What If Sonic Lost His Memory?

''During the events of SA2, Sonic falls to Earth in place of Shadow, sacrificing himself to save the world. With no memory of his past, Sonic sets out to uncover the truth of who he is. However, the appearance of a certain grey hedgehog spells looming disaster for the future of Sonic's World. What could this disaster be? And how does it tie to the amnesiac Sonic?''

History
What If Sonic Lost His Memory started it's run on the 11th of January 2020 as the third What If series, following up the newly debuted What If Emerl Survived with a much wider reaching and more common question: What if instead of Shadow losing his memory after Sonic Adventure 2's conclusion, it was Sonic? This prompt is one as old as the very game it's based on and was inspired by a famous audio drama by shadow759, to the point that The Sega Scourge used it as the jumping off point of the story.

Premise
The premise for #WI03 is simple: During the finale of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic uses his full power during the combined Chaos Control to stop the Space Colony: ARK from crashing into Earth. By going all out without regard for his safety, Sonic was able to fully return the ARK back to it's proper place in orbit at the cost of all his energy. He fell to the planet below and crashed, filling Shadow with the resolve to protect the planet that Sonic and Maria both loved dearly.

Prologue (Sonic Adventure 2)

 * What If Sonic Lost His Memory? Part 1
 * What if? Sonic Died? And Shadow Lived? (by shadow759)

Shadow Heroes Arc

 * What If Sonic Lost His Memory? Part 1

Sonic Memories Arc

 * What If Sonic Lost His Memory? Part 2
 * What If Sonic Lost His Memory? Part 3
 * What If Sonic Lost His Memory? Part 4

Reception
What If Sonic Lost His Memory has dominated each and every poll it's been featured in, always putting it at the top of the production order for a new wave of Sonic: What If? episodes. On the first community poll. it claimed 51% of all total votes which is the highest amount ever given to a specific series and almost every video posted by The Sega Scourge has at least a handful of comments requesting the next installment of the story - even if the video is unrelated to #WI03 or Sonic: What If? entirely.

Trivia

 * What If Sonic Lost His Memory? Part 2 made multiple firsts for the show as a whole.
 * It was the first episode to use the Casino Night backdrop after the first wave of episodes used the original pale blue one.
 * It was the first Sonic: What If? episode to be released using YouTube's Premiere feature, streaming the episode live at a pre-determined point for it's first showing before it becomes available as a regular upload.
 * It was the first installment to feature fully custom music, with a snippet of an original track by SinFrog made to accompany Amy's moment of melancholy after the escape from the crashing Egg Fleet.
 * Part 3 was the first episode to be partially scripted by someone else, having been worked on by Mechanist Gamma.
 * This What If featured the first instance of the character Silver the Hedgehog, and is the first story to have him use time travel to appear in a game that he did not originally appear in.
 * #WI03 is the first story to adapt the following games:
 * Sonic Heroes