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Despite offshoot cartoons and comics continuously inventing parents, siblings, and other relatives for the cast, the only characters to have any meaningful family connections have been the Robotniks: Gerald, Maria, Ivo, and... probably Nega? (The mid-2000s was a weird time for the lore.) When asked about Maria and Eggman at a recent fan meet-up in Seoul, South Korea, Takashi Iizuka expounded some details on their relationship: As reported by Sonic City, Iizuka was asked which of the two were older, and if the two knew each other. His answer mostly hinged on the "50 years ago" aspect of the attack on the ARK: Eggman is probably under 50 (no, he doesn't currently have a revealed age), meaning he's both younger than Maria would be and might not have been alive at the time of the attack. Thus he would not have known Maria personally. The two are cousins, with their respective fathers being Gerald's two sons. Though none of this is a major revelation, it does give a sense of the how Iizuka sees the order of events. And of course, this all comes with the caveat that an on-the-spot lore question at a Q&A panel isn't the ideal scenario to get new info that will withstand the combined forces of time and retcon. We're now only left with one major question regarding the extended Robotnik family: why doesn't he call him Uncle Shadow? Sonic News Tips Credit: Shiny Gems Original Post Content: View full story

In November, Sega is going to release the Sonic Encyclo-speed-ia. A book that's going to deep dive into the games' universe lore, and it's going to provide the official timeline and tell which games are canon and which ones are not. This book is being written by Ian Flynn, and it's basically the "Hyrule Historia" of Sonic the Hedgehog. For the ones who don't know, Hyrule Historia was a book released in 2011 in commemoration of the 25th of The Legend of Zelda and close to the release of Skyward Word on the Nintendo Wii. It provided the official timeline of the Zelda franchise and details filling the gaps and inconsistencies in the games. Before this book, the Zelda timeline was a mess and there were a lot of discussion about that in the community. In addition to that, since 2010 at the Sonic Colors release, Takashi IIzuka said in many interviews that the stories of Sonic games happen in two different worlds: the human world and Sonic's world. However, it's not clear if this two world thing are two different civilizations living in the same planet, if they are actually two different planets altogether, or if they are two entirely new dimensions. A lot of people in the community didn't like this supposed recton because it contradicts the story of a lot of other past games like the Adventure series. Considering all of that, t's very clear to me that the Encyclo-speed-ia is going to have a similar purpose in the Sonic's franchise. They are going to release a whole book about the series' lore, they will have to address some inconsistencies and bend the games together. Some people are very passionate about discussing the lore of the franchise, but I don't have a problem with the concept of two worlds. It creates inconsistencies and a lot of unexplained things, mostly in the Adventure era games, but it also fixes a lot of other inconsistencies in the games' continuity, geography and art style, and everything could be explained if Sonic Team creates retcons in future games or in the encyclopedia. The lore is confusing with and without the two worlds concept. I don't know why people are so mad about that. To me, the funniest part about discussing the lore of a franchise is finding new good answers to explain and fix inconsistencies. So, let's theorize how they could fix the inconsistencies. Why the echidna are on earth in Sonic Adventure? What Angel Island is doing in the human's world? The human world and Sonic's world could have some kind of connection. If Sonic and the other characters can travel between both worlds, we can assume they aren't the first ones to be able to do that. Eggman is human, and he lives in the Sonic's world in a lot of games, for example. Maybe the echidna tribe traveled from Sonic's world to Earth a long time ago, or maybe the anthropomorphic animals are actually from Earth long before the humans existed, and they colonized and move to the other world at some point in history. Angel Island and the Master Emerald could have some kind of connection to Earth as well, and Angel Island could be able to move between the two worlds. If that were the case, I hope they are going to explain all these things. Sonic Rush hits Sonic's world isn't inhabited by humans: In the Rush series, we knew Blaze's world. According to the game's story, her world is a parallel dimension to Sonic. She is like the Sonic equivalent of this dimension, and the sol emerald are the equivalent of the chaos emerald. In Rush Adventure, we came to Blaze's world and the only human that appear in the game is the villain Eggman Nega. All the other NPCs and characters are anthropomorphic animals. If Blaze's dimension is a parallel world to Sonic's, it needs to be similar. The concept of parallel worlds are different realities that are similar but have slightly differences in the history, geographic and other aspects. So, if Blaze's world is inhabited mostly by anthropomorphic animals, so is the Sonic's world. Sonic Forces hints the two worlds: Sonic Forces featured a world map that doesn't have any similarities with the Earth world map of Sonic Unleashed. According to the lead art director of Sonic Forces, Yoshitaka Miura, the game was artistically designed to look like an alien world different from Earth, and he put a misterious alien language in the buildings and billboards of stages such as Sunset Heights. The Lost Hex from Sonic Lost World is located in the sky of the Sonic's world I think the Lost Hex isn't located on Earth because of the cartoony art style. Also, the deadly six always appear in the IDW series that happens in the anthropomorphic animals' world. That makes me believe that the Lost Hex is closer to the Sonic's world than it's from the Earth. The two world thing is no more? Ian Flynn said in a more recent episode of the same podcast that we don't need to worry about the two worlds concept anymore. He said we can't say why yet, though. Some people are speculating that maybe he created a different retcon that replaced the two world concepts entirely now that he is involved in the Sonic Encyclo-Speed-Ia. We will only know when the book comes out.

Hi guys^^. This is the topic I wanted to create a long time ago. It's not based on the "themes of the adventure era" topic but has some similar intersecting things. Now, time to explain myself. There's something that has been bothering me for quite a while. I tend to notice that recent Sonic games rely too much on the past. I'm not quite talking about Sonic 4 and all that rehashed stuff, but about other aspects of the franchise, the first of them being - The STAGES Pretty much all the iconic locations or those that have some role in the overall story are either from Classic games (Green Hill, Ice Cap, Angel Island, Hidden Palace, Sky Sanctuary, Death Egg) or from the adventure era (Station Square, Mystic Ruins, Lost World, Egg Carrier, Master Emerald Altar, Metal Harbor, The Ark). These are the locations that appeared either more than once due to their importance to the story or are just iconic levels from the past. I can't remember a single stage from newer games that is equally important to the universe. And that's because the games now don't really have the LORE anymore and that brings me to the next point being - The LORE The lore was created and established in the Classic games and games before Sonic the hedgehog 2006, but then it just kinda died. Again, every important location is either from the Classic games or from the Adventure era, but it's not only the stages. It's the events as well. - The whole Death Egg saga (That has some kind of connections between Classic games and Sonic adventure). That was in the Classic games. - The story of the Knuckles'/Tikal's tribe and the story of Chaos - Sonic adventure, Sonic Chronicles - The whole Ark saga. Now this is just as huge as the Death Egg saga if not even more huge. - Sonic adventure 2, Sonic battle, Sonic heroes (Shadow being the connection), Shadow the hedgehog - The events connected with Emerl - Sonic battle, Sonic advance 3, Sonic chronicles(I know it's not canon but still..) - The whole Blaze story. - Sonic Rush, Sonic Rush Adventure. These games told us pretty much everything we know about Blaze. Again, I can't remember a single part of the modern lore (if there IS lore now), that could have such big influence on the further development of the universe. Every single event happened in S06 was erased from time, every single event from Unleashed was forgotten in the next game, in Colors there was actually no back story like in Sa/Sa2/Shth/Sbattle etc.. and generations is just one giant plot hole, a giant dump of past events that either don't have any connections with other games or even contradict each other (Blaze) But that's not everything. - VOCAL CHARACTER THEMES This is something that I just hate now. Every time they use a character song, it's either a song from Sonic adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 or Shadow the hedgehog, in other words, from games of the past. There hasn't been ANY new character theme from 2006. Yes, those themes are amazing and it's good to not forget about them, but back in times of the Adventure era EVERY new game had new character themes and it was freaking awesome! And some characters don't even have a character vocal theme yet (Blaze, Cream). I understand that it's due to "Sonic only" crap and because they are not playable and don't have any major importance to the story, but it sucks as well. And why not create a new character theme for Dr. Eggman? That music from S06 is not a vocal theme and again, it's from the game of the past. A lot of vocal themes are not even relevant anymore, because the characters had their development and those themes don't really fit them now. - RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CHARACTERS AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT This was established in the Adventure era as well. And while there was some major character development, they just screwed most of it like Tails being more independent (Sa, Sa2) or Knuckles not being stupid gullible guy. (Sa, Sa2), Amy not being a stalker bitch. There also were some hints towards relashioship between Knuckles and Rouge but they decided to pretty much forget about that. Now all relashionships between characters are just EXACTLY the same. There is no development in friendship between Shadow and Rouge, there is no development of Knuckles as a guardian of the M.E. etc. I think half of these problems are there because of the "Sonic only" shit, but the other half... To me it looks like the universe is stagnant. Every game has (almost) no connections to the next and that lead to the point that there are no events that are important to the development of the whole Sonic world, there is (almost) no character development and in some cases the characters even degraded, Iconic locations are all from the past, vocal character themes are also all from the past. While I think they are making big progress with the gameplay and style of the series, I'm pretty sure they just said "screw that" to everything else that made the Sonic Universe so interesting, rich and lively. I hope all this makes sense. I might make some mistakes or maybe not made myself clear enough, because it's a bit hard to make a post like that with so many thoughts in engslish. WOW, THAT was THE post xD Now, what do you guys think about all that?