels (it's in the middle of an ocean in S&K and by the coast in SA) - as we don't yet know the nature of the 'gateway' between worlds, it seems likely that the island's travel periodically takes it through whatever mechanism connects the worlds. Why not? It would seem to be a logical explanation based on what we do know of the current continuity, such as it is; it being required due to a retcon shouldn't make it less likely or valid.