What did Tails do while Sonic was on Wing Fortress Zone?

I guess the simple answer would be that the plane is damaged but still able to glide to safety, he lands near some kind of workshop, bangs a rocket booster on the underside, hoofs it up to space, happens to see Sonic exploding out of a side door, and uses his expert plane skills to catch him. Not sure if that's a very exciting narrative but a starting point I suppose...

 

If you were to were to make a hack out of it I think it'd be cool to take like an open world approach and have Tails running around scrapping Badniks to put together the rocket.

 

This is from a very recent article, from this February, thanks to HEDGESMFG !! it is a translation but it does describe a scenario that makes sense and would be exciting for you to figure out how to depict!!

"At the end of this stage, after the boss battle, Eggman escapes into space in an escape spaceship.

The Tornado, which was supposed to have crashed at the beginning of the stage, is revived as a magically modified machine with a booster and carries Sonic to chase Eggman, but how can a biplane be able to chase Eggman's spaceship as it reaches 2nd space speed?

So, at first, we were working on a design that would allow Tornado, rather than a booster, to transform into a high-tech mechanism while chasing it and reach speeds up to about the first cosmic velocity. I was drawing a rough sketch directly on the digitizer that looked like a Tsuburaya mechanism, with the propeller and main wings retracted, the nose cone at the tip protruding, and the bubble canopy and rocket engine deployed from inside the body, but it was too large for a sprite.

Because of the capacity and work time required for the anime pattern in which the tornado deforms and becomes even larger, we decided to use an external rocket booster instead, which would have a smaller capacity and significantly shorten the work time. . The rough sketch of the deformed design was drawn directly digitally, so it doesn't remain on paper, and I think it's somewhere on a floppy disk that I left at the company, but now... When Eggman's spaceship accelerates, I wanted to include a more flashy jet from the engine nozzle and a sudden acceleration, but we couldn't do something fancy due to capacity and time constraints, so the programmer took care of it. We ended up with this shape at the very limit of what was possible."

 

Ah, so that's where that came from in Sonic Adventure...

 

had a nice little wank

 

There is no lore around this. It's completely open to interpretation. Because what designer would sit and ponder about it when it's not shown in the game that they have very little time left to finish?

So I'd not worry too much about it and simply fill in the blanks with your own ideas.

 

he died. the Tails we see at the end of sonic 2 (and the rest of the series) is an impostor.

 

Ah yes, the infamous "Tails is dead" rumour. He was actually replaced by a guy named "Miles". The games are full of hints. What do you think Spring Yard Zone was telling Sonic to "cope" with? Wake up, sheeple!

 

To be clear, that comic is set after Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive), not covering the actual events. Much like Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Tails just parks the Tornado as Sonic runs off and catches up soon after. They never reference Tails getting shot out of the sky or anything.

 

You are missing the part where Tails helps Sonic at the end of Wing Fortress.

 

Nah he died in Sonic 2 on the Master System, which took place before the plane crash. So the Tails who crashed is also an impostor.

 

Damn, this mf loves dying.

 

I'm just mind-boggled by how closely the artist of this story managed to capture Yamaguchi's style of drawing Sonic and Tails. It's rough around the edges, sure, but damn if it isn't a solid attempt.

Between this and Patrick Spaziante's numerous replications of Akira Watanabe's style, someone really needs to start an art thread dedicated entirely to instances of Sonic artists imitating other Sonic artists.

 

Probably not exactly what you wanted since it's more recent (from 2016...), but the second-to-last issue of Archie Sonic was an adaptation of Sonic 2's Sky Chase / Wing Fortress / Death Egg stages into the new universe they were establishing, but it's basically only seen by Sonic's perspective, a lot like the game. The issue is somewhat uneventful since it's just what happens in Sonic 2 with Snively in some parts of it. It's specifically only that part since it was part 2 of what would have been a 4-part series going over the events of 1, 2, CD and 3 but the comic ended before they finished #4 (Sonic 3).

 

That kind of scavenger hunt gameplay can be really good fun, maybe with a time limit (and comedy bad ending where Sonic just watches Robotnik fly away and just sits there and goes 'well darn it, can't believe he never did that before'.

 

It's one of the understated most awesome moments in gaming history - part of what makes it great is the lack of direct explanation, but my personal headcanon is a lite version of the SA1/SA2 Tornado transformation.