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Aaron Webber's first interview since returning to SEGA of America!


Barry the Nomad

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While I don't think I can add to the debate what hasn't already been said here, I do find it awfully telling that we even have to debate on what the planet is even called in the first place. And this is a problem with SEGA's inability to commit to a singular idea. When Aaron Webber, the guy who's very job is to sell us the whole idea of Sonic, can't even rationalize it, you know Sonic's continuity is a fucking mess. That's why I was saying, that it would be nice if he were to elaborate and clarify how it all works.

Personally, I'll always prefer the name Möbius. But at this point, I'll even take Cloud 9, just as long as we have as something as basic as a name.

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You say by this point you'll take Cloud 9. Were you taking Cloud 9 in 2008? Or were you going "Mobius is better"? Because that's exactly what resulted in all this mess. People were going "Earth is stupid, Sonic can't be on Earth!"

 

I really just wonder how many people now saying "I just wish SEGA'd pick something and stick with it!" were unhappy in the years SEGA HAD picked up something and was sticking with it - they just hadn't picked what the people now talking wanted

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oh for fuck's sake

I mean, good God.

You want to know why SEGA's inconsistent with it? Because of this. This specifically. They're absurdely eager to please to the point of idiocy, and they have one third of the fanbase going "this is Earth it must be realistic", one third going "how can it be earth! it's a blue hedgehog?!", and one third who understands hey it's cartoon world

 

Result? "Oh it's Sonic's World, fuck off. It has no name. Also it's two worlds. What the fuck ever."

 

SEGA needs someone to take the helm and say "fuck off fans", and guess what, when they do, they'll make Sonic into something else entirely and everyone'll go "WHY ISN'T SEGA LISTENING TO US"

 

there just is no winning

 

I mean jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus christ of all the tired "but Pluto is a dog and Goofy is too! Is Pluto a slave?" arguments

 

The thing is though, the only reason the bolded part exists in the first place is because SEGA created the situation themselves. By not even attempting the most basic storytelling consistency and mashing multiple styles together schizophrenically, they gave themselves a confused fan base not sure what was supposed to be going on. This whole situation could literally have been squashed on day one by them going "It's a different planet" and then actually vaguely sticking to it. Instead we got "It's Earth but with totally different continents and history and talking animals and robots and flying cars but maybe on two worlds...ahaha, uh?"

 

I'd suggest that there's also a bit of difference between the examples you listed as being based on 'Earth' and Sonic - with a couple of exceptions (being easily explainable by aliens), they're all looney toons style parody worlds. Of course something like Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty doesn't need a backstory - it's all crazy toonland! If the main Sonic games went for that style, it would have been fine (a la AoStH or to a lesser extent Sonic Boom) - but it didn't, they tried to make a light-hearted but quasi-serious setting... without any of the background setup you need for a light-hearted but quasi-serious setting.

 

I mean, good grief, this is hardly Tolkienian folklore levels of world-building I'm suggesting - it's really basic stuff. They could have literally gone in one line "they're aliens" or "they're mutants" and these sorts of issues wouldn't exist. I'm not suggesting going into the complete world history or precise latin species classifications, but I don't think it's unreasonable to have expected SEGA to have given a tiny bit of thought to their mascot's franchise's backstory.

 

 

You say by this point you'll take Cloud 9. Were you taking Cloud 9 in 2008? Or were you going "Mobius is better"? Because that's exactly what resulted in all this mess. People were going "Earth is stupid, Sonic can't be on Earth!"

 

I really just wonder how many people now saying "I just wish SEGA'd pick something and stick with it!" were unhappy in the years SEGA HAD picked up something and was sticking with it - they just hadn't picked what the people now talking wanted

 

See, the problem is that they didn't stick with it - if they'd kept it always in a faintly Earth-like setting like SA1 and 2, it wouldn't have been an issue - the problem was they'd previously also had crazy coloured hillsides and assorted weirdness. Heck, even just saying "yeah, that's all on a random island somewhere" would have been fine - instead they decided to make Earth as un-Earthlike as possible (to the extent of even changing the continents) that it got to the stage where you kind of have to ask... why make it Earth in the first place at all if everything about is patently not Earth?

 

 

While I don't think I can add to the debate what hasn't already been said here, I do find it awfully telling that we even have to debate on what the planet is even called in the first place. And this is a problem with SEGA's inability to commit to a singular idea. When Aaron Webber, the guy who's very job is to sell us the whole idea of Sonic, can't even rationalize it, you know Sonic's continuity is a fucking mess. That's why I was saying, that it would be nice if he were to elaborate and clarify how it all works.

Personally, I'll always prefer the name Möbius. But at this point, I'll even take Cloud 9, just as long as we have as something as basic as a name.

 

This. It wouldn't even matter what direction they chose - make it Earth, but actually make stick with that setting! It's not like it can't be done - look at how Sonic X rationalised it all and managed to keep everything straight with the game world.

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You've never read a good Carl Barks comic if you're just scoffing it off as "of course it works, it's just toooooons!", did you?

 

Or hell, you're scoffing off Looney Tunes and Hello Kitty- what about Dragonball? It's a planet named Earth. The geography is different and there's dinosaurs.

 

It's a fantasy planet named Earth. They set this in 1999. They set it earlier in Japan, but whatever, apparently SoA was populated entirely by "BUT IS PLUTO A MENTALLY CHALLENGED SLAVE" people. They corrected this in 1999. Over a decade ago.

 

By the time of Colours, when they finally gave up and changed it to Sonic's World, people were still having this incredibly absurd argument. I'm sorry if I'm sounding like I'm spiting you, but this is an argument that gets me irrationally angry. Why is the fact that there's talking animals in Earth in Sonic so outrageous, as opposed to, say, humans with laser eyes in Earth in Marvel? Are you seriously saying "It can't be Earth, there's robots and talking cars!" in 2015 when we've had a century of science-fiction? Did you complain that Back to the Future can't happen on Earth? Etc etc.

 

I hate it when children's stuff and cartoons get immediately shoved over as "don't bother thinking about it, it's just Mario!" but jesus christ, there's no need to go all the way to the other direction and start demanding these ridiculous questions SEGA already had answered, people refused to take the answer, and then complained when SEGA didn't answer anymore.

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I can empathize with wanting the series to have a consistent setting, but I don't understand why oddly-colored hills are things that clearly can't exist on Earth simply because it's not realistic.  Again, cartoons are bendable enough that we recognize what an object is supposed to be by its symbology, not by their actual appearance.  It's why Rugrats can still communicate its existence as Earth despite seasons 8 and 9 for some reason changing the color of the sky to purple.  Because we still recognize it as the sky.  Just like we still recognize the checkerboard hills in Sonic as hills.  I'm sure there are infinitely better examples, but you get the drift.

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There doesn't need to be ridiculous levels of detail, but I'd suggest that there should ideally be a very, very basic level of coherency. I mean, DBZ may not be able to explain in detail every strange occurence, but there is at least a coherent attempt at world-building (with whole Earth/saiyan/Namek stuff) and it can at least fall back on the "Because... aliens!" excuse.

Sonic, meanwhile, hasn't even managed to properly define what planet it takes place on after 25 years, to the point that most people didn't even realise there were supposed to be two worlds! Even the most sketchy of outlines (it's a lost island somewhere / it's in the far future / it's an alien planet) should really have happened by now; we don't even know what Sonic and co are, nor why we only see a handful of them but humans are everywhere. To be honest, this should all be really, really basic storytelling and world-building - it would be like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just having the Ninja Turtles running around New York, living in the sewer... because, without giving them any sort of backstory or rationale. Sure this works fine for some less serious things (like AoStH), but for a franchise that seemed initially to be aiming at a light hearted but quasi-coherent outline (similar to TMNT), I'd suggest it's just bad storytelling.

Your original post was arguing that it made no sense to base the events of the franchise on Earth simply because the fantasy elements made Sonic's Earth different from our own. Which is ridiculous; the moment you accept any cartoon that doesn't take place on an alien planet, you are inherently accepting the logic that Earth is allowed to be abstracted in fiction. If you can't get with this, we're literally at a fundamental impasse.

Now you're arguing about coherency, but you've not made a convincing correlation as to why the unexplained factors are a deliberate hindrance to storytelling. Sonic is an anthropomorphic hedgehog. Explaining how this is so literally adds nothing to the narrative cohesion of any particular story or overall canon, the same way that explaining why dinosaurs still exist in modern times in DBZ's world doesn't expound on the brilliance of the Namek saga in any way, shape, or form.

Good storytelling is founded in the internal logic of answering questions or giving information that is relevant to the plot, not by giving information whose only purpose is seeking complete reconciliation with our reality or laying out every single reason why a discrepancy exists. This is why suspension of disbelief works and we can watch cartoons where people fly with unexplained magic without being total buzzkills.

EDIT: Let's also not lay the blame on this entirely at Sega's feet. Sonic is a franchise wrought with the problem of having to entertain dumbass narrative double standards that the animation world solved in the 1920s simply due to its gameplay being bad. This argument says just as much as the fact that we seriously argue whether or not cartoon animals can elicit emotion (the answer is fucking yes.) Let's not act like this fandom and gamers are entirely sincere in their discussions about Sonic's aesthetics.

Edited by Nepenthe
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You've never read a good Carl Barks comic if you're just scoffing it off as "of course it works, it's just toooooons!", did you?

 

Or hell, you're scoffing off Looney Tunes and Hello Kitty- what about Dragonball? It's a planet named Earth. The geography is different and there's dinosaurs.

 

It's a fantasy planet named Earth. They set this in 1999. They set it earlier in Japan, but whatever, apparently SoA was populated entirely by "BUT IS PLUTO A MENTALLY CHALLENGED SLAVE" people. They corrected this in 1999. Over a decade ago.

 

By the time of Colours, when they finally gave up and changed it to Sonic's World, people were still having this incredibly absurd argument. I'm sorry if I'm sounding like I'm spiting you, but this is an argument that gets me irrationally angry. Why is the fact that there's talking animals in Earth in Sonic so outrageous, as opposed to, say, humans with laser eyes in Earth in Marvel? Are you seriously saying "It can't be Earth, there's robots and talking cars!" in 2015 when we've had a century of science-fiction? Did you complain that Back to the Future can't happen on Earth? Etc etc.

 

I hate it when children's stuff and cartoons get immediately shoved over as "don't bother thinking about it, it's just Mario!" but jesus christ, there's no need to go all the way to the other direction and start demanding these ridiculous questions SEGA already had answered, people refused to take the answer, and then complained when SEGA didn't answer anymore.

 

I think you may be misunderstanding me - while I personally feel SEGA could have saved themselves this entire issue by just saying it's an alien world, it's the total lack of consistency that is the problem. It's not that talking animals can't exist on Earth, it's the fact that there's not any even vague suggestion of what should be a rather important facet of the story.

 

All the other examples you mention have vague reasoning behind their weirdness. DBZ is due aliens. X-men is due to mutation. Back to Future has the whole flux capacitator leads to time-travel schtick. Is any of it hard science or even quai-realistic? ROFL no! But within each of their settings, there is a vague outline of why, a basic consistency with its own setting*, and that's what Sonic lacks.

 

I don't care what the explanation for Sonic and his world is, just that there is one and they very vaguely stick to it. No-one would be hand-ringing about alien worlds if they had always stuck Sonic in a Sonic Adventure-esque setting; if they then put crazy stuff in it like robots and flying cars, that's all well and good as long as it retains vague coherency with the setting. Chalk it up to aliens, Gerald Robotnik, the Chaos Emeralds, it doesn't matter - a vague outline to give the illusion of basic sense.

 

Likewise, I'm not 'scoffing' at toons - I might be misreading you, but you seem to think I'm implying they're inferior in some way because of their crazy freeform style. They aren't - it's all part of their style, but looking at the Sonic games (and particularly the early 3D ones) I don't really feel that Sonic was intended to have been that kind of cartoon world. Again, it's all consistency - if Sonic had been that sort of setting, a bit more like Mario, it would have still been awesome, and I loved AoStH. But... to my mind that isn't really what SEGA was aiming at; your mileage may vary.

 

 

*Ok, maybe not the DBZ dinosaurs. But just because DBZ does something, doesn't make it right! :P

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First: I can't believe that damn fanboy is back in there.

Second: Really? Asking HIM about Sonic knowledge?

One thing is asking Iizuka, he's the one in charge since Naka left after all, but HIM, RUBYECLIPSE? He has no f****** idea what he talks about!

 

(Not that it seems that Iizuka knows better than any of us here in Stadium. That Sonic Mythos thread sure has some better writers and theorists than Iizuka. Won't mention Ken Pontac as anyone would write stories better than him.)

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First: I can't believe that damn fanboy is back in there.

Second: Really? Asking HIM about Sonic knowledge?

 

Wouldn't a Sonic fanboy be the best person to ask about Sonic-related knowledge?

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Wouldn't a Sonic fanboy be the best person to ask about Sonic-related knowledge?

 

I think fanboys are like blind people.

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First of all, what in the fresh hell is this "two worlds" garbage.

Second,

First: I can't believe that damn fanboy is back in there.

Second: Really? Asking HIM about Sonic knowledge?

One thing is asking Iizuka, he's the one in charge since Naka left after all, but HIM, RUBYECLIPSE? He has no f****** idea what he's talking about!

What in the fresh hell are you talking about.

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First of all, what in the fresh hell is this "two worlds" garbage.

Second,

What in the fresh hell are you talking about.

 

For the second question directed to me, Aaron Webber, AKA RubyEclipse, is a known fanboy in the Sonic community, more namely the SEGA Forums. He worked for SEGA as Community Manager before.

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I think fanboys are like blind people.

 

What a hilarious analogy. Thank you for making me laugh.

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What a hilarious analogy. Thank you for making me laugh.

 

I don't know if this was you making fun of what I said or anything, but I'm glad to help. I think.

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You've never read a good Carl Barks comic if you're just scoffing it off as "of course it works, it's just toooooons!", did you?

Or hell, you're scoffing off Looney Tunes and Hello Kitty- what about Dragonball? It's a planet named Earth. The geography is different and there's dinosaurs.

It's a fantasy planet named Earth. They set this in 1999. They set it earlier in Japan, but whatever, apparently SoA was populated entirely by "BUT IS PLUTO A MENTALLY CHALLENGED SLAVE" people. They corrected this in 1999. Over a decade ago.

By the time of Colours, when they finally gave up and changed it to Sonic's World, people were still having this incredibly absurd argument. I'm sorry if I'm sounding like I'm spiting you, but this is an argument that gets me irrationally angry. Why is the fact that there's talking animals in Earth in Sonic so outrageous, as opposed to, say, humans with laser eyes in Earth in Marvel? Are you seriously saying "It can't be Earth, there's robots and talking cars!" in 2015 when we've had a century of science-fiction? Did you complain that Back to the Future can't happen on Earth? Etc etc.

I hate it when children's stuff and cartoons get immediately shoved over as "don't bother thinking about it, it's just Mario!" but jesus christ, there's no need to go all the way to the other direction and start demanding these ridiculous questions SEGA already had answered, people refused to take the answer, and then complained when SEGA didn't answer anymore.

Actually, no they didn't. They just completely avoided the issue for the past 20 years, and never clarified how their world worked in the first place, and just left their fanbase to figure out how the whole thing worked.

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All the other examples you mention have vague reasoning behind their weirdness. DBZ is due aliens.

Dragon Ball didn't have aliens until it became DBZ, to my knowledge. And it had loads of weird shit before that, arguably weirder than any of the alien shit.

Honestly I don't think explanations of this sort are strictly necessary. There's nothing wrong with declaring that the setting just is what it is. And not having some explanation for why it's different from reality doesn't mean it can't be consistent with itself.

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Just to make it clear, I think Aaron is not fit to answer any questions on what comes to Sonic's lore. Hell, not even Iizuka seems able to clear that confusion anymore. We have to take the right reins to fix this, not trust them to some fanboy or a man who can't do a good game intentionally.

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Dragon Ball didn't have aliens until it became DBZ, to my knowledge. And it had loads of weird shit before that, arguably weirder than any of the alien shit.

Honestly I don't think explanations of this sort are strictly necessary. There's nothing wrong with declaring that the setting just is what it is. And not having some explanation for why it's different from reality doesn't mean it can't be consistent with itself.

I'm pretty sure Goku's backstory was always that he was an alien and Namekians were always from the planet Namek, but it's irrelevant, because the dinosaurs and other talking animals are all natively from Earth.  So even without aliens, it wouldn't necessitate an explanation.

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First: I can't believe that damn fanboy is back in there.

Second: Really? Asking HIM about Sonic knowledge?

One thing is asking Iizuka, he's the one in charge since Naka left after all, but HIM, RUBYECLIPSE? He has no f****** idea what he talks about!

(Not that it seems that Iizuka knows better than any of us here in Stadium. That Sonic Mythos thread sure has some better writers and theorists than Iizuka. Won't mention Ken Pontac as anyone would write stories better than him.)

The last time we talked, I told you not to make undue inflammatory remarks and posts that attack people, mainly because it's against the rules. That includes Aaron. Do it again and it's a strike.

I'm pretty sure Goku's backstory was always that he was an alien and Namekians were always from the planet Namek, but it's irrelevant, because the dinosaurs and other talking animals are all natively from Earth.  So even without aliens, it wouldn't necessitate an explanation.

That was backstory added in Z, at least as far as Goku was concerned. Originally he was a freakish human boy. Toriyama literally retconned the implication of him being a freaky Earthling with Raditz explaining the alien nonsense. As for Piccolo, I think he was just some demon or interdimensional being or something, since neither he nor Kami knew about their people.

Edited by Nepenthe
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I'm pretty sure Goku's backstory was always that he was an alien and Namekians were always from the planet Namek, but it's irrelevant, because the dinosaurs and other talking animals are all natively from Earth.  So even without aliens, it wouldn't necessitate an explanation.

Goku's origin became that of an Alien in DBZ. Originally, he was just supposed to be an adaptation of Son Wukong. As for Namekians, Piccolo was set up as a demon, and became a Namekian when Vegeta mentioned that he was one. 

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I didn't know calling someone a fanboy was inflammatory. Oh well. At least the leash on bad behavior works here, so I'll comply.

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Goku's origin became that of an Alien in DBZ. Originally, he was just supposed to be an adaptation of Son Wukong. As for Namekians, Piccolo was set up as a demon, and became a Namekian when Vegeta mentioned that he was one. 

Ah, my mistake, then.  I haven't watched the original Dragon Ball in ages.  Point still stands that the aliens are not necessary as, nor do they serve as, an explanation for the differences between the real world and the world in DBZ's narrative.

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Your original post was arguing that it made no sense to base the events of the franchise on Earth simply because the fantasy elements made Sonic's Earth different from our own. Which is ridiculous; the moment you accept any cartoon that doesn't take place on an alien planet, you are inherently accepting the logic that Earth is allowed to be abstracted in fiction. If you can't get with this, we're literally at a fundamental impasse.

 

That's not exactly correct - my original point was that there were so many variations from our Earth to the point that it seemed rather pointless making it Earth in the first place, not that simply having any fantasy variations made it unrealistic.

 

 

 

Now you're arguing about coherency, but you've not made a convincing correlation as to why the unexplained factors are a deliberate hindrance to storytelling. Sonic is an anthropomorphic hedgehog. Explaining how this is so literally adds nothing to the narrative cohesion of any particular story or overall canon, the same way that explaining why dinosaurs still exist in modern times in DBZ's world doesn't expound on the brilliance of the Namek saga in any way, shape, or form.

 

I'd suggest that basic world-building always adds to narrative cohesion of the overall canon. Sure, knowing what Sonic is doesn't alter the narrative of an individual game specifically, but for the overall experience of a coherent fantasy world, obvious questions like "Why are there only a dozen furries wandering around?" or "Why is this Earth if it doesn't resemble almost any aspect of Earth?" should be at least faintly hand-waved.

 

It isn't even like this is a minor facet of the setting like DBZ's dinosaurs; it would be like if DBZ didn't even both explaining about Namek or the saiyans and they were... just kinda there? With awesome powers, for some reason? Would you suggest that TMNT would be better if there was no explanation for what the turtles were or how they came about, or what the Foot Clan was?

 

Again, there is a large aspect of personal preference to this; some people's threshold for suspension of disbelief is higher than others. Similarly, you don't have to obsessivley fill in every single detail - I'm not suggesting we need Sonic's eating habits and shoe size. But filling in pretty obvious voids in the setting does give a more polished experience and I'd argue is better storytelling.

 

 

 

Good storytelling is founded in the internal logic of answering questions or giving information that is relevant to the plot, not by giving information whose only purpose is seeking complete reconciliation with our reality or laying out every single reason why a discrepancy exists. This is why suspension of disbelief works and we can watch cartoons where people fly with unexplained magic without being total buzzkills.

 

That isn't exactly what I'm arguing though - the problem I see with Sonic's setting is that there isn't a whole lot of internal logic.

 

Again, things like the planet name (or even number of planets...) and what exactly the main characters are are pretty major details of a setting; I'm not suggesting anything more than a vague handwave, but most settings of Sonic's nature have at least a vague outline. Do we need to know the history of the Aquatic Ruin Zone or exactly how Eggman's moustache doesn't droop? Of course not - but as others have suggested, it does rather speak volumes that what should be really basic details to most settings aren't even concrete after 25 years.

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Actually, no they didn't. They just completely avoided the issue for the past 20 years, and never clarified how their world worked in the first place, and just left their fanbase to figure out how the whole thing worked.

 

What exactly didn't they explain that's so needed? Humans and funny animals, despite Eggman existing since Sonic 1 and there being a history of fiction of humans and funny animals? Gameplay elements merged into the world? Robots? Despite there being robots in fiction since the 19th century? Flying cars? The fact that the same world can have flying cars and cars with wheels? I mean, that's something that happens IRL, just not in the numbers of the games.

 

What explanation did they not provide that you looking at it and seeing there are cartoon hedgehogs and ladybug robots does not immediately give you- that this is a fantasy earth?

 

And yeah, the basic details of the world aren't consistent after 25 years. Because of a decade of "why is this named Earth it can't be named Earth". They already HAD made it consistent, until people complained enough they changed it again.

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And yeah, the basic details of the world aren't consistent after 25 years. Because of a decade of "why is this named Earth it can't be named Earth". They already HAD made it consistent, until people complained enough they changed it again.

 

This isn't exactly casting Sega in all that better a light. It just makes them look like they can't filter out the unreasonable complaints like "why is this named Earth it can't be named Earth" from the more sensible ones.

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