This pages aim to create a timeline of the different events and stories that happens in the Sonic Universe, and how they relate to each other.
## What is canon ?
> Everything (except Chronicles) is canon
Sonic stories have this particularity which is that they operate on a loose canon basis. This have changed a bit since the 2020s as there is now some kind of "canon and lore comitee" in the Sonic IP, but it doesn't change one important part of how the Sonic canon operate : the canon is created by the different game, and games aren't created to "advance the canon". Each Sonic games (or show, etc) start from a concept, an idea and takes elements from the "canon" to create its story, most of the time creating a lot of the important elements "from scratch" THEN creating connections. It's why Iizuka explained one time that each Sonic game is in a "self-contained bubble".
It create a situation where the notion of "canon" is less restrictive than what we have often. We could argue about which version is the "right definition of canon", but TBH there is no right or wrong usage of canon as it's a pretty vague term. It's mostly an accepted convention by fans and sometimes author. It simply means "what is part of the official storyline". The english wikipedia article is quite good putting some nuance in the different usage of the term. It's mostly because "canon" is often thought as something binary (either something is canon or not) when stuff are often quite more complexe. Starwars had an interesting ways to handle that with its different tiers of canonicity. Sonic have its own, which mean that they tend to be canon related to each other even if it doesn't always completely "fit rights" (now if it's a good thing or a mess will be up to everybody, I'm kinda done arguing about that kind of things).
It's also how we have games like Colors DS and Colors Wii that have kinda different story. They're two visualisation of the same story.
## Content used
First, we have a "one dimension" outlook of the Classic and Modern series. The goal is to see their separation as just a separation of "brands", but still tied to just one continuity.
It makes that the following elements are used to create this timeline :
- Classic games
- Modern games
- The Sonic Team official animations or webcomics
- IDWSonic
- Sonic Prime
## Division and Era
This chronology is divided into four parts, one by "eras" plus one for the backstory. Here I use eras in a "chronological sense" (which mean that a game created to go in an era will go in it).
- Backstory : All the stories that happens before the games
- Classic : All the games happening before Sonic Adventure
- "Adventure" : All games happening between Sonic Adventure and before Unleashed
- Modern : All games since Unleashed
Now I aim to create a separation of "Modern" in "Boost" and "Frontiers" era, I just prefer to wait a bit before creating the division, when we'll have more content around.
