He also drives the Tornado in everyone but his and Knuckles' playthrough in Mania, even wearing the infamous goggles. Sonic knowing how to drive an airplane does make sense if you think of it as the only way he's able to explore the world beyond South Island, yeah. I wonder if that was the thought process behind it, or if they just thought it'd be a cool way to get Sonic to reach the Death Egg. (It probably wasn't for the exciting gameplay possibilities, because to this day Tornado sections are zero fun to play )
It's a bit headcanony, but I always figured what happened was Sonic's speed at the start of the Classic Era wasn't enough to tread water, so he had to use the Tornado to cross between islands. Eventually, Sonic becomes fast enough to cross the ocean on foot, so simply runs between places now, resulting in Sonic leaving the Tornado in Tails' care pre-Sonic Adventure.
Interesting that early supplementary materials often included aircraft and pilots in Sonic’s origin - sometimes even predating the Tornado in the games. The Mary Garnet stories obviously featured pilots heavily, and Sonic’s father in the manga also owned a plane.
I'd argue that in part that's due to Sonic Team's desire to make Sonic "cool". Sega was really pushing their "cool-ness" factor during the late 80s and early 90s with games coming out of AM2 like Hang On, Out Run, After Burner, ect. It's very likely that within Sega, such things were perceived as being cool (and honestly that era kinda pushed driving state of the art vehicles as cool anyways). In that context, it makes sense that Sonic would have a Plane, a motorcycle, a car, so on. In-universe, it's just a practical thing to have if you want to explore the world, which Sonic clearly does. Despite him being able to run on water, that's several thousands of miles of ocean Sonic would have to cross on foot. While the idea that he would cross the ocean that way these days is interesting, I would point you to the scene from the Sonic 2 film as to why that wouldn't be feasible.
Sonic owns a plane so he can island hop and Sonic can run fast enough to go over oceans can co exist. I could theoretically run around everywhere, still gonna use a bus occasionally.
You can't run up to the skies, so Sonic uses a plane. Sonic CD shows he likes to climb to get a good vantage point of situations, clearly a plane would be useful for that too.
The thing is that Sonic almost never actually uses what's supposed to be his plane. I like to think that Sonic gave Tails pilot privileges as thanks for saving his life in Sonic 2 and 3. Though it'd also make sense that there's just an unspoken understanding between them that Tails is the better flyer, for two obvious reasons.
Why would you fly your own plane if you could relax on the wings and get an eight year old to do it instead?
More pages of the Fang’s Big Break comic have been posted. It unsurprisingly references Fang’s encounters with Sonic in Triple Trouble, but it also flashes back to hitherto offscreen meetings with Knuckles during attempts to steal the Master Emerald. It almost seems to suggest that Knuckles relocated the ME to the SA1 shrine at least in part due to Fang - the emerald is in Hidden Palace during Fang’s first theft attempt, and Knuckles seems to be in transit with it when Fang attacks the second time. Is this the first time we’ve seen the Adventure shrine in Classic branded media?
Better question is, does it mean the Altar of Emerald will appear in Sonic Superstars, since Sonic Team would have had to give this the go ahead...
1:02:58 - How is Sonic Prime canon despite contradicting the lore of the games in so many ways? I can't help but wonder why bother creating a lore team if the next major project contradicts the lore so heavily. (...) (...) Sonic Prime was well into production before the lore council was a thing. Corrections were made, but the lore council was not overseeing the project. (...)
Hopefully this puts some arguments to rest. All a matter of bad timing, not oversight. It sucks Prime's stated as canon despite the contrivances, but that's how they're selling it to the public.
