The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Does Knuckles being tricked by Eggman into fighting Sonic fly in the face of S3&K? It happens pretty transparently in SA1.

 

SA1 jokes about Knuckles being tricked again three separate times.

 

Again, it's not the fight that's the issue, it's the "willingly working with Robotnik" part. Even in Sonic Adventure, he was tricked, but wasn't working with Robotnik. Robotnik just put an idea in his head and let his hotbloodedness do the job.

 

I mean, just because he's using one of Eggman's devices doesn't mean he's working with Eggman. Otherwise Sonic's gonna have some explaining to do. So what we see in Advance 2 doesn't necessitate that he's working with Eggman.

 

It's also the fact that Knuckles confirms Robotnik duped him somehow.

What we know of the situation is that:

• Robotnik duped Knuckles in an unspecified way.
• The manual has it that he was abducted as well as Tails.
• He's moving in the Egg Saucer that suggests he's trying to break out, versus Robotnik not doing the same motions when piloting the same craft.
• He also doesn't pick a fight with Sonic after he gets out of the Egg Saucer, merely run along after him for the explosion and sheepishly trying to explain himself, which is weird if he thought Sonic was an active enemy again.

 

...Huh. That's odd the Japanese manual states this.

As a kid, I always took it as Eggman did feed Knuckles some sort of bold-faced lie again and suggested 'hey you can take this and try to get him this time'. It still seems perhaps a bit out of character Knuckles would take the machine instead of trying to physically fight Sonic again, but I always chalked it up to a 'gameplay first' thing (they didn't want to show Knuckles being held hostage, the idea of him actually being the boss gets thrown up since they've done the 'tricked' thing a couple of times, and then that makes it into the game). A 'character vs. character' fight wouldn't work terribly well with Sonic Advance 2's 'auto-run bosses' setup, which is thankfully something the Rush games corrected.

I think a lot of confusion from it stems from the fact that he's in the pilot seat where Eggman rests if you re-fight the boss as Sonic/the other characters and Sonic sort of getting aggressive with the vague wording, rather than relieved to some extent that Knuckles is okay.

If the manual refers to him as being kidnapped and he's more upset that Sonic nearly killed him trying to destroy the machine, that's a lot funnier and more in-character. The biggest issues I see with that are the weird entirely unique track that plays when you're fighting Knuckles here, as well as the sprites making it appear as if he's confidently smiling:


If he was trying to break out, I feel his facial expressions would come off as more aggravated?

As long as we agree the damn insta-kill hand shouldn't have made it into the final release, I'm cool with whatever people wanna headcanon![/QUOTE]

 

Why are we putting this much stock in the Advance era manuals, again?

 

In addition to the boss having its own music as mentioned, said track is labeled as "KNUCKLES BOSS" in the sound test.

Not to mention that if you replay Egg Saucer with Eggman replacing Knuckles, it plays the regular boss music instead.

I think it's safe to say that the game treats Knuckles as the boss itself, rather an abductee like Tails or Cream.

 

The issue there is that they have two pixels to display his mouth, and it's on a diagonal slant with his swings. You can see it go both ways depending on how you interpret the situation:

 

I wanna say that head is straight up copied from one of his Advance 1 sprites where he's supposed to be smiling.

Yeah here it is

 

...Yeah, it's looking more like the manual might have made a mistake? If the US manual doesn't state it, I feel like someone might have wrote a quick blurb and realized the first two characters you rescue are kidnapped. Whoever wrote it might have blindly assumed the same for Knuckles here. Cream was left out intentionally since canonically this is her first time meeting Sonic.

I think you could chalk up Knuckles moving in the cockpit as him potentially being inexperienced with operating the machine.

 

I can see how the animation looks like Knuckles trying to break out, but I always interpreted as him doing this kind of thing, being aggro and adversarial:

 

No, I always go for the Japanese, that's the translation of.

So why use a machine instead of going mano a mano like usual?

 

I tried to explain my reasoning here. However, I do agree that it seems a bit out of character for someone like Knuckles:

The only in universe explanation I can think of is that Eggman was very insistent on letting him pilot the machine prior to the events of Sky Canyon/Advance 2 to make himself look like a generous saint. That or...Knuckles was kinda bummed his last two 'mano a mano' fights had him 'lose' and he's too prideful to admit that's why he took the machine when Eggman offered it? Still kinda iffy on being in character though.

Given that Advance 2's bosses are the lowpoint of the game for me (alongside Special Stage requirements), I think perhaps it's for the better they didn't try a 'mano a mano Knuckles' boss.

 

That's a great question, man. I don't know!

 

I'm aware of Sonic Triple Trouble, but I think my stance on it is 'not liked' and was avoiding it.

I know he used a machine, and most people here either put it as a second instance of him being tricked like an absolute moron trusting the guy who electrocuted him and stole the Master Emerald, on a separate continuity since he's a stranger, or are waiting for Flynn to rewrite it. I don't do any of those three so can't reasonably argue for or against it, so feel free to discuss that.

 

So in Advance 2 he was kidnapped by Eggman and put in the robot boss thing, and in Triple Trouble he was maybe actually tricked by Fang.

Solved. He's not that dumb.

 

That's my theory for how he ended up in the cage but still trusting Robotnik for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (again, not well liked, but just clarifying where that stems from). Sonic Triple Trouble's manual confirms Robotnik tricked Knuckles: Fang is completely independent from Robotnik.

 

Eggman Piloting vs Knuckles Piloting