Those who aren’t as educated in the ways of the Sonic Franchise make one of many perplexing mistakes. They assume that Tails is SEGA’s whipping boy. The typical whipping boy is the abused character. The one under-developed, and dato little to nothing to do in anything, and portrayed in a simple-minded light.
I can understand how people have come to this conclusion. Tails is the sidekick of the main protagonist, Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s young, he’s not incredibly strong, and he’s a bit of a coward at times. But Tails is not SEGA’s whipping boy. Tails has appeared in nearly every Sonic game, if not every Sonic game, and has had multiple titles all to his own. He’s one of the trio, the closest friend of Sonic, and has actually acted in ways that progress plotlines.
… Then there’s Knuckles.
Originally I had planned to go over the entire GENESIS history of this character in every form of media he’s appeared in, but quite frankly that isn’t required, and it will only lead to tedius artificial lengthening. I’m here to state the issue so that’s what I’ll do. If I end up talking about some of his history that’s just because it’s relevant.
Knuckles has been ruined; simple as that. When we first met him, we were Super Sonic, blazing through a jungle, then suddenly we get uppercut out of our Super Form. Knuckles wasn’t even in a super state himself, and he could literally knock the super out of Sonic. From there he was Sonic’s rival to friend. Nowadays however he’s a bud of Sonic all the time, and quite honestly the stupidest piece of worthlessness in the entire franchise, and I am not exaggerating.
People talk about how Silver was ruined because he’s never really been a good character, but at least Silver wasn’t from the Genesis days, and hasn’t popped up often. People reference Blaze, but she still had good games and good character. Vector, Charmy, Mighty, Bean, and many others, are characters that rarely appear and are generally ignored, if not hated, but the issue is that while they are wasting space, Knuckles has simply been destroyed as a character from the ground up.
The last time I remember seeing Knuckles in a light that I thought of him as intelligent was Sonic & the Black Knight, which doesn’t even count considering it’s an alternate version. So te know which version that means? SONIC 2006! I don’t look for ways to get back to this game, people. It just happens.
But seriously, even in Sonic 06, Knuckles wasn’t an idiot. He had little to nothing to do, but he didn’t constantly go “Der, what weh duin”. The closest thing we got is him running in the wrong direction near the end of the game. What do we have now?
Well Sonic Free Riders I’d rather not talk about because EVERYONE’S stupid in that game, and Sonic Generations gave just about everyone that isn’t sonic o Tails maybe… three lines, so that leads us to Sonic Lost World.
Now in this game Knuckles still plays a very small role. Sonic and Tails segnala back to him while on their adventure, and all he does is brag about how he can do the job better, only to be smacked into a albero da Amy absent-mindedly flailing… because… yeah. Amy has super strength now.
It was in Sonic Boom, the entire thing, however, that REALLY drove into the ground how Lost developers were with Knuckles. I’ve detto it before, and this has constantly proven me right, THE ROGER CRAIG SMITH SONIC ERA IS BAD!
Knuckles aside for a moment, every character in the franchise has been turned into a stereotype of themselves, unless you’re Sonic, Tails, o (ironically) Amy. Sonic gets all his progression as a character taken away, and now he’s just a selfish brash jerk again. Tails is a rebellious resentful sidekick who gets a bit too riled (That Bipolar stupidity in Lost World was just pitiful), and strangely enough it’s AMY who actually grows as a character slightly. In Boom she’s not constantly obsessing over Sonic, but honestly she doesn’t really seem like the character of Amy anymore, but that’s a different story for another time.
Boom was meant to be an else-world story for Sonic and Co. hence the new looks and such, so you’d expect some changes. Well let’s just say that when I mentioned all those examples of character changes, (Amy aside) I was referring to EVERY Roger Craig Smith game, not just Boom.
To put it simply, they are the SAME (again, aside from Amy) except Knuckles has the worst of it because he now LOOKS big and stupid. He doesn’t look buff, he looks like a balloon. Gone are his mitts and now he has FINGERS. Gone is any mention of him having anything to do with the Master Emerald. Gone is his strength apparently also, but we’ll get to that later.
It’s just these small changes that make a big impact but even these “small” changes aren’t that minor. The tiniest would be the fingers, but Knuckles has ALWAYS had mitts. No redesigns have ever dato him fingers. Not in Riders, not in the OVA. The Master smeraldo I can kind of understand considering there are completely pointless and Chaos-Emerald-copied CRYSTALS now which they do absolutely NOTHING with, but let’s remember something here…
… THE MASTER smeraldo WAS THE ENTIRE REASON KNUCKLES WAS BROUGHT INTO THE FRANCHISE! He attacked Sonic because Eggman tricked him into thinking Sonic ha rubato, stola the Master Emerald. He spends both Adventure games trying to fix the thing. He’s the guardian of the master emerald! But for some reason each game forgets più and più that it’s kind of IMPORTANT that Knuckles be protecting it.
The appearance, again, just looks ridiculous. It reminds me of Justice League and how everyone’s chests looked ridiculous and their arms were like inflated noodles, but even with that they looked like they had elbows and joints. Knuckles looks like he has noodle arms regardless, and everyone keeps joking about leg-day.
Knuckles’ strength is NOT physical. It’s Super Natural. HE GETS IT da BEING A GUARDIAN OF THE MASTER EMERALD. HIS POWER COMES FROM THE CHAOS FORCE. This has literally made him one of the most POWERFUL characters in the franchise, RIVALRING SHAODW THE HEDGEHOG ON LEVELS OF CHAOS CONTROL, and EXCEEDING SONIC.
But because there is no Master Emerald, we go to physical, and Knuckles is WEEEEEAK. We see him lifting weights… not houses… not mountains (which he CAN do), WEIGHTS. The regular knuckles could just chuck those anywhere. And of course because he ISN’T the main character—and is just there to be Mr. Dumb Dumb—regardless of his strength, HE LOOSES at everything. His special sposta is hitting the ground and that’s about it.
This Knuckles can’t destroy giant robots… y’know, even though he can break solid emerald, diamond, and METAL, EASILY.
Every time I saw this stupidity ruining everything I’d think back to Sonic X where the ACTUAL Knuckles would be able to impale a giant yellow alien battle-robot with a sky-scraper tall pillar after getting impaled himself and beaten up. This Knuckles would also crack at the robot repeatedly until his knuckles actually cracked open. The Boom Knuckles goes “Pow” then gives up.
I don’t like Sonic X, but even on INTELLIGENCE it handled Knuckles better. I’ve mentioned this before, but we get a GENUINE EXPLANATION of why Knuckles gets tricked all the time. It’s because of his heart: wanting to trust in the good of people regardless of the situation. He was willing to believe in second-chances regardless. te may scoff at that, but let me recall an episode of Justice League: Unlimited where Captain Marvel (now called “Shazam”) had the same mindset about Lex Luthor. He wanted to believe in a better day, and that people could change. It was Superman who refused to believe in the good of a bad person, and because of that he got humiliated.
THAT is a good character quality.
Nope, Knuckles has to say things like “Wow… am I smart?” and constantly act like a dunce who gets tricked da everything, and only does something good when the plot demands it. Quite honestly, I don’t even think his voice matches. The actor they got sounds fine for him in my opinion, but the performance is just stupid. He doesn’t sound stupid enough to be Knuckles. He sounds like a man-child who’s just excited, but is supposed to come across as dumb. Well congratulations. I certainly believe this Knuckles is an idiot. SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT, RIGHT!?
“But that’s just Boom and Lost World” te may say, and fair enough… maybe it is. I highly doubt that’s the case but maybe it is. We’ll see. However even in the comics he’s been ruined.
I won’t go over what Comic Boom Knuckles is like considering nothing has changed from the TV version, but keeping in season with my constant hate for the Retcon-version of the Archie comics, let’s go over a lista of what was done to THAT Knuckles.
~As far as we know he remembers NOTHING from the ACTUAL Archie World
~Julie’Su, GONE
~His family, GONE
~His future family, GONE
~His people, GONE
~A new love-interest has already been pushed on him
Do I know if he’s stupid again? I doubt it considering Archie Knuckles has almost always been pretty awesome, but just like everyone else, this is someone who’s life HAS been ruined COMPLETELY… and he doesn’t give any cares whatsoever.
Where did the laid-back cool Knuckles of Sonic Heroes go?
Where did the deep character of Knuckles from Sonic X go?
Where did the hardcore beast Knuckles of the Genesis days go?
He’s probably locked away in a cage along with
~The actual Archie Sonic characters
~Ryan Drummand’s Sonic
~Jason Griffeth’s Sonic
~Sonic Adventure 3
And pretty much everything that made the original Sonic characters good. I am so incredibly tired of this stupidity. It’s been a gradual change mostly. That’s why it wasn’t dato that much attention. The Smith Era just gave it an extra shove.
SEGA IS MOVING AWAY FROM CONSOLES, AND più TOWARDS PC AND APPS. While I personally get help from the PC angle, this is a RED FLAG. This is NOT good a direction. I’ve detto it a-hundred times, and I’ll say it again: They’re just throwing new thing after new thing, and never stopping to develop what they have, IMPROVE on what they have. If a new release of Sonic 06 was made where the problems were fixed, they’d be forgiven. If we got SA3, they’d be forgiven. IF CHARACTERS WERE dato THEIR DUE, THESE DEVELOPERS WOULD BE FOGIVEN.
I do not forgive them right now. I have literally NOTHING Sonic-related in the current line-up that I can go “I support this”.
Not Boom (ANY VERSION OF IT)
Not the comics
Not the main continuity
It has gone DOWNHILL for a while now and with the people who are currently in power still in power, it WILL keep going there. Knuckles is just one of the many causalities, but he’s one that annoyed me più than most.
Say what te want about the fanbase, but right now it’s the developers that have dropped the ball.
God Bless,
Eat Pie and Prosper
I can understand how people have come to this conclusion. Tails is the sidekick of the main protagonist, Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s young, he’s not incredibly strong, and he’s a bit of a coward at times. But Tails is not SEGA’s whipping boy. Tails has appeared in nearly every Sonic game, if not every Sonic game, and has had multiple titles all to his own. He’s one of the trio, the closest friend of Sonic, and has actually acted in ways that progress plotlines.
… Then there’s Knuckles.
Originally I had planned to go over the entire GENESIS history of this character in every form of media he’s appeared in, but quite frankly that isn’t required, and it will only lead to tedius artificial lengthening. I’m here to state the issue so that’s what I’ll do. If I end up talking about some of his history that’s just because it’s relevant.
Knuckles has been ruined; simple as that. When we first met him, we were Super Sonic, blazing through a jungle, then suddenly we get uppercut out of our Super Form. Knuckles wasn’t even in a super state himself, and he could literally knock the super out of Sonic. From there he was Sonic’s rival to friend. Nowadays however he’s a bud of Sonic all the time, and quite honestly the stupidest piece of worthlessness in the entire franchise, and I am not exaggerating.
People talk about how Silver was ruined because he’s never really been a good character, but at least Silver wasn’t from the Genesis days, and hasn’t popped up often. People reference Blaze, but she still had good games and good character. Vector, Charmy, Mighty, Bean, and many others, are characters that rarely appear and are generally ignored, if not hated, but the issue is that while they are wasting space, Knuckles has simply been destroyed as a character from the ground up.
The last time I remember seeing Knuckles in a light that I thought of him as intelligent was Sonic & the Black Knight, which doesn’t even count considering it’s an alternate version. So te know which version that means? SONIC 2006! I don’t look for ways to get back to this game, people. It just happens.
But seriously, even in Sonic 06, Knuckles wasn’t an idiot. He had little to nothing to do, but he didn’t constantly go “Der, what weh duin”. The closest thing we got is him running in the wrong direction near the end of the game. What do we have now?
Well Sonic Free Riders I’d rather not talk about because EVERYONE’S stupid in that game, and Sonic Generations gave just about everyone that isn’t sonic o Tails maybe… three lines, so that leads us to Sonic Lost World.
Now in this game Knuckles still plays a very small role. Sonic and Tails segnala back to him while on their adventure, and all he does is brag about how he can do the job better, only to be smacked into a albero da Amy absent-mindedly flailing… because… yeah. Amy has super strength now.
It was in Sonic Boom, the entire thing, however, that REALLY drove into the ground how Lost developers were with Knuckles. I’ve detto it before, and this has constantly proven me right, THE ROGER CRAIG SMITH SONIC ERA IS BAD!
Knuckles aside for a moment, every character in the franchise has been turned into a stereotype of themselves, unless you’re Sonic, Tails, o (ironically) Amy. Sonic gets all his progression as a character taken away, and now he’s just a selfish brash jerk again. Tails is a rebellious resentful sidekick who gets a bit too riled (That Bipolar stupidity in Lost World was just pitiful), and strangely enough it’s AMY who actually grows as a character slightly. In Boom she’s not constantly obsessing over Sonic, but honestly she doesn’t really seem like the character of Amy anymore, but that’s a different story for another time.
Boom was meant to be an else-world story for Sonic and Co. hence the new looks and such, so you’d expect some changes. Well let’s just say that when I mentioned all those examples of character changes, (Amy aside) I was referring to EVERY Roger Craig Smith game, not just Boom.
To put it simply, they are the SAME (again, aside from Amy) except Knuckles has the worst of it because he now LOOKS big and stupid. He doesn’t look buff, he looks like a balloon. Gone are his mitts and now he has FINGERS. Gone is any mention of him having anything to do with the Master Emerald. Gone is his strength apparently also, but we’ll get to that later.
It’s just these small changes that make a big impact but even these “small” changes aren’t that minor. The tiniest would be the fingers, but Knuckles has ALWAYS had mitts. No redesigns have ever dato him fingers. Not in Riders, not in the OVA. The Master smeraldo I can kind of understand considering there are completely pointless and Chaos-Emerald-copied CRYSTALS now which they do absolutely NOTHING with, but let’s remember something here…
… THE MASTER smeraldo WAS THE ENTIRE REASON KNUCKLES WAS BROUGHT INTO THE FRANCHISE! He attacked Sonic because Eggman tricked him into thinking Sonic ha rubato, stola the Master Emerald. He spends both Adventure games trying to fix the thing. He’s the guardian of the master emerald! But for some reason each game forgets più and più that it’s kind of IMPORTANT that Knuckles be protecting it.
The appearance, again, just looks ridiculous. It reminds me of Justice League and how everyone’s chests looked ridiculous and their arms were like inflated noodles, but even with that they looked like they had elbows and joints. Knuckles looks like he has noodle arms regardless, and everyone keeps joking about leg-day.
Knuckles’ strength is NOT physical. It’s Super Natural. HE GETS IT da BEING A GUARDIAN OF THE MASTER EMERALD. HIS POWER COMES FROM THE CHAOS FORCE. This has literally made him one of the most POWERFUL characters in the franchise, RIVALRING SHAODW THE HEDGEHOG ON LEVELS OF CHAOS CONTROL, and EXCEEDING SONIC.
But because there is no Master Emerald, we go to physical, and Knuckles is WEEEEEAK. We see him lifting weights… not houses… not mountains (which he CAN do), WEIGHTS. The regular knuckles could just chuck those anywhere. And of course because he ISN’T the main character—and is just there to be Mr. Dumb Dumb—regardless of his strength, HE LOOSES at everything. His special sposta is hitting the ground and that’s about it.
This Knuckles can’t destroy giant robots… y’know, even though he can break solid emerald, diamond, and METAL, EASILY.
Every time I saw this stupidity ruining everything I’d think back to Sonic X where the ACTUAL Knuckles would be able to impale a giant yellow alien battle-robot with a sky-scraper tall pillar after getting impaled himself and beaten up. This Knuckles would also crack at the robot repeatedly until his knuckles actually cracked open. The Boom Knuckles goes “Pow” then gives up.
I don’t like Sonic X, but even on INTELLIGENCE it handled Knuckles better. I’ve mentioned this before, but we get a GENUINE EXPLANATION of why Knuckles gets tricked all the time. It’s because of his heart: wanting to trust in the good of people regardless of the situation. He was willing to believe in second-chances regardless. te may scoff at that, but let me recall an episode of Justice League: Unlimited where Captain Marvel (now called “Shazam”) had the same mindset about Lex Luthor. He wanted to believe in a better day, and that people could change. It was Superman who refused to believe in the good of a bad person, and because of that he got humiliated.
THAT is a good character quality.
Nope, Knuckles has to say things like “Wow… am I smart?” and constantly act like a dunce who gets tricked da everything, and only does something good when the plot demands it. Quite honestly, I don’t even think his voice matches. The actor they got sounds fine for him in my opinion, but the performance is just stupid. He doesn’t sound stupid enough to be Knuckles. He sounds like a man-child who’s just excited, but is supposed to come across as dumb. Well congratulations. I certainly believe this Knuckles is an idiot. SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT, RIGHT!?
“But that’s just Boom and Lost World” te may say, and fair enough… maybe it is. I highly doubt that’s the case but maybe it is. We’ll see. However even in the comics he’s been ruined.
I won’t go over what Comic Boom Knuckles is like considering nothing has changed from the TV version, but keeping in season with my constant hate for the Retcon-version of the Archie comics, let’s go over a lista of what was done to THAT Knuckles.
~As far as we know he remembers NOTHING from the ACTUAL Archie World
~Julie’Su, GONE
~His family, GONE
~His future family, GONE
~His people, GONE
~A new love-interest has already been pushed on him
Do I know if he’s stupid again? I doubt it considering Archie Knuckles has almost always been pretty awesome, but just like everyone else, this is someone who’s life HAS been ruined COMPLETELY… and he doesn’t give any cares whatsoever.
Where did the laid-back cool Knuckles of Sonic Heroes go?
Where did the deep character of Knuckles from Sonic X go?
Where did the hardcore beast Knuckles of the Genesis days go?
He’s probably locked away in a cage along with
~The actual Archie Sonic characters
~Ryan Drummand’s Sonic
~Jason Griffeth’s Sonic
~Sonic Adventure 3
And pretty much everything that made the original Sonic characters good. I am so incredibly tired of this stupidity. It’s been a gradual change mostly. That’s why it wasn’t dato that much attention. The Smith Era just gave it an extra shove.
SEGA IS MOVING AWAY FROM CONSOLES, AND più TOWARDS PC AND APPS. While I personally get help from the PC angle, this is a RED FLAG. This is NOT good a direction. I’ve detto it a-hundred times, and I’ll say it again: They’re just throwing new thing after new thing, and never stopping to develop what they have, IMPROVE on what they have. If a new release of Sonic 06 was made where the problems were fixed, they’d be forgiven. If we got SA3, they’d be forgiven. IF CHARACTERS WERE dato THEIR DUE, THESE DEVELOPERS WOULD BE FOGIVEN.
I do not forgive them right now. I have literally NOTHING Sonic-related in the current line-up that I can go “I support this”.
Not Boom (ANY VERSION OF IT)
Not the comics
Not the main continuity
It has gone DOWNHILL for a while now and with the people who are currently in power still in power, it WILL keep going there. Knuckles is just one of the many causalities, but he’s one that annoyed me più than most.
Say what te want about the fanbase, but right now it’s the developers that have dropped the ball.
God Bless,
Eat Pie and Prosper
