This is actually something that Ken Penders 100% agreed on, and is exactly why he spent the latter half of his tenure at Archie on trying to kill her off permanently (with the editors and possibly even Sega telling him no every single time). Which is really ironic when you consider how upset he got over Ian Flynn killing off his precious Locke, a character who prevented the heroes (namely Knuckles) from doing cool shit far more often than Sally ever did, all while not being even half as popular as she was.
Swinging a big hammer around is a fundamentally more satisfying attack than arbitrary magic card stuff. I really loved how Amy used to use the hammer as leverage to do acrobatics too, works so much better for a platformer. I'd be fine if the cards really were alongside the hammer, but they're not, they're clearly a clunky replacement. And tarot is just a kinda tired interest for your main female character if you ask me.
Fortune-telling is pretty cool and could give Amy abilities that the others lack. But the cards are barely magical as it is anyway so there's no point complaining about her suddenly having powers now. Her power is essentially telekinesis that only works with cards like 90% of the time, and we only ever hear about her actually learning from the cards about the future or information she shouldn't have, and it'd be great to have it as a mechanic. But also, the cards are pretty fucking cool, and the hammer often just makes her Temu Knuckles, except when they make her bounce very high (which is very cool too). I have the cards too, and I think they should stay.
Well you just explained how the cards make her Temu Silver but I guess that doesn't matter because you like tarot cards. Like what are you talking about? When do you glide or climb with the hammer? Wouldn't Classic Knuckles already count as 'Temu Sonic' by the same logic? He sure can spin dash.
I'll give my opinion on Amy but I feel I'll just be parroting a lot of what other people are saying. Amy's tarot cards, in the original sonic CD, were meant to show that she is naive and superstitious and not be that central to her character. Honestly, the fact that they are trying to rewrite modern amy to me more mature and less obsessive about her love while at the same time making her tarot cards more prominent seems counter productive. (I may be biased though, i grew up on gamecube sonic so I actually prefer stalker amy. I like when characters have unique dynamics, and think making everyone just 'ambiguously friendly' with each other makes the cast blur together.) I wouldn't actually mind however if they were like "Yeah at first she only did fortune telling as a weird hobby, but at some point she did learn actual for real magic so she can keep up with the rest of the team." I know she's supposed to be more the 'normal' person of the group, but they seem to be phasing that out anyway so why not. I think they should just go full card captor sakura, give each tarot card a unique power she can call upon, maybe have her hammer transform like a magical girl wand. This is a bit of headcannon territory, but the way I'd justify it: Amy is one of the only characters to have an established last name. Rose, like a compass rose. The series has a fascination with cardinal directions, with multiple locations being named after them like South Island, Westopolis, North Star Island, etc. Compass Roses are used to tell direction, and Amy has an uncanny ability to always tell where sonic is. You could make it so that the 'Rose' clan has supernatural sixth-sense abilities that Amy had been unknowingly using, and at some point she deliberately unlocked them in order to train her magic. I dunno, maybe bring in witchcart or something since she is an actual canon magic user. Also, I like the weird talking car she had in sonic drift. I'd like Amy to bring that back as her equivalent to Sonic's tornado.
So just a high jump counts as climbing now? That would make Tails "Temu Knuckles" too, or the other way around even. You could glide with Tails in Knuckles' introduction game. Point is it's a weird justification for getting rid of the hammer.
Who ever said she's supposed to get rid of the hammer, or it's a one-or-the-other situation? Breathe man
Because Sonic Team has made it into a one-or-the-other situation. It's fine I just thought you'd justify your argument for why Modern Amy doesn't use the hammer. All you did was call it "Temu Knuckles" which seems to indicate they should get rid of it.
If you want to be super serious about it, you'll reach the conclusion that Amy being the Normal Type-Pokemon alongside every overpowered friend is very lame and deflating. You have to make everyone else a complete idiot to make her being sensible and smart relevant in any way, which Sonic Boom does for laughs... but I don't think you'll get really far by doing that. She'll just become Sally in a world that would welcome Sally much less than SatAM does because, in that case, Sally being the most important political target in the whole world makes her a more interesting character by not being a damsel in distress. (That's not even touching the whole "how many girl characters have cool innate powers in this series", which is pretty important, too. Rouge is... I guess she's the only character in the series whose power is basically to do what her species would have you imagine she does. It's a bat who flies. Wow. Then there's what? Blaze and Cream? But neither can be trusted to appear really often. I don't like that the only character who can't do anything special in the gang is a girl.) So she has her hammer, which I guess makes her strong and has all kinds of uses. It's a projectile, it's a pocket spring, it's a propeller -- that's... fine I guess. So I guess the hammer and the cards are only at odds with one another because both are crazy multipurpose objects for the same girl. But I think they can, and probably should, coexist by having her actually tap into mystical powers routinely, especially if they are in any way related to some already established magical source in the series, like the Chaos Emeralds. Only then she can use the hammer to do fuck all in a very cartoon character kind of way.
The hammer isn't a good fit for a Sonic game, and neither are the cards because, in my unpopular opinion, Amy wasn't really designed to be an action hero and most of the attempts to retroactively make her one have been cringe as a result. The piko piko hammer and tarrot cards are both literal toys. They can just be cute things she does. They don't have to be retrofitted into being Just as Powerful as Sonic's speed or Knuckles's strength. That's just dumb and bordering on condescending. Here's an idea: design new female characters that have abilities that actually fit the series. Trip was great! Do more of that!
Well, I much more prefer Amy as an action hero rather than an eternal damsel in distress. She's been an action hero since she wrecked ZERO, and I'd like her stay that way.
I really don't know what's 'Normal-type Pokemon' about bonking robots into Valentines hearts. I wasn't even arguing this but Amy's levelheadedness is absolutely relevant to the other characters, especially when one of Sonic's defining traits is being superhumanly impulsive. Sonic wasn't an idiot for trusting Amy that Gamma was a friend and Shadow wasn't an idiot for considering that humanity was worth fighting for, and both moments are quite canonically relevant! It doesn't really matter anyway though because the idea that Amy is any less of a superhero than the other main cast is already debatable. Moonjumping through the air with the help of your magic love mallet is absolutely more mystical than Knuckles climbing a dirt wall with his regular ass claws, a thing a literal regular ass animal or even regular ass human could do. Amy hasn't been "just" a damsel in distress for 26 years, and nobody's dissing CD Amy for being a damsel in distress. This argument has nothing to do with Adventure Amy's actual traits. She saves herself when she gets kidnapped in SA1 and being held hostage is one of many things she does in SA2. It's like saying Tails can't fly planes anymore because he got situationally kidnapped in that one game 30 years ago. Maybe the main girl character being in distress sometimes isn't actually a problem to begin with. I like CD Amy.
It really is quite fascinating what a rhetorical hand grenade Amy Rose is to literally any forum thread here.
Comes with the territory of being the primary female representative of Sonic. My unpopular opinion is that Neo should have been Metal Sonic's modern design. The iconic classic design can continue to exist in the classic sub series. I generally prefer the two brands being as distinct from each other as possible and it always bugged me that they made the design for just one game, and you never even fought it in a boss fight.
Oh please. Are you suggesting her being a Talking Cricket is relevant in a world where heroes don't have even the slightest chance of ever making morally dubious choices, especially Sonic? Can you ever imagine a story in which Sonic, like, destroys Gamma and then regrets it? Or a story in which Maria did actually say "yeah kill those assholes" 50 years ago, but Amy is able to convince him otherwise regardless? Her being an actual moral compass is difficult to conceive because the other guys' moral compass isn't at risk of being challenged. Moonjumping through the air with a love-themed magic mallet is very much not mystical because it isn't connected to any mystical force in the world. It's just. A physical ability. Thor's hammer isn't mystical because of whatever special thing it can do; it's mystical because it belongs to a God, with the whole mythology behind it. It's yet again about what it's bringing, and the hammer is... fine I guess. Then again, so are the cards, and they allow some really cool things. A tired concept? Well, the foil to a sunny hero being a brooding edgy character with anger management issues is an extremely tired concept, and we seem okay with that too. (But that's less relevant. It sounds intentionally obtuse to say "she's just as cool as everyone else already with just a big hammer she can swing around" is my point. Yeah I liked her in CD too... but now they made her part of The Gang, so she's ought to be a heroine now)
"Normal type Pokemon" is one way to put the annoying, overused trope of "The Girl character who physically can't keep up with The Boy Characters and exists only to be nice to mean people and to be kidnapped". bonus points if they are basically the main character's design But Pink and/or Has Eyelashes and a Dress So You Know They're A Girl. There was an argument we had in the origins thread about how I think that the things that "differentiate" her from the other characters gameplay-wise (being slow. not being able to roll up into a ball.) actually really suck, and that is especially because for a long while she was the only girl character, and is still the only "mainline" girl character who shows up in most of the games and other media. A character is not "more interesting" if all that's different about them is that they're less capable, no matter how much people try to spin it as important to the plot it ostensibly is. Amy's plot beats in Adventure and Adventure 2 would not have been any different if she was able to be as physically fast as Tails or spin-dash, so it just felt like she was the "less capable"/"more normal" one because she's the girl. (like, E-102 is a robot and Big doesn't share a character design with the entire rest of the cast that can roll up and move quick) Honestly I don't mind her getting mystical nonsense in part because I actually can't think of any other Sonic character that has that? So she's actually being differentiated in a way that is interesting and isn't also extremely limiting. I like her hammer too, but in hindsight it is kinda messed up that in the series where Tails throws bombs in some games and has a literal mech with guns in it in others, and Knuckles literally just beats the hell out of things, that her main offensive and traversal tool is a literal toy. It's a Japanese gag toy hammer, the kind that makes silly squeaky noises when you hit someone with it - Smash Bros even had it as a potential item drop when the Golden Hammer shows up. And besides, the cards predate the hammer anyway, so making them a Thing again has some continuity value. Maybe after Sonic CD, she decided to go even harder with it, since it helped her meet her "hero" the first time, and that belief actually manifested as something tangible for her.
