When you have video game franchises that last a long time, you have to do various things to ensure they keep improving so that gamers will keep wanting to play them. When those long franchises have interconnected stories that build upon one another in either big ways or loose ways, you need to ensure that the “timeline” is rather clear so that gamers won’t get confused. Obviously, some franchises don’t do this that well, and others are ones you wouldn’t think about needing a “timeline” at all. With Sonic The Hedgehog, you might not feel it “has the need” to spell everything out story-wise, as the games don’t always rely on that to make the titles fun.
Yet, SEGA decided that it was going to do it anyway! So, on SEGA’s official website, a full-on timeline of the franchise, including many of the spinoff games, has been labeled and managed so that even the smallest elements of the timeline can be explained. At first, it might seem a bit overwhelming that SEGA would do things as they did. However, when you read all the explanations, you’ll understand that this is more like fitting pieces of a puzzle together and that it ends up being a nice information dump about just how much lore is in Sonic’s franchise in the first place.
Sonic The Hedgehog’s games have tackled various periods of history and taken on many spinoffs, which is why it’s fascinating to see many of them here on this timeline for all to see, all the way up to the latest main game, which introduced new lore and characters, like with Sage, to show just how far everything has become. That game was vital in helping Sonic’s franchise rebound within the games, and SEGA is hard at work with its follow-up. Thus, there will be more lore in the future that will fit onto this timeline.
Now, obviously, this is just the game’s timeline; this doesn’t cover the other timelines and even universes that Sonic has been a part of. For example, the live-action movies have an entirely different timeline and universe due to how Sonic and Co. interact with humans on the regular and have slightly different origins. Then, there’s the comics, like with IDW, which went much deeper with the lore, had an even more expanded cast, and are still going today! The cartoons/animated series are also not part of this.
Even without them, it does highlight how grand Sonic’s story has been over the decades.