An abandoned research site. Art by Richard Elson.
New Zones are areas on Mobius created after the planet merged with Shanazar. Although the Zones were added to Mobius' geography, they could only be visited through certain gateways, such as the Ring of Eternity.
These same portals could also lead to parallel universes and to Earth.
Sonic the Hedgehog, Amy Rose, and Tekno investigated a number of these Zones and portals in the Time Zone story arc. While Sonic initially sounded like he was doing it for fun, in Splitzoid Amy said that they'd been worried that people from the other side of the portals might try to attack Mobius. This happened twice: the aforementioned Splitzoid attack and the alien Set.
List of Zones[]
- Superzone, a city filled with superheroes.
- A scientific research base taken over by Doctor Robotnik.
- It is possible the Secret Zone is one.
Behind the scenes[]
In practice, the New Zones hardly ever turned up: of the seven times the portals were used, only three times did they go to a New Zone and two of those were the same New Zone (Robotnik's base). Sonic went to Earth three times and a parallel dimension - King Sonic's universe - once.
In an interview with Edward Reynolds, Lew Stringer explained how the New Zones work: "The way I see it, Mobius is physically the same as it was. The new zones, imported from Shanazar, exist in a pocket dimension, and can only be entered via various portals (of which the Eternity Ring is one). So Mobius has been redesigned, in the same way a computer is upgraded, but still operates the same way albeit with extras. There you go - clear as mud!"
When Nigel Kitching returned to the comic from Issue 175, the New Zone plotline was dropped. The portals turned up again in "The Battle for Mobius" in STC-O: Tom's Portal & Gift Store was selling access to them.