Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[MetalSkulkBane]

3 hours ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

And kids who grew up on Sonic X in Japan. 

I was that kid and I don't like it.

First step for Two World to work, it must be somehow acknowledged. As if said in a game. Show. Right now it's a bloody Schrodinger Cat.

(If it works like in Sonic X then I still have few issues.)

[DabigRG]

4 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

I was that kid and I don't like it.

First step for Two World to work, it must be somehow acknowledged. As if said in a game. Show. Right now it's a bloody Schrodinger Cat.

(If it works like in Sonic X then I still have few issues.)

You grew up in Japan?

[SBR2]

I could take or leave two worlds. It's dumb as hell and makes zero sense but it really doesn't effect post post-Shadow games.

Like honestly for the most part the fact there's two worlds has never affected any stories ever but it is still extremely dumb and contradictory. It's like the friggin Schrodinger's Cat of dumb writing choices. It's somehow both massively annoying but also completely inconsequential. 

[charmsb]

1 hour ago, SBR2 said:

I could take or leave two worlds. It's dumb as hell and makes zero sense but it really doesn't effect post post-Shadow games.

Like honestly for the most part the fact there's two worlds has never affected any stories ever but it is still extremely dumb and contradictory. It's like the friggin Schrodinger's Cat of dumb writing choices. It's somehow both massively annoying but also completely inconsequential. 

Summed up my feelings perfectly.

They've introduced this absolute monster to the series' lore as an excuse for why they didn't want to create human background characters in Sonic Forces. Did they know what they were doing? Jesus. I guess they didn't expect a bunch of highly deranged and obsessive freaks like myself  well-meaning fans to care so much.

[Mauro Fonseca]

They introduced it decades before Forces. Even if you somehow don't want to believe Ian when he says he was told it's been a thing since before Adventure, we've been told about it since Colours. It's got nothing to do with Forces, Forces is just the first game to make it more glaring because it helps explain why no GUN in such a scenario.

[Domino]

Current-day SEGA can say what they want, but you can't honestly try to tell me that this world-jumping scenario was the intention back in Sonic Adventure, what with the Mystic Ruins existing the way it did, among other things.

[Dummy Bear]

28 minutes ago, Domino said:

Current-day SEGA can say what they want, but you can't honestly try to tell me that this world-jumping scenario was the intention back in Sonic Adventure, what with the Mystic Ruins existing the way it did, among other things.

It's this, the desert Echidna ruins in SA2 on the explicitly named planet Earth, humans recalling past events such as the Death Egg and Little Planet incidents in pre-release builds of Sonic Adventure(that they should logically have no knowledge of since that happened on a different world), the humans in the "Man of the Year" Sonic Jam short, and the small tidbit of Sonic being born on a real world island known as Christmas Island in the original Sonic bible, makes me question that "this was our thing all along".

I still believe that the critical praise of the human-less Sonic Colors, the constant criticism of humans other than Eggman existing, peoples' inability to understand what an art shift is(seriously the landmasses in SA1 still followed Sonic conventions such as random floating landmasses and random loops with grass on top, just with more realistic looking textures), and Izuka just being tired of being asked this question for the billionth time(seriously, Naka's explanation wasn't good enough? I think they just wanted to keep asking until they got an answer they were satisfied with) had more to do with the "Two Worlds" creation.

[charmsb]

1 hour ago, The KKM said:

They introduced it decades before Forces. Even if you somehow don't want to believe Ian when he says he was told it's been a thing since before Adventure, we've been told about it since Colours. It's got nothing to do with Forces, Forces is just the first game to make it more glaring because it helps explain why no GUN in such a scenario.

I know they introduced it before, but it was really just brought up in that fateful interview in order to explain away the shift away from humans. Besides, I really couldn't care less when it was from, I just know I don't like it. It could be as old as the series' inception and I wouldn't like it.

[Dr. Mechano]

2 hours ago, The KKM said:

They introduced it decades before Forces. Even if you somehow don't want to believe Ian when he says he was told it's been a thing since before Adventure, we've been told about it since Colours. It's got nothing to do with Forces, Forces is just the first game to make it more glaring because it helps explain why no GUN in such a scenario.

- Angel Island is depicted in "the human world" in SA1.
- Ancient echidna architecture all over the Mystic Ruins.
- Sonic Chronicles places Green Hill Zone right next to the human-populated Central City.
- Even in the classic games, we see human iconography in Wacky Workbench, Marble Garden, and Yellow Desert - all supposedly in the "animal universe."
- Witchcart's whole existence as another non-Eggman human living in the supposed "animal world."
- Sonic Rush depicts typical classic Sonic-style environments, so it's supposedly in the "animal world," and yet GUN robots appear in Huge Crisis Zone.

All I'm saying is, if this "two worlds" thing was planned from the start, they sure didn't stick to it a lot of the time.

[Razule]

48 minutes ago, Slash said:

humans recalling past events such as the Death Egg and Little Planet incidents in pre-release builds of Sonic Adventure(that they should logically have no knowledge of since that happened on a different world

Maybe that's why it was only in pre-release builds. It contradicted Two Worlds. Everything else, fine, but those lines needed to go.

[Dummy Bear]

4 minutes ago, Razule said:

Maybe that's why it was only in pre-release builds. It contradicted Two Worlds. Everything else, fine, but those lines needed to go.

Okay, now explain why those lines contradict the Two Worlds but Angel Island being in the game doesn't.

[Razule]

13 minutes ago, Slash said:

Okay, now explain why those lines contradict the Two Worlds but Angel Island being in the game doesn't.

The floating island floated across space to a world with a continent with a missing piece it could conveniently fit.

[Mauro Fonseca]

1 hour ago, Dr. Mechano said:

- Angel Island is depicted in "the human world" in SA1.
- Ancient echidna architecture all over the Mystic Ruins.
- Sonic Chronicles places Green Hill Zone right next to the human-populated Central City.
- Even in the classic games, we see human iconography in Wacky Workbench, Marble Garden, and Yellow Desert - all supposedly in the "animal universe."
- Witchcart's whole existence as another non-Eggman human living in the supposed "animal world."
- Sonic Rush depicts typical classic Sonic-style environments, so it's supposedly in the "animal world," and yet GUN robots appear in Huge Crisis Zone.

All I'm saying is, if this "two worlds" thing was planned from the start, they sure didn't stick to it a lot of the time.

Not to be arguing back, but two of those are instantly irrelevant- Chronicles isn't by Sonic Team and got more leeway story-wise than usual, and Witchcart is from a game by Aspect (or is it Ancient, I always mix the two) so same thing (not to mention, is a quickly-made reskin of Mizrabel). The rest are actual arguments here since they relate to Sonic Team games, those two aren't.

(the rest could be argued around and explained etc, but is more difficult and convoluted to and comes down to whether you believe Ian, Sonic Team, etc. I do think they had a vague intention of separate worlds since at least 2003 and possibly earlier judging how the OVA's setting involved two separate realms, but I don't know for certain much like how no one else knows for certain. We just got that the concept first was clear in 2003, was made clearer in 2010, and was told to us by a decent source that he himself was told it was intended from at least 1998. Yes, they didn't make it obvious and clear if so- but what do they ever do? They have an entire set of lore references explaining stuff like this or how Blaze's world works in terms of civilisation etc, and just never explain it to the public, out of a feeling that it's unneeded material. It's absolutely believable to me that this has been a thing as far back as 1991, and they just never felt the need to explain it further because they felt it'd bog the games down in lore and minutia)

EDIT: and if anyone's wondering why I instantly discount Witchcart etc- if you actually try to count the non-Sonic Team classic games as canon, you're left with a huge mess where there's 7 Emeralds, or just 6, or 8, and they spread around the world, or all just remain on South Island, which was just an island Sonic and Eggman visited, or is where Sonic lives, together with friends like Tails, who had a massive adventure before meeting Sonic but was also afraid and meek and bullied before meeting Sonic, and Knuckles, who got on Sonic's side but then instantly mistrusted him again and sided with Eggman and Fang, etc etc. It's much clearer that each developer just refererred to their own games- Sonic Team to their own, Ancient to their own while taking characters from the main games, etc.

EDIT EDIT: Just to clarify again, just... not saying you have to like two world or to believe that it was intended since Adventure instead of just with Colours- just that those two specific arguments against that possibility (Chronicles and Skypatrol) are useless because they're games that Sonic Team would've ignored anyway

[Dummy Bear]

It's not like creators ever lie and just make stuff up on the fly or anything.

No siree.

[Dr. Mechano]

9 minutes ago, The KKM said:

 and Knuckles, who got on Sonic's side but then instantly mistrusted him again and sided with Eggman and Fang, etc etc. 

To be fair, later games like Adventure and Advance 2 also do this. Advance 2 is even eerily similar to Triple Trouble in that Eggman gives Knuckles a mech to pilot. So I'm not sure if Triple Trouble's depiction of Knuckles is that hard to believe, given he's trusted Eggman in games Sonic Team had closer involvement in since.

I think the six Chaos Emeralds in most of the Game Gear titles are simple enough to explain; Only six Emeralds were used in those games, even though seven exist in total, same as in Sonic 1. The 8th Emerald in Fighters could be chalked up to Eggman's duplication ray (used to create a clone of the player character for the mirror match) also copying one of the Emeralds?

Though yeah, it's fine if we set Chronicles and some of the 8-bit titles aside for the purpose of this discussion. We both acknowledge there's enough issues in Sonic Team games that demonstrate some inconsistency with the two-worlds concept, which is fine.

[MetalSkulkBane]

9 hours ago, DabigRG said:

You grew up in Japan?

Ups. My bad ^^;

No, just on Sonic X, but not in Japan

[VO.SUPER]

I can take or leave two worlds. Its existence has been inconsequential to the games themselves since SEGA refuses to commit to any plot related details regarding the interstellar nature of Sonic's world since Adventure 2. 

Its convoluted, and nonsensical, but frankly I just want SEGA to commit to something. 

[User18091994]

1 hour ago, The KKM said:

Not to be arguing back, but two of those are instantly irrelevant- Chronicles isn't by Sonic Team and got more leeway story-wise than usual, and Witchcart is from a game by Aspect (or is it Ancient, I always mix the two) so same thing (not to mention, is a quickly-made reskin of Mizrabel). The rest are actual arguments here since they relate to Sonic Team games, those two aren't.

(the rest could be argued around and explained etc, but is more difficult and convoluted to and comes down to whether you believe Ian, Sonic Team, etc. I do think they had a vague intention of separate worlds since at least 2003 and possibly earlier judging how the OVA's setting involved two separate realms, but I don't know for certain much like how no one else knows for certain. We just got that the concept first was clear in 2003, was made clearer in 2010, and was told to us by a decent source that he himself was told it was intended from at least 1998. Yes, they didn't make it obvious and clear if so- but what do they ever do? They have an entire set of lore references explaining stuff like this or how Blaze's world works in terms of civilisation etc, and just never explain it to the public, out of a feeling that it's unneeded material. It's absolutely believable to me that this has been a thing as far back as 1991, and they just never felt the need to explain it further because they felt it'd bog the games down in lore and minutia)

EDIT: and if anyone's wondering why I instantly discount Witchcart etc- if you actually try to count the non-Sonic Team classic games as canon, you're left with a huge mess where there's 7 Emeralds, or just 6, or 8, and they spread around the world, or all just remain on South Island, which was just an island Sonic and Eggman visited, or is where Sonic lives, together with friends like Tails, who had a massive adventure before meeting Sonic but was also afraid and meek and bullied before meeting Sonic, and Knuckles, who got on Sonic's side but then instantly mistrusted him again and sided with Eggman and Fang, etc etc. It's much clearer that each developer just refererred to their own games- Sonic Team to their own, Ancient to their own while taking characters from the main games, etc.

EDIT EDIT: Just to clarify again, just... not saying you have to like two world or to believe that it was intended since Adventure instead of just with Colours- just that those two specific arguments against that possibility (Chronicles and Skypatrol) are useless because they're games that Sonic Team would've ignored anyway

Green Hill is in the map of Sonic Adventure 2, too. When you unlock the bonus stage, it's marked on the world map of the game. That means, Green Hill in on the same planet as the humans.

Also, from what I remembered, Takashi Iizuka has been saying this kind of thing about Sonic's universe being divived into two different worlds (the furry's world and the Human's world) since Sonic Colors interviewes from 2010. So, it's not a random retcon they came up with right now.

But I also remembered that he said they are different geopolitical worlds, not two different planets. This also explains why Sonic Adventure 2 has realistic looking settings, but also has places like Pumpkin Hill that looks like a stage from classic Sonic.

 

The problem is that some modern games didn't give a f#ck about continuity. It's weird how Eggman took the whole world in Sonic Forces but we don't see humans or humans cities being mentioned in the game at all. Sonic Unleashed on the other hand showed cultures around the whole world and none of that have furries habitants, villages or cities. 

I think this might be easy to fix, they only need to show more world building in the stories (in the games and in the comics)

Edited July 14, 2021 by Raphael Martins
Grammar correcting

[Mauro Fonseca]

He never said it's just geopolitical. Fans assumed that was it, in an attempt to maintain the one world setting. Pardon the meme, it was coping. It absolutely is and always was intended, for however long it's existed, to be two separate planets, that the characters travel between through portals, a setup the Sonic movie actually ended up using too.

 

Much as some people would want it, this isn't the scenario described by Phil Collins going "Two Worlds, One Family". It's not figurative worlds, it's literal ones. 

[Diogenes]

The whole two worlds thing is dumb, largely pointless, and sloppily handled, but it's not some huge gaping plothole-creator. If Sonic and friends can move between worlds somehow, then so can other people and other things, at various times, for various reasons. Angel Island? Warped from Sonic's world to the human world just in time for SA. The ruins of Mystic Ruins? At some point an echidna civilization got sent from one world to the other. References to humans in Sonic's world's ruins? Some humans went there at some point and were enshrined in legend. Again, dumb, pointless, and sloppy, but not much more than the series' "lore" has ever been.

[Wraith]

There's an interview with Yuji Naka circa 2011 where he's asked about Sonic's Origins
 

Quote

"Sonic initially had critters and robots but Sonic Adventure have introduced humans suddenly. Why have you decided to add them?" Action in Sonic's universe unfolded on Christmas Island from the very beginning, and accidentally things have happened the way there were only animals and robots in there. And later when Sonic made it to usual mega polis in Adventure, that's where he met humans. "But is this island located on Earth or this is some kind of another planet anyway?" On Earth. It actually exists, Americans (and also Englishmen - magazine) are having nuclear weapon testing there. Actually, this is exactly why we've populated it with robots and strange animals. laughs

Here's a quote from iizuka from a year prior where he describes the human/animal world stuff.

 

Quote

Game: Could you tell us a bit about the story behind Sonic Colours? It looks more like the old games, which were set on Moebius, than the new-style Sonics set in Station Square...

Takashi Iizuka: We have two different worlds for Sonic games – one is human, and one is set on the non-human side. Sonic Colours is set on the non-human side. The only human in the game is Dr Eggman, who tries to build this huge amusement park which, as you will see on the world map, ties all these planets together with a tractor beam.

Now, obviously Iizuka's word holds more weight now. All I mean to ask is, if this was embedded in Sonic canon since the start, why can't Sonic's founders agree on the story?

Maybe someone was kicking around this idea in the 90s, but that hardly legitimizes it to me. I've accepted it as the case now, but I really don't think it was a widely agreed upon thing within Sonic Team. They might have disagreed but decided the mechanics of Sonic's world weren't important enough to get into anyway.

Either way, it functionally doesn't exist until 2010 since the games don't give you a reason to believe it does before then.

[SBR2]

8 hours ago, Dr. Mechano said:

- Sonic Chronicles places Green Hill Zone right next to the human-populated Central City.
- Witchcart's whole existence as another non-Eggman human living in the supposed "animal world."

Ok not that I don't agree but these two are probably not the best examples. Chronicles was barely canon even when it came out and Sega does not want to acknowledge the Game Gear games at all.

Though if I can go on a tangent I think they should acknowledge the Game Gear Games and Knuckles Chaotix as part of the Post-Generations Classic timeline. Just straight up Zelda that shit and put those games as occurring after Classic Sonic's timeline split off.

[Dummy Bear]

14 hours ago, The KKM said:

They introduced it decades before Forces. Even if you somehow don't want to believe Ian when he says he was told it's been a thing since before Adventure, we've been told about it since Colours. It's got nothing to do with Forces, Forces is just the first game to make it more glaring because it helps explain why no GUN in such a scenario.

I think an easier(and arguably better) solution to why GUN couldn't stop Eggman would be just to have Eggman take over GUN.

And now you have GUN robots as enemies.

[charmsb]

58 minutes ago, Slash said:

I think an easier(and arguably better) solution to why GUN couldn't stop Eggman would be just to have Eggman take over GUN.

And now you have GUN robots as enemies.

Or just the fact that Eggman is uncrushable and isn't always actively trying to do something horrible. Sometimes he is straight up neutral. And in any case, he's always moving around, creating new bases, travelling to space, etc. I'm talking about Eggman as if we are still in an era of the series that acknowledges GUN by the way.

[VO.SUPER]

I genuinely believe two worlds got established when Sonic X became a thing. The original idea was that Sonic was living on planet earth in the games, which was largely the case in the games, but the idea of there being two seperate worlds kicked in after Sonic X and even then there was internal debate about that. As Sonic team started to notice the disdain for the human element of Sonic games, they decided that they would adapt that for the games so as to justify just how heavily human centric the "dark age" games were while also mixing together with the American canon as well as what Sonic X set up.

They didn't think particularly hard on this detail because they were just trying to justify their visual designs in the games as well as lack of animal NPCs mixing with human NPCs, etc. Without really committing to anything.

At the end of the day these were just bandage solutions for clear world building holes and division of visions.