Sonic Periodic Table
You know this has got to be one of the most awesome things you’ve ever seen if you’re a Sonic fan. Yes, I got really bored. What can I say? It’s a Sonic Character from all media (Archie, Fleetway, X, Underground, SatAm, AoStH, OVA, the games, etc.) 10 points to whoever can guess “No” is. Catch you all later. Remember to check out ASSC Studios in the mean time for our comics, movies, and Sonic Information.
-Jay
So you want to make some sense of the Sonic games and set them up in some sort of timeline in an order that would make sense “chronologically.” Chronologically in quotes of course because games would be from the point of view of characters in Sonic Universe not ours. So you want to make this timeline to make sense of everything. You decide to start weeding through the gazillion and a half Sonic games to weed out anything “non-canon.” You take out the obvious ones like Wacky Worlds, Sega Superstars, all the cameos, most of the cell phone games, remakes, etc., etc., etc. But then what’s this? You come to Sonic Spinball and you think to yourself, “Well this can’t be canon because it’s set on ‘Mobius.’” We all know that the different comic continuities are different from that of the games’ and after Sonic Adventure the Western games no longer took place on said planet. (Though there’s not necessary much proof of most of the games before Sonic Adventure in the West technically taking place on Mobius either but that’s another issue up for debate at another time). So you continue on with your creating your timeline (and that’s exactly what is, your timeline as SEGA/Sonic Team have never released an official in-game chronology though Sonic Chronicles came close in some areas). You start putting the games in order Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic CD. Sonic CD? (Speaking of problems). That game came out between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 but it’s to take place before it because of Tails and sprites and other issues. Well let’s check out the game manual to see if it gives any clues. So you open up the manual or read it online and what do you see? Well if you’re reading the English manual you’re going to see that Amy refers to the planet she is on as “Mobius.” Mobius? But that would mean Sonic CD isn’t “canon.” Now we begin to run in to what is known as the “Mobius Problem.” Now the real question is what to do about it?
If you’re really advent on creating a sensible timeline based on the “canon games” (Sonic Adventure and afterwards) this would be the easiest thing to do. If you ignore all the games that mention Mobius your timeline is now going to be that much smaller and easier to do. This would resolve any issues dealing with Sonic Spinball and Mean Bean Machine right away. Going through your timeline you now notice you’re going to have to take away Triple Trouble. Really not much a big loss there unless you’re a big Fang fan, also I’m assuming you’re just relying on English manuals and not using anything Japanese or relying on both to put everything together.
Really though taking out these games may be kind of silly? You may ask why because we all know Sonic’s world isn’t Mobius, it’s Earth, or at least called Earth. Listen if the “Mobius games” aren’t canon or official or whatever word you want to us for it then why does Sonic Central list them on their website? I know what you’re thinking that Sonic Central also has listed compilations and various arcade games (Spinner types of arcade games not Fighters types of arcade games I’m talking about) so granted that does not technically make these games “canon” as well but it’s got to mean something.
The Mobius vs Earth debate is probably one of the biggest arguments in the Sonic community. Archie Comics even eventually retconned its storyline and made Mobius Earth, our Earth, from the way distant future, like 1300 years or some ridiculous amount. Once again what applies in Archie does not apply to the games, though I think Ian Flynn really should make the plot or storyline for the next game because he’s been doing such a great job with the comics but that too is a different story for a different day. So getting back to Mobius vs Earth let’s think about it this way:
For this I’m assuming that a majority of the people coming to this website is from English speaking nations or knows how to speak English. In English we refer to the planet we are living on as “Earth.” But at the same time in English we can also refer to the planet we’re on as “World” (a term less used thanks to science fiction). Another term applied to this planet in English is “Mother Earth.” Now let’s look at beyond English. In Roman mythology the goddess of the plant was Tellus whose Greek equivalent was Gaia (no not that Gaia). In Romanian Pamint, in German Erde, Dutch Aarde, Swedish Jorden, Norwegian Jorda, Finnish Maa, Albanian Toka, Japanese Chikyuu, Spanish Tierra, French Terre, Latin we’re on Terra (also called Terra Firma), and in Klingon tera’. So who’s to say any of these peoples are wrong when calling the planet we’re on now what they do. All right maybe we shouldn’t listen to the Klingons because they’re from Qo’nos and hey look we call it Kronos.
What I’m trying to point out here is that though we live on Earth in England across the Channel we’re now on Terre, we head east and we’re in Erde, and then north were in Jorden. There are many different names for the planet. Assumedly Sonic’s “Earth” is the same size as our Earth meaning it’s quite possible that there are different languages and dialects meaning that it is quite possible for the planet Sonic is on is going to be called Earth in some areas and Mobius in others. So if in the next game they change the name of the planet to Halukomako or something stupid like that it’s still Earth and at the same time it’s still Mobius. Earth is just what a majority of the citizens of that planet call it just like on our Earth it’s…Terra (or some similar variant of).
Don’t like what I said or have something to add? Drop me a line at jay@asscvx.net Just to warn you in advance though if I find your email to be mean or spiteful or whatever I’m going to ignore it (or post it on the front page where I will humiliate you). So please be calm and respectful when you email me, if you’re not going to be then I really don’t care what you have to say.
All right I have only one chapter left in Sonic Chronicles. When I finish the game I will give my third impression. I know it’s been out for awhile now and I should probably be finished with it right now but in this game you really need to remember to level up, a fact I always forget to do. Like most RPGs it takes forever to level up. But that’s an RPG thing not a Sonic thing so I’m not going to hold that against Sonic Team or Bioware or this game. The story is solid. Anyone who says otherwise needs to have their head examined. Bioware did an excellent job with creating this storyline it’s easy to follow, very exciting, and makes you want to keep playing. It’s like crack. Bioware also did a good job with including elements from past games and to go out of their way to make sure these elements make sense and don’t contradict each other. There’s references to Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Battle, Sonic Advance 3, and probably some other games and they smoothed and connected all of these other games out perfectly and connected them to this game even more perfectly. There’s only one major flaw in this game, only one which is pretty good for a Sonic game if you look back to all the non-handheld games that have come out since Sonic Adventure 2. This flaw is that it is evident that the Bioware staff do not understand basic math. Usually when you subtract something and add what you subtracted to something else that number stays the same or it can be less. For example you have 200 of something, let’s say apples. You take 20 of these apples away and you can drop anywhere from 0 to 20 of these apples in another apple bushel. Well in Sonic Chronicles for some reason when you or an enemy take away 20 HP via an HP draining ability that character can be recovered by anywhere from 0% to 100%. In other words if a character has 200hp and 20 hp is drained from that character the character that drained the hp shouldn’t gain any more than 20 hp if we apply the rules of basic math. Apparently no one ever told the Bioware staff this as for some reason when a character drains 20 hp they can be restored by 200 hp. It’s great when it happens to one of your characters but it’s annoying as hell when you’ve been at a battle for five rounds and can’t KO an opponent because they’re down to 10 hp, drain 20 hp from your character, and are then fully healed by magically turning 20 into 300. And I had such high hopes for Canadians too *sigh* oh well. All and all this is a good game. Generally the newer handheld games have yet to disappoint and Chronicles defiantly keeps this up. I would have to say that this is now my second favorite Sonic game, the first of course being Sonic 2. Nothing could ever top Sonic 2 unless of course they reinvent the series and make a 3D version of the Death Egg Saga (Sonic2-Knuckles) and kept it EXACTLY as the Genesis games were. But that would never happen.
All right so I’m back in charge of the website, hurray! I was gone for close to two months and from the “hints” that were put up on the website throughout October indicated I was going to come back on October 25 but I didn’t officially make my come back until November 21 the day after the Marvelous Land of Schnoz was released. Before I get into the reason why it was so delayed with returning let me first explain why I left. Really it’s a stupid reason, there are a lot of more serious reasons that I could have left for, some of which occurred while I was gone which is why it took so long for me to return after the October 25 return date. When I left in September I was really stressed out about school as it was. Every September it’s always very hard for me to adjust from doing nothing for three months then bam nothing but school for thirteen weeks straight until Thanksgiving. It was also the ending of “back to school” season at work (I work at Staples) so that too added to my stress levels. It was getting rather hard to maintain the website as well as working extended hours at work while maintaining my school work. I was also getting overly stressed about the election, more than I should have been because it was September, because at the point I think McCain was either ahead or gaining ground in the polls. Then one day I found out something that just made my stress levles snapped and I just couldn’t handle everything anymore. I had to give up something so I immediatly left the website until things cooled down. To make a long story short there was this girl that left in 2007 and when she did I kind of went a little crazy when she did (ok so that might be and understatment). If ASSC wasn’t down when she left I probably would have left then but since Kyle basically runs Blue Apple I didn’t have to leave I just had to put up with filming where I just breakdown in the middle filming and start laughing as seen in Numa Screw Up and in the second Mounties’ blooper reel. But yeah I went a little crazy then and a bunch of stuff happenned and I had to slowly piece together my life and it took me a little over a year to get everything back to normal and smoothed out. Then in September I come to find out that she was coming back and what was worse was that all my friends knew and didn’t bother telling me so I lost and I snapped so something had to give and that something was the website. So she came and went, never saw her though we did talk briefly. Things started to settle down. Work was giving me less hours because the economy was going down the toilet and I was able to have a steady pace with my schoolwork. Now it was time to decide to come back. I picked October 25 because I had a report due the 22 and figured I would give myself until the weekend after the report was due to come back. So Dan I staged this whole thing with the “hacker” and the “gremlin.” Just that Dan forgot to tell Kyle and the two started to go at it (at first I thought nothing of this as I had told Dan to tell Kyle to have the two of them “fight” over control of the site). So I had to explain everything to Kyle and he decided to follow everything. All right well my professor decided to extend the due date of the report for another week so as Dan and Kyle were finishing their preparations for the gremlin/hacker thing I was slacking off keeping with the election still instead of finishing my report. So the 25 was approaching so we “shut down” the site so it only linked to the Wizard of Schnoz promo so I could start and finish my report and Schnoz. I was going to finish it over that weekend but my dear cat Lillian who I had for so long and literally grew up with died, her liver failed and she died a painful, agonizing, horrible death…poor cat. So instead of doing my report and working on Schnoz I was too busy attempting to cope with my loss. Luckily there was that extra week to work on that report, right? So I took advantage of that extra time and worked on my report (which I managed to pull a B out of my ass on) instead of working on Schnoz. Now it was the final days of the election so I once again put off coming back. The election cam and Obama won and there was much rejoicing, we even filmed an Early Early Late Show but Kyle lost his camera so it won’t be uploaded until he finds it. He’s an English major so it’s probably buried under several rough drafts of one of his papers. So the election came and I did the whole ASSC is in the Land of Schnoz thing as I worked on Schnoz at Dan’s house because he had Flash and I did not. Due to our different schedules, though we work at the same company with the same job and title, I could only manage to work on Schnoz once a week for a few hours at Dan’s house. Finally I finished it and the rest is history. I hope I cleared everything up for everyone and I apologize for everything. Unfortunately the gremlin/hacker thing didn’t work out as planned as I was trying to get Alby involved without Kyle or Dan’s knowing (Dave was supposed to be involved too but he ignored all requests but Dan knew of Dave’s involvement). Like Dave Alby ignored me. It was supposed to be that I ended up being the “gremlin” and Alby ended up being the “hacker” which I tried to imply with the ending of the Marvelous Land of Schnoz. Oh well. It’s good to be back!
Shh, don’t tell Dan, Kyle, and Dave I’m here. I’m still not ready to officially come back to the website but I just got Sonic Chronicles today and figured I’d give you all my first impressions. So far the game seems good but it seems as though that Bioware has fallen into the same thing with this Sonic game that previous titles have. No I’m talking about bottomless pits as they’re kind of hard to have in an RPG (but I haven’t beaten the first chapter yet so only time will tell). I am talking about how right away there is some impossibly hard boss (ala Shadow the Hedgehog anyone?) Seriously, I had to reset my game because I spent a frigging hour on that damned Swatbot (awesome inclusion btw Bioware but aren’t you afraid some rabid game only fanboy is going to flame you for it) and it just kept kicking my ass thrice times over. So I went back and decided to boost Sonic and Amy up to like level 5 before I fight it again (just as a heads up for others who have just started I read on a forum somewhere of enemies called something like Swatbots MK II or something to that effect and they totally just roflolpw3n level 7 characters and I guess they’re in Metropolis when you visit it in Chapter 1). So yeah way to go Bioware for releasing yet another impossibly hard Sonic game (because Zero Gravity for the Wii and Secret Rings weren’t bad enough). Sonic’s gotta be cursed or something. It’s Bioware. They’re supposed to make good games! Though I’m not saying it’s bad just impossible there’s a difference. So Green Hill Zone is amazing and that’s all I can really say. After I finished playing for the night I decided to surf the interwebs to confirm some of my thoughts I’ve had reading while I was following Chronicles before its release as well as some questions I started asking myself while playing the little bit I did. I guess I know Sonic games too well as all my suspicions were correct. I’m not going to mention these in this post as they are major spoilers. However when I eventually come back to the website after I post why I was gone I’ll tell you the spoilers as most people will have it beat by then, me not being one of those people. What I will tell you from what I read is be nice to Amy and it apparently doesn’t matter if you’re a jerk to anyone else. My impressions so far is that it’s a good game probably the best game I’ve played since Sonic Advance 3, though Rush isn’t too it’s just filled with way too many bottomless pits for me! All right before I leave again let me just leave you with one last thing I’ve read which I’m sure many of you all ready know and if you didn’t know this I think you can still read as I don’t believe it’s much of a spoiler (especially if you visit Sonic Stadium on a regular basis). I guess the ending is a cliffhanger and ends with “To be continued” Bioware is all ready writing the script for the sequel and just need the green light from Sega and from what I’ve read the way they leave the game it totally voids the “continuity” that Bioware tried so hard to put in and explain. Oh well only time what will happen. Personally I don’t think it matters as this game is supposed to take place after every other game, did you not pay attention to the opening sequence? If I ever beat it I’ll give a full review as I progress I will give more reviews but the next one will not be until I officially come back to the site. Until then my friends.
-Jay
Figuring it’s September and the start of quarter 4 ‘08 I’ll give you all my thoughts of the two Sonic games expected this quarter. I’m going to start with Chronicles first as it comes out at the end of this month. Chronicles I am genuinely 110% excited for. In the mid to late ’90s I had gotten tired of the first set of crappy Sonic games that were coming out Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Blast and the million and one compilations that started to come out as well Jam, S & K Collection, and so on. So I decided to quit Sega and go with it’s long time rival Nintendo where I was introduced to the world of Pokemon via the first video game console I ever purchased with my own money, the GameBoy Pocket. Pokemon was a lot of introductions for me. Not only did me introduce me to Nintnedo (and well the world of Pokemon obviously) but it also introduced me to the RPG genre. Later that year I got a PlayStation for Christmas and so I decided to check out Final Fantasy VII and from then on I was hooked on RPGs though once and awhile I would still dust off my Genesis or dig it out of the garage or tool shed to play an old fashioned platform game. Over the years most of the other platforming games I had for Genesis were lost except for my Sonic games which is essentially all I have left. Throughout my years of RPG addiction I always thought that Sonic would be great/better if they made a Sonic RPG. Needless to say when they announced Chronicles it was a nerdgasm and a half. Everything I’ve seen and heard about Chronicles has been good. So I can’t wait for this game to come out. Chances are once it does no one will see me until I complete it as it’s the best of both worlds for me. Now Unleashed is another story. Responses were critical at best when Sega first announced this title. Then E3 came out and everyone was all “Yay Sonic Unleashed is one BA game.” Well now E3 is long over so we no longer have to put up with the Sega PR reps whose job is to MAKE their games seem good. I think that’s all E3 did for Unleashed. The PR reps made Unleashed look good so we all got excited, probably over excited, so no we’re going to be disappointed once it’s released as we have been since pretty much Sonic Heroes. The critical reviews are starting to surface again and thinking back to E3 the PR rep himself had a problem in playing the game because of the stupid bottomless pits Sonic Team has to put every where in their games. Seriously Sega before you address your crappy stories, voice acting (in some cases but not all), complex controls, camera issues, and minor technical glitches you should address the fact that your programmers and level designers are freaking lazy. One example is Sonic Rush. It’s a great game. The story is great, the voice acting isn’t that bad, the controls are simple, there’s no camera issues (because the background is 2D), and the controls are simple. However if you deviate even slightly off the main path you fall into a bottomless pit. The old platform games rarely had bottomless pits and if they did they were generally filled with spikes or lava or something that would kill you anyway but at least the programmers and level designers were doing something, now they’re just lazy. In Sonic 3 if you fall off the main path you end up on another path or if you go above the main path there’s another path. In Sonic and Secret Rings if you go off the main path you fall into a bottomless pit or are crushed by some obscure obstacle like a Triceratops. If you go above the main path you defiantly fall into a bottomless pit. Unleashed looks like it’s going to be the same issue. Don’t get me wrong the scenery looks beautiful as it has in all 3D Sonic games but I hate the fact that if there’s a city below me I fall into an endless pit of nothingness, which is the reason why I hate those stupid grind rails that are all over the place now. You know you’re pretty much screwed when you’re on a grind rail if you move your controller the wrong way it’s been that way since Sonic Adventure 2 when grinding was first introduced. If I want to go off the main path I should be allowed not punished, which is another reason why RPGs are great you can go off all the main paths you want and still end up where you want to. The camera issue also doesn’t look like it’s going to be a problem with Unleashed so hopefully we will actually see now when and why we’re falling to the bottomless pits. The voice acting, well the only character’s voice that I have a problem with that’s been announced for Unleashed is Shadow so that’s not too much of an issue for me this time around. Well I’ve totally killed my train of though so in conclusion Chronicles=yay Unleashed=eh.
Well August came and went with not much accomplished except for VX Kingdom. Yes I realized I didn’t update yesterday the last day in August but there was a reason why which will be addressed in a future blog. So with September comes school, tomorrow school starts actually. With my work schedule now set for the semester I know for a fact that ASSC Studios will be updated comic wise every Monday, Tuesday, and Wendesday though this will probably change come later in the sememester. Chances are that at least one of the weekend days there will be an update too and as always I make an exception to my updating rules when it comes to politicians screwing up. This month expect to see the return of Another Sonic Sprite Comic and the storyline I had started with it back in July. However if something comes up Sonic wise that needs to be addressed I will hault the storyline for that comic such as when Unleashed or Chronicles come out. And alwayse expect Bushed and Random Stupidity at random when something worth making fun of comes up. Good luck to all who have started school all ready.
Tomorrow is the last day of August so I’d figure I’d give the past month a review at ASSC Studios. Unfortunately Blue Apple never got around to filming any new Early Early Late Shows. To tell you the truth if none get filmed by election day the series will be cancelled. As for the music videos I promised well we started to film “That 70’s Ripoff” again but because we didn’t film until night the footage is crap and there are only 2 takes thus far. The character battle is going strong though it could be stronger. Also I really enjoyed doing VX Kingdom again however due to school starting Tuesday I have decided that from here on out that comic will be only updated on days I have off from school, and well if I’m really ambitious I’ll make several on days I’m off from school so it won’t be totally stale and random when it comes back. As for SIRF it started off strong now not so much. Chances are if the SSA start up any time soon more attention will be paid attention to SIRF. Now on to September!
August is almost hear which means summer will be over soon and it’ll be back to school and cold. But hey we still have 31 days and we’re going to make the best of it at ASSC Studios. Obviously we will continue with Bushed as our lame duck president just keeps getting lamer and ducker as the days go on. As you may have noticed a storyline has begun to unfold in Another Sonic Sprite Comic and Random Stupidity it will return September 1 because in August we will bring you a new VX Kingdom every day! On the note of Random Stupidity, for the month of August it will be back to it’s usual randomness and stupidness either based off of real life events or whatever pops into our heads. Now on to Blue Apple. The Mounties last episode of Season 2 will be July 23 and will not return until February 2009. So what’s Blue Apple to do? We are going to go back to music videos! This weekend we are going to attempt to reshoot “That 70s Ripoff” and “Anthem” (contact us for details if you wish to participate). There is also plans to shoot “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters. Also hopefully every Friday there will be a new Early Early Late Show for your enjoyment.
All right though I still don’t like the concept of this new Wii exclusive Sonic game it has been confirmed to be true. The idea and concept behind this game in my opinion isn’t all that good. First off weapons in a Sonic game were all ready tried and it didn’t end too well. Secondly it’s apparently going to be part of the “storybook series” that was started with Secret Rings. So you’re telling me that this whole being sucked into a famous book thing is now going to be a series? Great. I’ll still buy the game and if I think it sucks I’ll continue to complain about it as I do with Secret Rings, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow the Hedgehog. Oh well at least there’s Chronicles to look forward to and Unleashed is defiantly starting to look up. Plus there’s speculation of a Nintendo made title assumed for the DS as well as a “Sonic Next.” Only time will tell if these games are good. Regardless the end result will be Sonic Chronicles 2, Sonic Unleashed/World Adventure 2, and of course the third “chapter” in the storybook series. Stay tune to 2009-2011 to find out.
