#dragonballs

Namek Hours: MEETING THE GINYU FORCE!

A great and powerful usurper came to our home and began unleashing devastation in search for the artifacts long guarded by our people, and the ultimate power they held. An outsider would then come, following this threat, this tyrant, and in pursuing him would gather the artifacts of legend, aided by one of our people. The outsider would use their power themselves, and awaken to the prophesied transformation, into the warrior long spoken of in legend, driving off the tyrant and saving our people's legacy.

In terms of its role in Sonic's lore and story, Super Sonic isn't the narrative equivalent of Super Saiyan Goku, Hyper Sonic is.

THAT is why he's important. The games preceding 3K are building to this moment, and all the foreshadowing in Sonic 3K itself are about this mural, the Super Emeralds, and Hyper Sonic. NOT Super Sonic, HYPER Sonic.

And yeah I KNOW Dragonball isn't Sonic's only influence, and it has a lot in common, possibly MORE with stuff like Lupin III and Yu Yu Hakushou, but this is ABSOLUTELY what they're doing with this. All the commonalities between the Chaos Emeralds and the Dragonballs, the Echidna tribe and the Namekians, Eggman and Frieza, Sonic and Goku, Knuckles and Piccolo, it is NOT an accident that this is the story they told so soon after it happened in Dragonball.

And I want to stress, Sonic is NOT just Mickey Mouse Dragonball, but come on. They wore their influences on their sleeves SO much in this era of the series. So blatantly you can pinpoint precisely what is being referenced almost any time they do it. Death Egg=Death Star, Angel Island=Laputa, and YES, the Chaos Emeralds = the Dragonballs. They've even got bigger, more powerful ones on the home of their guardians because Angel Island ALSO = Namek.

It's the single most important moment in the entire Sonic series. More important than Gerald and the ARK. More important than Tikal and Chaos.

You can maybe remove Hyper Sonic from the games, get away from the power creep of it (which is dumb, that's not how power creep works, but whatever), but if you want to keep Hidden Palace and Doomsday Zone in the story, this is what it has to be. This is what it IS, you can't remove Hyper Sonic from the STORY of Sonic 3K. Part of the reason Sonic starts the game in Super form is to foreshadow his growth. The mural doesn't even make sense in light of that. It doesn't MEAN anything if it's prophesying Super Sonic fighting Eggman, he already DID that at the end of Sonic 2, and then again at the end of the first half of 3K when you fight Big Arms (because the canon sequence of events is that you lose the Emeralds to the Hidden Palace shrine after going through the giant ring in Mushroom Hill. Sonic and Tails find Knuckles guarding a secret passage at the start of the stage before getting warped there).

What I'm saying, is that Hyper Sonic should be included in lore stuff. They should talk about it somehow. My preference is that Hyper Sonic comes back to the games fully as an unlockable transformation via special stages (and those should come back too, even in 3D), but even without that, this was a major event in the lore that had a drastic impact on the setting going forward. The story built around it INTRODUCED KNUCKLES AND ANGEL ISLAND. And the story IS built entirely around it. In the same way the Frieza Saga is built around Goku's transformation, all encounters and plot beats leading up it.

“WE PULLIN’ UP” 9” x 12” —

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