I am convinced you are a stoner or a college student, or both.  

So would you prefer they go the Madden route?

it's seen more so as a benefit

By who? Ian's been taking the comics in a more game related direction, at least compared to how it was before. Many who wanted a Sonic cartoon didn't like SatAM, while people who came to the cartoon first, and those who didn't care about faithfulness so much, liked it for its relative quality.

Ultimately the important factor in how somebody reacts to media is whether they like it, not the reasons they come up with to rationalize why. If they made a game that was as good as Mario Galaxy, it would be well received regardless, see also a bad cartoon like Sonic Underground. Often the reasons stated by audiences are contradictory because most audiences aren't intelligent, introspective, and objective enough to state consistent rules defining what good means. Consider those who tell Sega that back to roots means make Sonic faster.

It seems to me like when the Sonic Adventure games "stray from the series' roots" it's considered a flaw, yet when SatAM and the Archie Sonic comics "stray from the series' roots" it's seen more so as a benefit.

They were too busy being attracted by Sally.

If you talk to some SEGA Sonic fans, they think the SatAM and the comics are a bunch of hooey.  But other fans who identify primarily with the games still appreciate the comics and/or the SatAM either as alternate universes or as fully-acceptable canon.  The same with those who consider themselves comic Sonic fans first.  Depending on how someone is introduced to Sonic, they may have different reactions when they encounter other versions of the character.

As long as people aren't jerks about their opinions and shoving them into the faces of others like it's the gosh-darned truth, then it's okay to consider the same idea (in this case "straying from the roots of the series") to apply differently to the games or the comics.  If the games and the comics were exactly the same, it'd probably be boring.

By who? Ian's been taking the comics in a more game related direction, at least compared to how it was before. Many who wanted a Sonic cartoon didn't like SatAM, while people who came to the cartoon first, and those who didn't care about faithfulness so much, liked it for its relative quality.

Ultimately the important factor in how somebody reacts to media is whether they like it, not the reasons they come up with to rationalize why. If they made a game that was as good as Mario Galaxy, it would be well received regardless, see also a bad cartoon like Sonic Underground. Often the reasons stated by audiences are contradictory because most audiences aren't intelligent, introspective, and objective enough to state consistentht rules defining what good means. Consider those who tell Sega that back to roots means make Sonic faster.

The impression I was getting was that divergence from the "origins" of the series seems less popular in the games than it is in other continuities. I don't know about where ArchieSonic is headed now, (haven't been following it since about issue 140 or so) but I was thinking more along the lines of the different approaches to deviance from past style expected of different continuities. If all of that is about rationalization, then that's the fault of those who are, well, rationalizing.

And SoaC, I happen to be a college student, but where did you get the impression I was a stoner? o.o

Can't speak for anyone else, but personally I just take the best bits of any franchise I find and make up my own little universe to keep myself occupied. In my case that primarily sticks to game cannon, but does also have a few ideas from various comics etc, and even has a great big chunk of my own imagination in there too.

In terms of comics and cartoons - yes, what others have said so far is pretty true, it's the job of such media to go to different places and set up their own universe, influenced but not nessecarily sticking rigedly to the continuity that inspired them. And then it's up to the fans to decide wether they like that or not, and choose wether to subscribe to it or to avoid it. If not, they should simply view it as 'another take' on the world and leave it to those who do like it.

Games, though, are a different story, because they're much more involving and by extension have a lot more involved in them. Yes, a game has to try new things, but it cannot afford to do that at the expense of what made it's predecessors great. I hate it when you get a sequel to a game that has absolutely nothing of it's preceeding title incorperated into it, and all the things I liked about the original have been lost or changed. That being said, I also dislike getting a game only to find it's exactly the same as it's predecessor, only with different cover art on the box - there's got to be at least something new in there, otherwise you may as well just stick with the original.

EA Games have a history of the latter extreme, what with NFS Carbon rushed out on the back of Most Wanted, and Burnout Dominator (made even without the consent of Burnout's creators, Criterion!) made to cash in on Burnout Takedown and Revenge - both of these games brought little new material to the table, borrowed huge suathes of their predecessors to fill disk space, and were utterly dire.

Sonic, on the other hand, is an example of the former. It's evolved too far from it's roots, so much so that there's little left to identify it any more. As mentioned above, precisely what those roots are (they need to be defined to stand any chance of recapturing them) is a bit of a mystery, and many fans will have different opinions. But the majority will agree that the later games have lost too much of the original flair, whatever that original flair was, to live up to the legacy.

It seems to me like when the Sonic Adventure games "stray from the series' roots" it's considered a flaw, yet when SatAM and the Archie Sonic comics "stray from the series' roots" it's seen more so as a benefit.

They were too busy being attracted by Sally.

I TAKE EXCEPTION TO THAT!

...Julie-Su is where it's at! <3

It seems to me like when the Sonic Adventure games "stray from the series' roots" it's considered a flaw, yet when SatAM and the Archie Sonic comics "stray from the series' roots" it's seen more so as a benefit.

They were too busy being attracted by Sally.

I TAKE EXCEPTION TO THAT!

...Julie-Su is where it's at! <3

My apologies then.

They're two separate universes for me. I enjoy(ed) the games because of their awesomicity. With AoStH, I dug it because, "WOW, Sonic cartoon!", but I hated it because... well, it sucked, regardless of the awesome in-jokes and memes that would pop up later in life with the interwebs. SatAM, for me, was amazing, because it took what I loved and gave it a root, so to speak, and expanded on it. I came to a realization that this was pretty awesome because they did a great job of it, and accepted it as canon IN ITS OWN UNIVERSE AND PLEDGED THAT A GAME BASED ON SATAM WOULD BE THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD.

Then Archie grabbed it and built upon that house to make it better... then worse... then Gary, Indiana... then a little better... and now we hear that Godzilla, who originally destroyed this beautiful house, may be coming back to take a giant steaming pile on that house again, but those who rebuilt it are telling us not to worry, because THEY GOT DIS.

How you like DEM apples for an analogy?

And no, I don't fap to the Sallys or the Julies or to whatever that yellow thing with boots and boobs names is, or any other femme character is in the books.

I'm probably barking up the wrong tree here, but I don't think this is a very healthy issue to care too much about. I say that as someone who once cared about this issue an awful lot.

Some backstory here, feel free to tl;dr this.

I first started posting here toward the end of high school, I had just re-discovered the Archie comic, having bought issues 1-90 as well as all of the super specials and the entirety of the Knuckles series at Jim Hanley's Universe in New York City (which if you've never been is one of the most amazing comic book shops in the world. It's like the size of a Wal-Mart and nothing but comics).

At the time, I was very upset with the idea of people wanting the comics to be more in line with the game. I liked the world the comics had built, particularly the echidna society on the floating island, and I didn't like the idea of abandoning that. I think I even participated in a few debates on this topic in the Knothole Forum, which was the first place I ever posted in on the Mofo.

I didn't care much about the games universe because I actually didn't play the games much, and what little I did play of the games, I couldn't digest much story from. You played a blue hedgehog. You jumped on robots, you fought a guy who was a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and that guy on the dia-beetus commercials. They were fun games, and I played them because they were fun games, not because the story pulled me in.

That was years ago. I stopped reading the comic around #125 when I couldn't find a comic book shop that carried it after I moved to Philadelphia. I stopped following news shortly after. I heard about Ian writing for the comic, which I thought was awesome because I knew his work with Other-M and knew he was a good writer.

Okay, you can wake up, I think I'm getting to the point here.

Now that I have some distance from those arguments, they seem very silly and minor to me. I was making them from a perspective of a fan. If you look at it from a business perspective, for both Archie and Sega it's very understanding why they would want to unify the continuity. It's hard to bring in new readers when there are oodles and oodles of backstory to learn. It's the same reason Marvel created the Ultimate continuity (which I think has gotten some unfair criticism recently). As a fan, I think the best thing you can do is make your opinion known, give the creative people behind the book a fair chance to make an interesting product, and then shrug your shoulders and say "Oh well" if you dislike the outcome.

I got some enjoyment from the comics, but it's not like they were a formative part of my life. They were light entertainment, and I don't think taking them as anything besides light entertainment is healthy. Any reaction besides "mild disappointment" is an overreaction.

Sonic used to be cool because he was blue and small and you had to move your eyes to experience him. Also he had a cute, determined little face.

People are simpler than you realize.