Adventures with Chaotix

I like how in one paragraph this says Knuckles is the sole remaining descendant of the inhabitant of Angel Island, and then a few paragraphs later, it says he's the strongest of the natives on the island, lol.

 

... What even is the context of that photo??? And does Knuckles even have a nose? Why does Sonic have weirdly pronounced lower eyelids that are too high up? Why is there a guy wearing business casual attire holding a SEGA Channel cartridge posing with these bad mascot costume wearing dudes outside on a public street?

I am so confused.

Those two things aren't necessarily contradictory. Since he's the only surviving one, he is the strongest. :P

 

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Channel

It's Andi Peters at the UK Sega Channel launch...

Do you think those mascot costumes are bad?... what about this one?

https://segaretro.org/Sponsorships/Football

 

The costume was also used in the 1995 UK roadshow.

 

It's amusing to me that at one point they wanted Knuckles to be younger than Sonic. Classic Sonic stuff seemed to always have him aged 16-18 iirc. Knuckles as a 12 year old is a whole different energy from the "older cooler warrior" thing they landed on, lol.

 

I've found the artwork that must have been used as the basis on the Chaotix prototype title screen shot!



It was used on a sticker included in Crackerjack in 1994.

 

They are both based on the same image, but the cracker jack image is not the same as the one in the title screen. This was posted a few pages ago, but if you look at the extreme details, things are different. Example: In the title screen, Knuckles pupils extend down to his muzzle and have a solid black iris/pupil, in the sticker they have a gap between them and the bottom of the muzzle and a light reflection in the pupil. They all seem to be based off of the official model sheet pic that was posted a page back but none of them are the same exact picture.

 

They're definitely different images, but it does seem like one is possibly a trace-over of the other. While some things are different (mostly the shapes of his pupils and chest marking), the overall body shapes - even things like the asymmetrical dread shapes and one arm sticking out awkwardly - are consistent between the two. Having looked up the stickers in question, it seems the whole set uses western stock art for the illustrations - based on this, my bet would be that the Knuckles' Ring Star graphic is based on an earlier version of his official model sheet, and that the Crackerjack sticker uses a trace-over/redraw of this created for SoA's stock art library.