I hope so. I dearly hope so.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Holy shit. Man, the Sonic franchise has been firing on all cylinders over 2022/23.
IDW comic spoiler from something from last year: Maybe I'm in denial, but why don't I believe Starline is dead? He was physically and emotionally defeated, and Belle watched him get crushed. He doesn't have heightened physical capabilities that we know of, and couldn't warp out of there. But... I think it's because we know being crushed by debris doesn't have a great track record of actually killing people, and we know he added regenerative abilities to Surge and Kit, so it's reasonable to believe he could've added them to himself. Plus, he's too interesting a character to completely write out.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Apr 6th 2023 at 4:00:50 AM
I Ts not an exaggeration to say Sonic is probably more known for its characters and world than its gameplay at this point.
That might personally bother me, but it goes to show how loved the cast is.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Let SEGA actually keep expanding the world for once...
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.Yeah, one of the major issues I had with how SEGA had been handling Sonic's world was that they barely explained anything about how Sonic's world works. This was something that I think that the Archie comics did very well in explaining about how Mobius worked as a world, although that's now non canon.
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!Sonic The Comic kept the idea of Zones but expanded it too. For example the Emerald Hill Zone had the game area, a coastline area, The Emerald Hill Village area, a swamp area, two hidden underground labs with a huge dragon hibernating under one of them till the Freedom Fighters accidentally woke him a thousand years too early. Casino night Zone, Metropolis Zone became City Zones. They made new Zones like Stone Tower Zone and new areas like Megopolis City the ancient abandoned city of the Echidnas.
"May your heart be your guiding key"
Which became a whole universe with inhabited planets, suns, asteroids, Robotnik's giant Egg shaped Egg Fortress, The Hive where Charmy is from that can create gold, plus the weird part you see in the games Special Zone.
Edited by neoamon on Apr 6th 2023 at 12:39:30 PM
"May your heart be your guiding key"Out of curiosity from seeing people on different sites argue over the relevancy of Sonic characters before, I decided to take a tally of how many games every Sonic character (that I thought to keep track of) has appeared in. Here's what I got.
- Eggman - 63 games
- Sonic - 62 games
- Tails - 57 games
- Knuckles - 47 games
- Amy - 41 games
- Shadow, Metal Sonic - 27 games
- Rouge - 21 games
- Cream - 19 games
- Blaze, Silver, Omochao - 17 games
- Vector - 16 games
- Espio - 14 games
- Charmy, Big - 12 games
- Omega, Orbot, Cubot - 11 games
- Eggman Nega, Jet - 9 games
- Zavok - 5 games
- Fang, Wave, Tikal, Chaos - 4 games
- Mighty, Gamma, Vanilla, Storm, Zazz - 3 games
- Ray, Bean, Bark, Emerl/Gemerl, Sage - 2 games
- Honey, Marine, Shade, Infinite, the rest of the Zetis - 1 game
Here's another set of data I got by making an "appearance rate" for each character, basically just a fraction of how many games they've appeared in out of how many games have been made since they first appeared (ie. how many games they hypothetically could of been in). This changes things by giving more bias towards more recent character. You could think of it as roughly a relevancy rating with a bias for more recent games, or roughly a rate of how often the creators thought to use a character.
- Eggman - 95.45% (63/66)
- Sonic - 93.94% (62/66)
- Tails - 89.06% (57/64)
- Knuckles - 82.46% (47/57)
- Amy - 67.21% (41/61)
- Shadow - 65.85% (27/41)
- Orbot & Cubot - 61.11% (11/18)
- Silver - 54.84% (17/31)
- Blaze - 51.52% (17/33)
- Rouge - 51.22% (21/41)
- Cream - 48.72% (19/39)
- Metal Sonic - 44.26% (27/61)
- Zavok - 41.67% (5/12)
- Omochao - 41.46% (17/41)
- Sticks - 40.00% (4/10)
- Vector - 30.77% (16/52)
- Omega - 30.56% (11/36)
- Jet - 28.13% (9/32)
- Big - 27.27% (12/44)
- Eggman Nega - 27.27% (9/33)
- Espio - 26.92% (14/52)
- Zazz - 25.00% (3/12)
- Charmy - 23.08% (12/52)
- Wave - 12.50% (4/32)
- Storm - 9.38% (3/32)
- Tikal & Chaos - 9.09% (4/44)
- the rest of the Zetis - 8.33% (1/12)
- Vanilla - 7.69% (3/39)
- Fang - 7.41% (4/54)
- Gamma - 6.82% (3/44)
- Emerl/Gemerl - 5.41% (2/37)
- Mighty - 4.84% (3/62)
- Bean & Bark - 4.17% (2/48)
- Shade - 4.17% (1/24)
- Marine - 3.57% (1/28)
- Ray - 3.23% (2/62)
- Honey - 2.08% (1/48)
This isn't the most rigorous count possible since no regard has been given to how relevant they were in each individual game, they could have been playable or a cameo and it would count as 1 game appearance, but the hard data is still interesting to look at none the less. Do with this information what you want.
No, they haven't. Note that while a cameo is fine, the character had to actually appear in the flesh for it to count, not just a picture of them in a menu. Emerl is technically in Rivals 2, but only as a picture on a collectable card. Same thing with an Advance 3 artwork of Gemerl appearing in 3DS Generations, or an Emerl Mii costume being in some of the Olympics games.
Huh, I was planning on doing exactly this. Thanks for the effort!
My take away from this is that Shadow really left Rouge in the dust when they were introduced in the same game. Blaze despite being introduced later manages to do just as well as Rouge. Cream isn't doing nearly as badly as I thought. And gosh I get why Metal's fans are so protective of him. Boy got introduced the same time as Amy and yet is 12th.
I'm still amazed by how big a push Silver got.
Team Chaotix really have spent their time on the edges of the franchise.
Edited by Whowho on Apr 7th 2023 at 10:36:49 AM
I don't think there's ever been a game with Rouge in it that didn't have Shadow in it as well. The opposite was true for a while, but starting in the late 2000s there started to be games with Shadow and no Rouge. Something that stands out to me particularly is that the first Olympics game didn't have Rouge in it at all, and most later ones only have her as an unplayable opponent. She's the only central cast member to not be a regular playable character in that series. Instead, it feels like she mostly didn't make the cut because they made Vector a regular playable character so the Sonic side would have another Power-type character other than Knuckles.
I'm still amazed by how big a push Silver got.
Despite their positions making them difficult to work into mainline game plots, Blaze and Silver have basically perfect attendance in any multiplayer game (ie. the racing and Olympics games, and even the multiplayer modes in Secret Rings and Black Knight), so that really keeps them steady on the outer edge of being central cast members.
I hadn't noticed it before, but there was actually a pretty long streak of games in the early to mid 2000s from Advance 2 (2002) to Riders (2006) where Cream was in every single game. That really buffs her numbers up, because her appearances became more infrequent after that. Once we were in the 2010s, Cream's numbers are only being kept afloat from her having minor appearances in the Olympics games. The last major appearance was Generations more than a decade ago at this point.
Funny enough, it did still take until Cream getting stiffed from Team Sonic Racing for Rouge's total game appearances to surpass Cream's.
I was keeping track of games by decade too, and the 2000s were the period Metal Sonic really didn't appear. He actually had slightly more appearances in the 90s than Amy (7 games vs 6). For reference in the 2000s there were 22 Sonic games by my count. Metal Sonic was in only 6 of them, while Amy was in 20 of them (the only 2 games she wasn't in at all where Rivals 2 and Rush Adventure). In the 2010s he started to show up a lot more often and that still seems to be going. The combination of all the nostalgia-based games (Sonic 4, Generations, Mania), asset reuse (Forces...), and him becoming a regular playable character in the racing and Olympics games means he's been very regular in appearing.
Their rating is kind of hurt by their long-ish absence between their first appearance and their reintroduction in Heroes. And then they're just kind of on the outer edge of the central cast in general. Something I find a bit funny is that earlier on Espio seemed like the more favored of the bunch - he got to be a playable character in Fighters and Rivals 2 - but then at some point Vector sort of took that spot, between him being a regular in the Olympics games while Espio is at best an NPC opponent, and Vector filling in missing Power roles in racing teams (he did it for Team Rose in Free Riders, and then again for Blaze and Silver in Team Sonic Racing).
Rouge's inclusion in Sonic Prime makes me think we might get a Rouge come back in the near future. I'd also expect her to make an appearance in the Sonic films at some point, one because the cast is in need of female heroes, and two because Knuckles is getting his own spin off and he pairs really well with her.
Maybe I'm wrong though.
Really I'm curious what's going to happen in Twitter Take Over #7 as they usually have an additional guest each time.
My gut tells me that Rouge makes the most sense in that seventh spot, but that's my bias as a pre-2005 fan showing. Silver or Blaze wouldn't be out of the question if they had an upcoming video game or media appearance to tie into it.
On a different note, my favourite character, Chaos, was near utterly forgotten immediately after their introduction. Makes me wonder about that timeline in which Chaos was revived rather than Shadow for Sonic Heroes.
Chaos had a very conclusive story, and the time they tried to use him, it fell out of place. Usually we only see him as Perfect Chaos than regular Chaos.
Chaos, like Metal Sonic, suffers the "how do we write a mute character syndrome". Hell, it was impossible to write him in Battle. Not surprising Shadow became a mainstay, he can speak in edgy talk.
Edited by Tomodachi on Apr 7th 2023 at 6:55:31 AM
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.

The small team spent a year making it, so it's pretty serious as is. But a bigger staff would really be something.