I think the Stardust Speedway race to begin with was meant to prove who was the "real" Sonic. Metal does a suspiciously distinct little finger wag if you mess around at the start. I like to think he thinks he's rescuing Amy in Collison Chaos.
The whole "real Sonic" business was just a mistranslation. In Japanese Heroes Metal didn't call Sonic his "loathsome copy", but his "imperfect self". He was created to be a superior Sonic, so he sees the original Sonic as his inferior. In his eyes they're both a Sonic, but he wants to prove that he's the better one. I see his finger wag gesture in CD as an implication of him wanting to beat Sonic at his own game.
Huh, I've always read the finger wag as a much more utilitary gesture as if to tell the player "hi! I'm not a normal boss! You're not supposed to hit me!" since he does it if you try to jump on him. Your ideas are all more exciting than this though.
I'm not talking about their impact on the lore or anything. I'm just wondering what kind of success the series would have had, what people growing up with it would have thought about it. Not just the comics and cartoons but the overall vibe and style changes. Simple things like box art, manuals, and commercials.
Agreed. I pray current Sonic Team and Sega have the conviction and artistic integrity to avoid this situation (lol as if). The movies are fine enough and decently enjoyable to watch. However, I don’t like them and the characters are not THE characters in my eyes. However, it’s not like the games’ characters are themselves to me at this point anyway ♂️
We're on the topic of character portrayals? Knuckles is supposed to be dumb. It's always been a part of his character.
Knuckles can be gullible at times, but he's not an idiot He was isolated from others for years, after all
I honestly don't know which 'dumb Knuckles' in particular we're even talking about. The Boom cartoon, where Sonic acts dumb? Forces, where Knuckles doesn't act dumb? Frontiers, where Knuckles also doesn't act dumb? Sonic and Tails' general ditzy demeanor throughout the boost era is much more of a problem if you ask me.
Knuckles isn't very sensible, thinks with his fists and has a short temper. But he's not stupid. I especially enjoy when his knowledge of ancient civilisations and such crops up. Frontiers reminded me of exactly why Knuckles is my favourite character in the series. He's a cool goofball in that game. And it reteoactively makes his bizarre role in Forces more tolerable by contextualising how and why he would lead an army. But also Boom Knuckles is a dumb piece of shit and is singlehandedly the funniest part of that cartoon don't @ me
His operation was such a huge failure that it killed the majority of his troops. I wouldn't say that's the sign of a smart character.
His trust in Eggman was such a disaster that it almost destroyed Angel Island. He makes these kinds of mistakes.
Yeah, I don't care how dumb Knuckles is in Sonic Boom, he's extremely funny in this show. That's not the Knuckles I want in the main series / other midia representation, but I'm actually fine with that show.
I feel like there's different kinds of stupid, but knuckles is definitely one of them. Like there's himbo stupid, which he is in boom, where he's just kind of goofy and clueless all the time. Then there is the kind of stupid Zoro is in one piece, where he's highly competent within his area of expertise, but the second you start talking to him you realize hes actually dumb af. Personally I kinda like the idea of Knuckles being good at survival skills and determining threats, but bad at social skills due to being isolated for so long. And hed probably be a bit clueless about modern technology too, which is why he wasnt immediately suspicious about the death egg.
I don't think being dumb was necessarily an issue for Knuckles, because he was still competent in spite of it. For every stupid decision he made, he had an equally cool moment to make up for it. The problems began when him being stupid was itself the punchline, and he was never able to make up for it. See him fumble catching Eggman's calling card or land squarely on his head while Sonic hits a perfect landing, just to emphasize Sonic's the cooler one. Its fine for Knuckles to be a little dim, its part of the his punchline as a character, but you kind of need to balance that out with some level of competence so that he doesn't come off as a joke. It's ironic that some of the posts above fear the movies' influence on the brand, but it has the best depiction of Knuckles I think in any media? Making his culture serve as the backbone of his character (as opposed to the games where he really just doesn't care about it) and emphasizing his warrior mindset just makes him a much more complete character imo. He's a fish out of water adjusting to civilized life after completing his life's mission, which leads to many funny moments, but he's still a trained warrior at the end of the day and he constantly shows it. I would not mind the games taking more of that. I know what you meant, and my point stands. Most of the influence of the American marketing was in the supplemental material and game manuals. The games themselves were as popular as they ever were, and that wouldn't change even if they stuck with the original Japanese depiction of the series.
Knuckles has literally never been officially dumb. In fact, his early character profiles specifically call him smart and clever. Even more modern profiles (see: Sonic Generations, Sonic Channel, many others) attribute his gullibility to believing the best in people, and his ignorance to having lived in isolation most of his life. Kinda hard to know how the world works when you've spent most of your life on a deserted floating island. Literally none of his profiles attribute them to his intelligence level. Him acting like a clueless buffoon in the mid 00s games was just flanderization, and has never been supported by character profiles or official word. In early games he merely acted gullible, which goes with the aforementioned profiles. Sonic Boom is obviously an alternate universe. So no, Knuckles being dumb has never been an inherent trait of the character, nor is part of what he is "supposed to be".
