I hate that it's called the piko-piko hammer. Piko is just the japanese onomatopoeia for squeaking. A 'piko piko' isnt a special type of hammer, it's literally just a squeaky hammer except they didn't translate it. Ironically, I think in the Sonic the Fighters manual they called it the Magical Hammer, so Amy having magic powers is as old as the hammer itself.
This is getting into the weeds. A lot of Sonic stuff is designed to be toyetic because it's a toy brand. Most of the characters do not wield literal toys as weapons.
The 6 year old doesn't wield a toy as a weapon... But she does throw her squishy plush-looking pet at things.
The Piko piko hammer toy existed before Sonic and is referenced in unrelated games such as Tales of Phantasia, Castlevania, and others.
Including Amy Rose, circa 1999. It's been made outta metal for two decades. The one game it was in before SA1 was a fighting game where she was around as capable as every other character anyway. It's like complaining about how the Adventure-era Archie comics gave Fang a real gun, because at one point in the past he used a pop-gun. Just feels like a weird arbitrary place to draw the line.
I wonder if anyone has ever watched old Anime where the hammer is just used for slapstick gag purposes and not meant to be taken seriously...
My knowledge of toy hammers extends to seeing kids use them, and that One Punch Man short where a martial arts master invites the main character to a game that uses a toy hammer and annoys the hell out of him.
Does it even matter if it's a "literal toy" or not if you can flatten metal with it like not even a real hammer can? Sonic in general is a literal cartoon character for babies so drawing the line at a hammer that explodes robots in one blow really baffles me. Sure its colored pink like Amy, sure it makes a silly noise like Sonic's jump sound. There is nothing objectionable about either of those things.
Ehh it's pink sometimes but yeah you're right. Point still stands but it's colored like her dress I guess.
I mean, yeah, piko piko hammers are just a common japanese toy in real life and have been referenced in a lot of media. But if you are going to give one to a character as a core part of their identity, then leaving the name untranslated is really weird especially as stops being a toy and just becomes a regular hammer. edit: i was trying to think of examples of loan words and names of things in media and whether it would sound more/less natural if it were translated, but couldn't think of anything. I think the problem for me is that, the word "hammer" is translated but the word "Piko", which modifies hammer, isnt. Like imagine a character that wields a Paddle Ball, but when they translate it into japanese, they use the japanese word for "ball" and the english word for "paddle".
This just has to happen with Japanese media brought over to another language... It's cooler or just simpler to keep the word in Japanese even if it could be translated. --- Squeaky Hammer just doesn't sound like the type of thing people would want to say...in this context. Obviously when it's meant to be something silly (like in Smash Bros) there's no problem, but it's a descriptive name more than an actual name. People would just call it a hammer. It's not unique sounding to non-Japanese ears.
Yeah it was a bad example. But japan has tons of loan words like that, i just think piko really sticks out in a series where nothing else is kept in japanese. But ultimately this is just a personal preference thing.
I just think that if they've had translated Piko to squeak, every instance of the word being written would've been replaced with "squeak". Amy breaks a big rock, *squeak* Edit: also the hammer makes a sound that can hardly be described as a squeak. Or at least what comes to our minds when we think of a squeak, in English specifically. Language is weird. Edit 2: I wanna explain myself here, the kind of toy hammer I'm familiar with makes a high pitched squeak that is very irritating, like a typical squeaky toy. In farsi, we don't really have term to refer such a thing, but I, and other Iranians would probably describe it as "جیغ جیغو" or "screamy-screamy", or maybe "جیر جیری" which is "squeaky squeaky", but to be more specific, that's how we describe cricket sounds. The sound the piko piko hammer makes is far from anything you would describe as a scream or a squeak. It's more like a knock. So we would call it "تق تقی" which means "knock knocky" or "hit hitty". So let's keep it simple and it's just "piko piko". (I just really wanted ramble about language)
I mean, the fact that it doesn't actually squeak should be a factor here. I'm not even sure it does in Fighters.
Y'all cannot do Piko Piko Hammer discourse without mentioning this oddity that Dave Manak drew in issue #132. And in case any of you are wondering if it's supposed to represent a different hammer altogether:
