Probably just a billet number for internal organisation purposes, would be useful to know which aircraft is carrying something or other, for example. In terms of names, outside the obvious fact that we're looking at retcons as a result of localisation changes and the unification of canons that took place decades ago, could just be one of those jokes where Eggman hates the nickname, but even he can't help but use if for himself accidentally, only finally giving up on trying to resist it come Adventure 2.
Kind of interesting that he's apparently got a few more airships somewhere off screen to warrant such a system. Just like with the Mecha Sonic line, come to think of it. Well, since we're sharing headcanons, I'll once more relay mine in that it means Extraordinarily Gifted Gentleman, and Sonic was the one who began pronouncing it as a word and insult ("I'm the Extraordinarily Gifted Gentleman, Dr. Ivo Robotnik!" "Then why does it say Eggman?") before Robotnik reclaimed it before Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive).
Well there's Sky Base, pre-Sonic 2, then post Sonic-2 there's Flying Battery, the Egg Carrier, the Egg Fleet and possibly even the Starlight Carnival parade just off the top of my head. That there's a number here wouldn't necessarily indicate more Wing Fortresses, such a numbering system is generally just all-encompassing.
Eggman seems like the kind of guy who'd name his only airship "#29" to make himself seem more powerful.
But then the numbers don't appear on the other airships, not even the Flying Battery in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. It's just a curious detail to me, since I can't see any other ship having them, not even the Sky Fortress of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2.
um. i'm pretty sure those numbers are there practically to look cool, possibly from referencing some anime thing or the like
One shouldn't underestimate the ability of creative teams to put inside jokes in the products they ship, really. I wouldn't spend too many synapses trying to figure it out.
Yeah, they're completely mundane numbers. I offered a practical suggestion, but there is no meaning really. We don't need to have an explanation for literally everything, guys.
Would be nice to know if 29 meant anything though. With the rushed development of the last bit of Sonic 2 any insight into wing fortress would be interesting. That being said as far as I can tell it isn't similar to any real world aircraft naming conventions it's just there to fill up blank space and vaguely look like something you'd see on the side of a plane.
They look like Hull Identification Numbers you'd see on ships, like aforementioned NCC-1701, but there's two: the 00 and 29, which is what's confusing me, as usually there's only one HIN.
I'm confident you're overthinking this and it'd just be because the team wanted to use that kind of thing as a reference, but didn't actually know so much about these things to know that the way they used it wasn't accurate. I know there's a lot to be said about symbolism and environmental storytelling in videogames and whatnot but it I really struggle to see the Wing Fortress numbers as being anything less than set dressing placed on a whim.
Given the 1965-09-17 cheat code, etc., 29 was probably just the age of one of the developers or something.
29 can be read as "niku" in Japanese. If you can find a way to read 00 as "So", there's something there. But also, niku means " meat", so the artists could be just really happy about a barbecue they organized. In fact the last option is now my headcanon. EDIT: also explains the chickens shooting at you
the 1965-9-17 code was a reference to Yuji Naka's birthday, and he was 27 when the game released. Personally, I'm not sure the numbers found in Wing Fortress are anything deep.
With the caveat that that did make me laugh, this is where I'll gently nudge that this is a continuity thread and not a "find the meaning in these numbers" thread.
