#I was a Teenage Werehog

[carnation-damnation]

You will be loved no matter how much you change.

#sonadow #sonic au #IWATW #I Was a Teenage Werehog #eyestrain #sonic #sth #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #shadow the werehog #THEM...

[wereh0gz]

I looked up hedgehog sounds because why not and all I can think about is sonic doing them

Specifically werehog sonic doing them

Idk the idea of this giant furry monster with razor sharp teeth and claws and super strength making these cute little squeaky noises when he's happy is both adorable and hilarious to me

Also hedgehog noses twitch a lot. Imagine his nose twitching when he sniffs something. Also him sniffing things more in general. He's a curious little guy and wants to know what something is before he bites into it and breaks it

#ramblings #werehog is banned from tails' workshop because he keeps breaking tails' things #he's too much of a chaotic little gremlin #he's like a wild hedgehog but without their anxiety #and with the intelligence of a human teenager #and absolutely zero impulse control #well maybe he has a little control. not much tho #oh it'd be so cute if he squeaked while eating #enjoying some chili dogs #or when getting ear scritches #look i love when he does typical dog things but i think people forget he's a hedgehog #it'd be cool if there was more werehog content leaning into hedgehog behaviors

[snail-speed]

The boy in his true form

WORDS WORDS WORDS under the read more because I want to scream into the void about this AU

Sonic meets his friends in this AU much, much more later than he does in canon. The reason being that he had to practice shapeshifting to get to an acceptable form.

Their encounter isn't under any sort of danger, as Eggman has been inactive due to Reasons (TM).

Lots of his features between both forms translate directly, here's a color guide for them:

In this AU, Sonic wasn't born like this. Sometime during his childhood, he essentially Bore Witness to the Horrors Beyond, and this was enough to permanently mutate him. He's not the only one like this.

I don't care much for like, tentacle monsters being horrible feral beasts, so despite his looks Sonic is still a pretty nice guy in this AU, he just looks very weird. He does differ a bit from his canon counterpart beyond appearances, though. He's spent most of his childhood and teenage years with people fleeing in terror at his appearance, so he gets clingy if you show any interest in him. He's just lonely and wants friends!

He's got a bunch of quirks in his real form, on account of being a tentacled horror beyond. Here's some of them, illustrated!

Extra stuff about him:

Three functional mouths (all of them can speak, eat, etc.)

His voice in his real form is a tad deep and has noticeable distortion (the closest approximation would be the Werehog with a slight distortion feature I suppose?)

All of his tentacles are prehensile and can stretch, on account of his shapeshifting powers

Ten eyes (5 in his head, 3 in his chest, 2 in his back)

#sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic au #Shoggothnic AU #digital art #snailspeed #i'm not sure if i should tag this as body horror or not??? #i feel he's cute enough to not be creepy but don't feel afraid to ask to tag :)

[krisispiss]

What kind of story is Kaz the protagonist of?

A gritty, adult superman style farm boy with amazing power story?

An edgy 2000s T rated 3D platformer game Ala Vex and Jak 3?

A slayers X overly edgy teenager self insert comic?

I THINK HE'D BE A GOOD MIX OF 1 AND 2... he's not edgy for the sake of it and likes to help people when he can,and then yeah he has an uncontrollable darker side, AND would absolutely be the protag of a 3D platformer... Something involving grappling with his stretchy limbs. Think werehog sonic mixed with like...idk sly or jak

[animaginaryartblog]

[Image ID: six digital drawings of different designs for Sonic the Hedgehog, arranged in two rows. The background is plain white. Handwritten notes comment on certain aspects of the designs.

Starting from the top left is Sonic the Hedgecat (aka Daybreak Sonic). This is the Light Gaia counterpart to Sonic the Werehog. Hedgecat Sonic is lean and slender, with large ears, a long tufted tail, and sharp, insectoid green wings. His blue fur is several shades lighter and paler, though his muzzle, underbelly, and paws remain dark brown. His quills have turned a pale orange with white tips, turning up slightly at the ends. The tip of his tail and the tips of his claws are also orange. His eyes are a bright lime green, with white where his pupils should be.

To the right of the hedgecat is a soft redesign of the Werehog, now also known as Nightfall Sonic. In this form, Sonic's build is less slender and more bulky, with fluffier fur, broader shoulders, and thicker limbs. His quills are far thicker and fluffier. His ears are small and pointed, curving slightly inward. His eyes are dark green, and his pupils are enlarged, the black almost engulfing the green completely. His fur is a desaturated blue, and his quills are dark purple, with black spreading from their tips like ink. His large claws and short, wolf-like tail are tipped with the same black.

The rightmost design in the top row is Twilight Sonic, a fusion of hedgecat and werehog. Twilight Sonic's fur is darker than the hedgecat's, brighter than the werehog's, and more saturated than both. His green eyes, likewise, are somewhere between the hedgecat's bright lime and the werehog's dark forest. The Twilight form has the hedgecat's insectoid wings, but they are now a cooler green, and have a bend in the middle like an arm. The edges of the wings are worn and tattered. His tail is longer than the werehog's, but shorter and fluffier than the hedgecat's. His quills are dark blue, with pale blue on their bases near the head and on their upward-curving tips. His tail, similarly, has a pale blue tip with a ring of darker blue below.

In the bottom left is Super Sonic. His fur is a rich gold-orange. His quills are pale yellow and curve smoothly upwards, not just at the tips like the hedgecat's. His eyes are purple, with light purple pupils; text beside them notes that they can shift color depending on his mood, but are usually purple.

To the right of Super Sonic is Nega Sonic. Nega Sonic's colors are the inverse of regular Sonic. His fur is a rusty orange, and instead of dark brown, his muzzle and underbelly are a pale, icy blue. His quills are pale yellow, like Super Sonic's, but don't curve up. His eyes are pure black with magenta irises and white pupils, and his teeth are likewise black with white edging.

Finally, in the bottom right corner, there are two designs for Sonic as a toddler and a child. Behind them is a png of his teen design (said teen design can be seen here) for comparison, at a slightly lower opacity than the rest of the drawings. Toddler Sonic (in the 2-3 year age range) is very small, his head only reaching to just above teen Sonic's knee. He is chubbier than his older selves and has stubbier limbs. His ears, on the other hand, look far too big for him. His fur is paler than teen Sonic's, while his eyes are much darker, almost black.

Child Sonic, who is somewhere in the 7-11 year age range, has richer colors than Child Sonic, but still lighter than teen Sonic's. His eyes are more obviously green, but still darker than his teenage self. He is brown markings have a reddish hue. He is much taller and leaner than toddler Sonic, but still a head shorter than his teenage self. His ears still look oversized. /end ID]

can't make a redesign of Gaia AU Sonic without taking his transformations into account. these are all still rough drafts, mostly so I could test how the new, still developing design would fit with his different forms. it was also a chance to play around with colors. shout out to my brother for giving my feedback despite knowing full well I would go with the opposite of whatever he said. you're a real one Iz.

another big sketch dump below, with some bonus Blazes and Pretzels because you know I love my cat girls. Mario might also be in there, dunno what that was about. once again not ID'ing the sketches because they're just. a lot. there's a lot of them and they're repetitive. don't worry about it.

#my art #digital art #traditional art #my sketches #sonic the hedgehog #sonic the character #sonic fanart #sth fanart #sonic au #gaia au #sonic gaia au #pretzel the dark gaia #blaze the cat #2023 art #procreate art #sonic the werehog #werehog #sonic the hedgecat #twilight sonic #super sonic #nega-sonic #nega sonic #classic sonic #baby sonic #silver the hedgehog #forgot he's in there too #yeah i'm gonna redesign him #and blaze #and pretzel #and everyone

[dany36]

sooo i finally finished sonic unleashed. the main story parts, anyway. there's still a bunch of act 2 and act 3 stages i still have to do but from what i've seen, they're way shorter than their act 1 counterparts so it's fine. some junk thoughts below about this game!

now that i finally have a ps3 i'v been catching up on a bunch of games i missed out on when i only had the wii :y when i first started playing this game i was like wow, this isn't really that bad compared to what i had been hearing online about it! sure the werehog portions were kind of tedious sometimes, and the fact that they're twice or three times as long as the daylight sections isn't great, but i mean sonic adventure 2's eggman stages sure were slower and more tedious than the sonic/shadow stages, so i was like eh sure, fine, whatever. some of the later werehog stages were a pain and fighting the same type of enemies over and over was really starting to get on my nerves, but again, is this any different than the slow stages of eggman/tails in sa2? if i was able to A-rank all of their missions, then getting through the werehog stages isn't the worst. some of the platforming sections were actually entertaining but yeah, the fighting? not so much.

the daylight stages are hella fun to play through, although i don't know if it's the ps3 version but they seemed very ummm glitchy at parts, and the frame rate would slow waaaay down in certain portions of stages too. it obviously isn't as smooth as i would have wanted, but that was kind of my experience playing through sonic generations. i'm playing with a fat ps3 so i don't know if the experience is better in the slim version lol, but yeah, i'd love to come back to it eventually and try to S rank the stages since they're so fast-paced and just a blast to do. i don't think i'll ever bother getting all of the medals and 100% completing it since this game is just PACKED with content. on top of getting the medals, S-ranking, and the sidequests you get in the hub world, apparently there's hot dog missions too?? oh and there's DLC on top of that. so yeah, i'm ok with not 100% this like i did with sa2 or colors or generations lol. teenage me would have loved to do it though.

sonic games might not be your cup of tea but the music never disappoints. i had heard the unleashed OST way before ever playing the game and man, it was so good to finally hear the music along with the game. while i was out trying to collect enough medals to unlock the stages i don't know why but hearing the apotos night theme made me get all sentimental and nostalgic lol even though i didn't even grow up with this game at all. idk i guess it's just something about sonic games and their music that always hits home.

i know in my last post i was extremely pissed off at the last stage in unleashed and i said it brought the game down to a 5/10, but maybe i was a bit harsh lol. like i still think that level is atrocious EVEN FOR a last level, which you always know it's going to be a harder-than-usual level. but seriously that level design was just ridiculously long and stupid in every shape or form--the part that pissed me off the most was when you have to walk on these pipes as a werehog and in some parts you have to jump, but when you jump sometimes the fucking camera changes directions so because you're tilting the control stick a certain way, that would cause you to fall off the pipe and die. seriously, i don't think i've ever played a last stage in a sonic game that was as bad as eggmanland, so it's always interesting to see the comments on the youtubes defending the stage and how it's actually a great level. like ok sure lol.

i still say that the game forcing you to collect a ridiculous amount of medals to unlock stages was just not necessary. i thought i was doing a pretty good job at collecting them but i still had to look up guides to unlock the stages from chuu-nan onwards. like, just let me play the stages and get through the story, maybe make the act 2 and act 3 harder to unlock that way but not the main ones!

i actually have the wii version of unleashed that i had bought waaay back when but i never bothered to finish it once i learned that the stages are like watered down versions of the ps3/xbox360 ones, so i'm glad i waited to play it how it was meant to be played. the wii one also doesn't have the hub worlds i don't think, which i mean the hub worlds are actually pretty bad and add nothing to it gameplay wise: they will never be station square or mystic ruins. the way the camera moves around them is actually pretty bad and would make me feel dizzy at times lol. but still, i'm glad they exist because otherwise, we would have never gotten the absolutely gorgeous music that the night stages have (spagonia night theme is absolutely lovely and holoska night is the perfect listen for winter time).

overall, i'm glad i finally got a chance to play unleashed and see how this was the start of the sonic team getting the 3D sonic formula right (minus that terrible drifting mechanism, sorry!). generations is still one of my ultimate faves and frontiers brought back the sonic fever in me, so i'm excited to catch up on the rest of the 3d sonic games i missed out due to me being either a poor college student or poor fresh out of college lol. i'm thinking about buying sonic boom next, it looks very platform-y from the gameplay i've seen of it, so yeah! full on sonic mode and loving it!!

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic unleashed #junk #right now though it's time to FINALLY play some classic tomb raider omgggg i had been searching for the tomb raider collection for ages #so hell yeah tomb raider anniversary here i come! :D

[familylightfox]

@reflections-of-mobius asked:

"You'll need to aim better than that!" Bless laughed as he dodged a snowball. It had been a rather pleasant day at the Inn- and now, it was shaping into a pleasant night. With a fresh round of snowfall, he'd convinced the others it would be worthwhile to have a snowball fight...and it may have slowly grown until it was all but a snowball war. "Even slowed down, I'm too fast~!" He snickered, only to yelp as he had to suddenly dodge a ball of snow that very nearly hit him. Temporary snow forts had popped up here and there, courtesy of the blur as he dodged throw after throw from the others. Node, who had retired from the fight several minutes prior, was now watching the remaining competitors with a soft smile- nursing some hot chocolate from the light of the Inn. "Wooooo!!!" He'd darted around the field, doing his best to stick to wider turns. Sadly, he still couldn't pull the hairpin maneuvers he had before- and that resulted in him undoubtedly being an easier target for Harmony and her teammates. Node had to bite back a snicker when Bless finally got struck- wiping out in a nearby snowbank out of surprise. "ACK--!" His yelp was quickly muffled by the white powder. Node shook their head. Just another night at the Inn, they supposed- as the weather gradually grew colder, and winter tightened its grip on the village. "Are you okay?" They called out across the field.- And were met with a thumbs-up suddenly popping out of the drift. Node couldn't bite back a small laugh at that. "I WILL HAVE REVENGE!" Bless called out as he burst from the snow, sending a wave of cold in all directions with a playful shout. "C'MERE!" And now he was charging towards the group of would-be victors. "Chaos..." Node chuckled.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Getting a bunch of teenagers to join in a would-be snowball fight was easy. How in the source Bless had managed to rope some of the nearby residents was anyone's guess, but Volt was in agreement with his other partner on only participating for a short amount of time. He had a bit too much to do still around the Inn to prepare for the upcoming festival to step away for too long.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to watch from the porch while 'working' on hanging up a few more decorations.

Harmony and her teammates could be heard laughing every time they had been hit by a snowball. It was always followed by their calls before they would launch their counterattacks. As the night wore on, however, they had a devious plan.

One that involved waiting until Bless popped his head up that final time. They already had everything set up. The moment he began to rush towards them, it was his undoing and Volt had to laugh as he spotted it.

"Take this Bless!" Tangle was holding an iron lantern post tightly as Whisper and Buddy were directly across the way with the end of her tail.

Harmony was in the middle with the stretched appendage pulled back and a grin on her muzzle.

The massively sized snowball was being held back only by her hand, which she released with a howl of laughter. Even Volt nearly fell over as he watched the werehog disappear under the snowball. A look was given to Node to go along with his grin.

"I think point goes t' the teens this time."

#ask the hybrids #traveling the multiverse: ic #who needs a riot/start a howl: bless #quiet nights in quaint company: node #'cause everytime we touch/i feel the static: bless & node & volt #reflectionsofmobius

[megaturtle1012]

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #my precious power ring #sonic the hedgehog #sonic unleashed #sonic the werehog #meme #shitpost #some stupid shit i made because why not

[badlydrawnmanic]

felt the need to make another one of these fucked up venn diagrams detailing a bunch of characters i like from various forms of media because i found a pattern and now i can't not think about it

details under the cut including who all these people are and what categories they're in if you (understandably) can't read this hell of a graph

left to right, top to bottom:

adam joseph gette - psychonauts 2 (outlier)

milla vodello - psychonauts (outlier)

roald - animal crossing (outlier)

silphymon - digimon (rough voice)

aquilamon - digimon (rough voice)

my d&d character, verona (rough voice)

sorbet shark cookie - cookie run (outlier)

amber sugar cookie - cookie run kingdom (rude)

purple yam cookie - cookie run (rough voice, rude)

dr. caligosto loboto - psychonauts (rough voice, green)

scourge the hedgehog - archie sonic comics (rude, rough voiced sharp toothed, green bastard)

augustus aquato - psychonauts (rough voice, weird hair)

galarian zapdos - pokemon (rude)

knuckles the echidna - sonic series (rude [sometimes], sharp teeth)

mad rat - mad rat dead (rude, rough voice, sharp teeth)

beelzemon - digimon tamers (rude, rough voiced bastard)

impmon - digimon tamers (rude, rough voiced bastard)

digitamamon - digimon adventure (rude, green, rough voice, sharp teeth)

my monster prom chupacabra oc, juan (rude, green, rough voice, sharp teeth)

my sonic oc, eclipse (rude, green, rough voiced, sharp toothed bastard)

kokatorimon - digimon adventure (rude, rough voice, sharp teeth, weird hair)

antoine d'coolette - archie sonic comics (sharp teeth, weird hair)

silver the hedgehog - sonic series (weird hair)

kiwimon - digimon adventure (rude, green)

midnight lycanroc - pokemon (rude, rough voice, sharp teeth, weird hair)

vampire cookie - cookie run (sharp teeth, weird hair)

alolan sandslash - pokemon (weird hair)

cutiefly - pokemon (outlier)

my sonic oc, ace the tenrec (rude, sharp toothed bastard)

audrey ii - little shop of horrors (rude, rough voiced, sharp toothed green bastard with weird hair)

beetlejuice - beetlejuice the musical (rude, rough voiced, sharp toothed green bastard with weird hair)

red velvet cookie - cookie run kingdom (weird hair, rude)

odd della robbia - code lyoko (weird hair, rude [sometimes])

giratina - pokemon (outlier)

our discord server's mascot, macaron (rude bastard with weird hair)

shaymin sky form - pokemon (green, weird hair)

neil buzzmati "buzz" - dino squad (green, weird hair)

manic the hedgehog - sonic underground (green, weird hair)

sasha nein - psychonauts (green)

my sonic oc, razor the hedgehog (green, sharp teeth, rough voice, weird hair)

psi-popper generator "oatmeal" - psychonauts (green)

black licorice cookie - cookie run (bastard)

raphael - rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles (green, rough voice, sharp teeth)

rayquaza - pokemon (sharp teeth, green)

one of my ocs, gordy - (sharp teeth, green)

breloom - pokemon (green)

my sonic oc, gyro the hedgehog (green)

luigi - super mario series (green)

nibbles - fossil fighters frontier (sharp toothed bastard)

sonic the werehog - sonic unleashed (sharp teeth, rough voice)

nidoking - pokemon (sharp teeth, rough voice)

kangaskhan - pokemon (sharp teeth, rough voice)

foxy - five nights at freddy's (sharp teeth, rough voice)

werewolf cookie - cookie run (sharp teeth, rough voice)

mewtwo - pokemon (outlier)

mangle - five nights at freddy's (sharp teeth)

one of my ocs, orion (sharp teeth)

my sonic oc, malice (sharp teeth)

kyle - animal crossing (sharp teeth)

glamrock freddy - five nights at freddy's (sharp teeth)

tyrantrum - pokemon (sharp teeth)

cyndaquil - pokemon (outlier)

[dies]

#sonic the hedgehog #cookie run #pokemon #digimon #mad rat dead #five nights at freddy's #fossil fighters #psychonauts #animal crossing #dino squad #rottmnt #little shop of horrors #beetlejuice #monster prom #sonic oc #not an ask #ooc

[nrrrdgrrrl2002]

I’ve avoided the sonic fandom for all 20 years of my life due to disinterest. And f••kin Ben schwartz and James marsden as a dad and blue teenager is what finally gets me interested. Not shadow having a gun. Not sonic becoming a werehog. Not even the fandom being unfairly called cringe. Freakin rise Leo and the guy from hop is what finally makes me go “ hey maybe I should check out some sonic lore”. What a life

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic movie 2

[crusherthedoctor]

Can we have some unpopular Sonic opinions?

I tried to cram in a lot, so I hope this satisfies you. :P I tried to stick to the ones that I haven't brought up quite as often, since by this point, we all know that I think IDW's storytelling is dire, SA2's story is overrated, X Eggman is an embarrassing portrayal (at least from season 2 onwards), Blaze shouldn't be handcuffed to Silver, Shadow's backstory had issues with or without the Black Arms, Neo Metal Sonic looks silly, etc. But anyway, here we go:

- Knuckles may be tricky to incorporate into plots that don't relate to Angel Island, but making him obsessed with his duties is no better than having him forget about Angel Island entirely.

- I like Marine, and never found her annoying. Oh, I understood what they were trying to do with her, but I honestly wasn't put off by her, and found her Aussie lingo more endearing if anything. Since her debut was during the period in my life where where I couldn't stand Sonic himself, I instead thought he was irritating (and hypocritical) for getting annoyed with her for doing shit he would often be guilty of.

- Silver is just as guilty of being shoehorned into games and plots as the Deadly Six are. Having more fans than the latter is irrelevant, since we're still talking about a character who constantly has to time travel in order to be present.

- Speaking of Silver, if he has to stick around, please do something different with him. They've pulled the doomed future routine multiple times now, and it's been boring every single time. I wasn't interested when it involved Iblis. I wasn't interested when it involved Knuckles drinking the edgy Kool Aid. I wasn't interested when it involved a council of dumbasses... give it a rest already.

- The Tails Doll can work as a mildly creepy thing, with maybe more to it than meets the eye when it's time for a boss fight or what have you. But the memes about him stealing your soul are just dumb, and I thought it was dumb even back in my teenage youth.

- “Eggman is supposed to be clownish!” Yeah, well he's also meant to be a genuine villain with a 300 IQ. These qualities don't have to be mutually exclusive.

- “Sonic is supposed to have attitude!” Yeah, well that's not the same thing as being an absolute cunt. Sonic was only ever meant to come off as having an edge compared to Mario. He was never meant to be a GTA-tier protagonist.

- Rouge is not a villain, and never was a villain. Literally the whole point of her role in SA2 was to reveal that she was working against Eggman and Shadow the whole time, albeit using sneakier tactics to do so. You'd think all those people who exult SA2's story would remember this, but apparently not. She barely even qualifies as an anti-hero, since aside from stealing the Master Emerald, she rarely does anything morally questionable otherwise. She's got a lot more good in her than people give her credit for.

- Captain Whisker is a better Eggman Nega than the actual Eggman Nega. And as far as robot characters in this franchise go, Johnny's design is pretty underrated.

- I don't like Iblis or Mephiles, but I DO like Solaris, and it annoys me that it was out of focus for most of the story due to all the time spent on its less interesting halves. Had they kept the backstory with the Duke and his experiments, and worked from there, I think they could have provided an interesting contrast with Chaos (since Solaris can also qualify as a monster with a sympathetic backstory) instead of recycling the surface level schtick.

- Black Doom may technically be just as bad as Mephiles, Nega, Scourge, Mimic, etc, since he's yet another villain with one-note characterization and fucked over Eggman. But because he never gained a disproportionate fandom, he doesn't annoy me to the same extent. It's easier to ignore him by comparison, and his Dr. Claw voice and face shaped like a lady's delicate part make him enjoyable to mock.

- Likewise, while Lyric is also on the same level as these other villains, it's easier to dismiss him because I was never invested in the Boom games anyway, and being an obvious alternate universe (compared to Sonic X or IDW, which retain the Modern designs and plot elements), it never had an effect on the main series. I also unironically like his design, and if nothing else, at least this snake didn't start a hypnotism fetish across the internet.

- Sally - and the rest of the Freedom Fighters for that matter - have had their importance in the franchise severely inflated. They may have been lucky to be the face of popular media (SatAM and Archie), but they're not these magnificent entities that the game characters are but a speck of dust in comparison to. Having a “legacy” doesn't make them more entitled to shit than any other character, old or new.

- Conceptually, the treasure hunting gameplay is one of the better alternate gameplay styles IMO. But it was let down in SA2 by its one track minded radar (the levels may have been big, but I don't think that would have been an issue on its own if the radar was better). If they brought it back and made it more like SA1's treasure hunting, I'd be all for it, although it would probably be better suited for a spinoff title.

- This goes for a lot of games, but when it comes to 2D, I prefer sprites over models. Not that the Rush models are bad (though the ones in Chronicles sure as fuck are), but the sprites in Mania and the Advance trilogy are just so charming and full of character.

- I actually like Marble Zone. Yeah, the level design is a bit blocky, but I love the concept of an underground temple prison, mixed with lava elements in a zone that otherwise isn't a traditional volcano level.

- I also like Sandopolis Zone. Again, completely understand why it's not the most popular zone around, but I've been a sucker for the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic since childhood (you can thank Crash 3 for that), and Act 1 is visually stunning.

- I prefer the JP soundtrack for Sonic CD over the US version overall... but I also prefer Sonic Boom over You Can Do Anything.

- SA2's soundtrack isn't bad by any means - I love Rouge's tracks, and The Last Scene is one of my favourite pieces of music - but as far as variety goes, it's a step down from SA1's soundtrack.

- If Sonic X-Treme had been released, it probably would have been unenjoyable and confusing. Whatever your thoughts on SA1, it was probably the better option between the two as far as Sonic's first legitimate translation into 3D goes.

- I have no qualms with Modern Sonic and the other Modern designs and characters, but I also fully acknowledge that changing gears from Adventure onwards - and doing it with a great amount of fanfare - was always going to create one of the biggest divides in the fandom, and fans shouldn't act surprised that this happened. The fact that they felt the need to hype up a new design and direction in the first place (compared to Mario, who has mostly been the same since the beginning, with only the occasional minor change with little fanfare) also indicates that they weren't confident enough in Sonic and his universe being the way it was, which often gets ignored by all the “SEGA have no confidence!!!” complaints you see with their recent games.

- Unleashed did not deserve the incredibly harsh reviews it received back in the day... but it doesn't deserve its current sacred cow status either. It had more effort put into it than '06 to be sure, and I can respect that, but much of it was misguided effort, and even if you like the Werehog, you have to admit that the idea came at the absolute worst time. The intro cutscene may be awesome, as is the Egg Dragoon fight, but 2% doesn't make up the entire game. Chip was also quite annoying, and I wasn't particularly sad when he pressed F in the chat at the end.

- On the other hand, while Colours definitely has its shortcomings, and people have every right to criticse those shortcomings, a lot of its most vocal detractors tend to have a stick up their arse about the game because people actually enjoyed it, and it had a gimmick that people actually liked. Yes, it may have been the first game to have those writers everyone hates, but then SA1 was the first game to give the characters alternate gameplay styles and have other villains upstage Eggman, so...

- Forces is absolutely not on the level of '06. It's nowhere close. A game being flawed does not make it the next '06, clickbait YouTubers. Or should I say, the game they want to retroactively apply '06's reception to, since they've been trying hard to magically retcon '06's own quality...

- To echo @beevean, ALL of the 3D stories have their issues. SA1 is probably the most well-rounded of them on the whole, but even that one isn't perfect.

- To echo another opinion, although I do love SA1, I'm not crazy over the idea of a remake, and would prefer them to just take Sonic's gameplay from SA1 and work from there. Because with a remake, you're stuck in a hard spot: Do you keep it the way it is bar the expected graphical upgrades, and risk accusations of not doing anything to actually improve the experience? Or do you try to address past criticisms, and risk the wrath of the fans who will inevitably go on a #NotMyAdventure crusade about it? What people fail to consider is that the Crash and Spyro remakes were accepted gracefully because their original iterations were still unanimously beloved for the most part, whereas SA1 - and especially SA2 - have always been divisive, and have only gotten moreso over the years.

- People take their preferences for the character's voice actors too seriously. I have my own favourites like anyone else, but I don't make a big deal out of it.

- And with fandom voice actors, they usually focus too much on doing a basic impression of their preferred official voice actor, and not enough on the acting. So you end up getting a lot of fan voices who sound like decent impressions of Ryan Drummond or Jason Griffith on the surface, but they sound utterly empty beyond that impression, because there's no oomph or depth to the actual emotions. They think about the actor rather than the character, when it should really be the other way around.

- The thing with Ian Flynn is that he is capable of telling a decent story, and he can portray some characters well. But he's proven time and time again that everything will go off the rails if he's given too much freedom (ironic, given how quick he is to point the finger at mandates when something goes wrong).

- Ian Flynn and Shiro Maekawa are not the only people in the world who are allowed to write for Sonic. I understand that one should be cautious when seeking out new writing talent, but for all the fandom's accusations of playing it safe, they sure aren't in a rush to experiment outside of their own comfort zone.

- And of course, the big one: You don't fix the franchise's current problems by crawling back to its previous problems. It's much more helpful and constructive to discuss the good and bad alike with each of the games. Less “THIS GOOD, MODERN BAD”, and more “This could work, but maybe without that part...”

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog

[carnation-damnation]

I'm the werewolf propaganda man, I'm not gonna sit here and act like I'm immune to "werewolf character being inordinarily affectionate at random times" trope

#sonic au #I Was a Teenage Werehog #IWATW #sth #Shadow the Hedgehog #Sonic the Hedgehog #sonadow #shadonic #sonic fanart #gay people. ur welcome

[queenofwerewolves]

What are some of your favorite headcanons?

oooh this is a really good question

Well my first one would be that no one is dead *cough*cosmoandtikal*cough*

And I like the ones about the Werehog in general, like where the Dark Gaia DNA never really left Sonic's body, so whenever he's really pissed to the core you can see like his teeth getting sharp or claws start to poke out of his gloves

Or just he legit transforms into the Werehog once every month

I like how Silver is actually a dork and doesnt know anything about the present and struggles to talk in Sonic's teenage slang

How Shadow is really a food junkie and just has a really poor diet but doesnt care

Im the kimd of person who makes up headcanons for no reason, like who said that Sonic and Shadow doesnt like to make flower crowns as much as Cream does?

Or that Tails is genderfluid is likes to wear skirts while he works?

Or how Silver realizes how somewhat progressive the present is and likes to experiment with feminine stuff like make-up and purses and asks Rouge for advice?

Or how Blaze explores her personality outside of being a Princess and tries sport-street wear? Or skateboarding? Or something else she couldnt do because of royalty?

Headcanons are more then just touches to the lore, it can apply to even the characters if you're creative, to me, anything goes as long as it isnt harmful or offensive in anyway

:D

#ask #this one was fun! #i have alot of silly headcanons like that

[chaosbcrne]

13, 5, 2

Sonic Questions

13. Favourite Sonic form? Pick one.

i don’t actually know that many ? super sonic is a given and dark sonic is an interesting concept. but, i have to agree with you, werehog sonic probably holds my heart the best at this point. big fluffy puppie...

5. Favourite female character(s) ?

answered here ! tl;dr rouge, with tangle and boom amy and sticks closely behind

2. How did you hear about Sonic ?

from my neighbors ! back when going out to knock on people’s doors and ask if they could come out and play was a thing. the parents across the street ran a thing which i don’t know the english word for where our parents paid them and they’d basically take us in for lunch time & holidays on school days. there were like 7-8 of us aged 5-10 from the neighborhood and a couple of cooler older teenagers (aged 12-15) who were Gamers and kinda given free reign over us and we spent most of our lunch breaks just watching them play games on the gamecube. eventually sonic heroes was one of them and it stuck

#fortruechaos #✮ ☾ you think you have the answers ☽ ↳ ask #very fond memories in hindsight

[sonicfanj]

Why I dislike Amy’s Piko Piko Hammer

I’m a relatively strange individual in that over the last couple of years I’ve come to dislike Amy’s Piko Piko Hammer. I know that it’s an iconic part of her character but I just can’t bring myself to like it any more. As it has become a topic in most discussions that I seem to have anymore I wrote up a 6300 word explanation to try and detail why i dislike so it would be easier for others to see where I’m coming and thought I’d share it here too. So here it is

Amy Rose, one of the most well known and controversial characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise since her adaption into the games back in 1993. Debuting as a fangirl damsel in distress who Sonic rescues and subsequently flees from, she would continue to persist in the franchise in spinoff appearances interacting with the rest of the cast and continuing her crush driven pursuit of Sonic. Come 1998 she was granted her first chance at being in a mainline platformer entry in Sonic Adventure. In this game Sonic Team experimented with giving every character their own unique way of playing through the game with each playstyle being further and further from Sonic’s own, and the one that put the franchise on the map to begin with. Some were reasonably accepted and others weren’t. Amy’s was one that was criticized primarily for a lack of speed and made the toy hammer she used in Sonic the Fighters a staple of her character. In time the hammer would become an element of Amy’s design that I would come to dislike and not even believe that she needed at all. To understand the many problems I have with the hammer, the role it has in gameplay, in its use, thematically, and Amy’s reliance and affiliation on/with it, I must first provide a retrospective of my own history with the franchise and how my viewpoint of the series changed when I looked back on it with the announcement of Mania.

At the age of five in 1991 I was living with my parents in the house they had just bought. My dad was a diehard SEGA fan who hated Nintendo with a passion and owned both the Genesis and Master System and he was finally allowing me to start playing video games. I immediately became attached to Alex Kid and though I was no good at the games I absolutely loved them. Then one day my dad brought home Sonic the Hedgehog. It was unlike any game I had played or seen my dad play and though I was not good at it, it completely enthralled me. Then came 1993 and Sonic CD, and my mind was blown away again. From the diverse levels and time traveling experience to the amazing opening and ending animations it was the game that solidified my interest in Japan and that I finally got good at playing Sonic games with. I was the first of my family to beat it and everything about the game won me over and Sonic, Amy, Metal Sonic, and Eggman won themselves permanent places in my heart. To me anything American made was dead and to this day I still do not know how I knew about Eggman and Amy’s Japanese names at that time as they were not used in the USA. Then though the dream was over as my dad sold his Genesis and Sega CD. I would not be able to see Amy again until my dad bought Sonic Jam for the Saturn and she appeared in the updated version of the CD ending as well as the CGs that were included in the game. For years I played the original trilogy with my younger brother but those games never captured me like CD did. Then Adventure came and I was enthralled all over again. But things were different, there was voice acting that was nowhere near as good as the Japanese voices in the OVA trailer included in Sonic Jam and Amy and Eggman had been redesigned almost beyond recognition and Amy suddenly had a hammer which origins I learned about through game magazines at the time. But back then that didn’t matter to me. I could play as one of my favorite characters and it was awesome with me loving her Hammer Vault more than anything else she could. I would spend hours just running around Station Square Hammer Vaulting over and over again because it was just so much fun. Then my sister one day brought home Sonic R and Sonic CD for Windows and the magic of that game was rekindled. I would play for hours and it was the greatest thing in the world. It was Sonic at his purest and nothing compared, not even the uniquely enjoyable Sonic R. I enjoyed Sonic Adventure 2 when it came out, but it was not CD and Amy had been removed from play except in competitive mode where she was just a slower Sonic, who himself disappointed me beyond instant Light Speed Dash compared to Adventure 1. Then the end seemed to come as SEGA withdrew from the console market and I was faced with the fear of Sonic having come to his end. Fortunately that was not the case as Sonic Heroes debuted across all platforms and I played it on my older brother’s Xbox. The game had everything in it that should have made it my favorite, but the cheesiness and way Metal Sonic was handled just disappointed me. There was also Amy who though playable again, was lacking her Hammer Vault from Adventure still and stripped most of the fun out of playing her for me, and when combined with her teammates and easy mode difficulty left me almost never revisiting the game as even Sonic was missing that purity that I so loved. Not surprisingly I returned to Sonic CD and mostly just watched my sister and younger brother play Shadow. Then 06 was revealed and something about it captured my imagination like nothing else had in a long time. Even with the game’s problems I was one of the few who was fortunate enough to not have that many glitches appear as I played the game and generally enjoyed it. But there were more disappointments and my family pretty much stopped caring for the franchise at that point beyond my younger brother who mostly stuck to CD like I had for year before as well. When Unleashed was first teased I remember being apprehensive about the Werehog idea but then that first trailer with Endless Possibilities won me over and everything about the game seemed right. Sure I was disappointed by the Werehog and how Tails and Amy weren’t playable, but they seemed so much better represented than anything I saw in what little I watched of Sonic X. It was a grand adventure again and Sonic was Sonic again, at least during the day. At that point though, while my younger brother played Unleashed even he had pretty much given up on the franchise having forward progression and pretty much stopped talking to me about the franchise. Fortunately for me I had discovered the SEGA forums around this time and between the community and the wikis my eyes were opened up to so much more. I learned a great deal about the Archie Comics which I had previously ignored due to my preference for the Japanese side of things and discovered so much more. I just soaked up as much of the franchise as I could. When Sonic Colors came out for Nintendo only it was disappointing but the forums kept me informed and in the game to an extent. Then there was the day of Sonic Generations reveal and my dad showed it to me when I got home from work and it was a game I had to have. But the more I studied it, the more it was wrong. Classic Sonic was round and chubby instead of sharp and dynamic. I was exposed to the belief that he was always cute in greater form than I ever was when I first heard such comparisons drawn by Morgan Webb on X-Play back when Heroes released. Everything seemed wrong but I bought the game anyway and was blown away by what was being done level-wise for Modern Sonic but was disappointed by so much of the game that I couldn’t revisit it. It wasn’t just Generations though, everything was going completely sideways from what I knew and loved about the franchise and I could no longer even retreat to Sonic CD because the PC it ran on had pretty much died and all of the working PCs could not run a Windows game that old. Christian Whitehead’s remake was a godsend in a way, but it too was wrong. I was able to finally experience the Japanese soundtrack for the first time, which immediately won me over in game context, but Sonic felt so heavy and slow compared to the Windows version that I just stopped playing because it didn’t feel right. Somewhere around this time I managed to finally be able to watch the subtitled version of the OVA with my younger brother and it was one of the most nostalgic experiences we had ever had. Sonic was Sonic, Metal Sonic was Sonic. Tails was fast and competent, and Knuckles was probably the most enjoyable I had ever seen him even though he was removed from his role in the games. It was everything I wanted though, bar Amy missing, and it made me wonder how much I was missing from the old days of the Japanese side of the franchise that never made it over. It was at that time I found Sonic Retro’s archives and my world was opened up again in ways that the Mania previews couldn’t touch.

Of all the arguments that never made sense to me in my time in the fandom it was that Sonic was a children’s franchise so it should be full of weak comedy and Teletubby levels of childish harmlessness. It was an argument I had never seen pre-Shadow the Hedgehog and made no sense in the context of Sonic being a teenage rebel with an attitude as I had been introduced to him back in 1991. I found myself frequently siding with Adventure diehards in the belief that the games were so much more but I had no real context for what I was talking about. But I finally realized that Sonic really was a children’s franchise when my younger brother translated the story in the first Sonic Drift and I saw that Amy addressed Sonic as Sonic-sama. It’s so hard to describe what it was that clicked due to the use of that Japanese honorific, which implies utmost respect and on occasion even admiration, but in that moment I realized that characters around Sonic’s age actually undermined the franchise being a children’s franchise. Sonic was a character of the nineties, a character who parents feared being a bad influence on their children because of his rebellious ways and cheeky attitude yet here was this eight year old girl who looked upon Sonic with such admiration and respect. And why wouldn’t she? She was a hedgehog and adventurer herself in a world where Sonic was the most famous hedgehog in the world, so much so that even a fox (a hedgehog’s natural predator) wanted to be like him. He was a role model. He was the cool teenager that your best friend’s older brother was. The problem solver. The one you wanted to be like because he was that awesome. That was who Sonic was and I had forgotten that at some point in the years since I was first introduced to him. I wanted my brother to translate more of the untranslated material from the Japanese side but he refused for reasons unknown to me so I instead started reevaluating the series and what it was. Everywhere I looked where another character around Sonic’s age was introduced it smothered the influencing effect he had on young children in favor of the Shonen Jump tenet of friendship, and Sonic changed over time from being the cool teenager who young kids looked up to into this shining beacon of righteousness who corrected the path of everyone he met. But who he was was no longer there and Tails trying less and less to be like his hero as the years went by nigh completely erased that aspect of Sonic’s character. But back then even Amy had that idolization of Sonic, instead of a hammer that she swung at him with if he refused to go on a date with her. Her idolization was gone in favor of violent jokes played off her infatuation. She was not the genki girl I loved but some green eyed monster who was routinely accused of being a stalker and yandere. While plenty of arguments were made in her defense it was not enough for me. I had to see what was missing from Amy’s character and so I studied the games and discovered some amazing things. Amy was introduced as a damsel in distress, but how much of a damsel was she? If I went by Sonic Adventure she should have been perceived as a helpless damsel before then but this clashed with her tomboy description and Rascal nickname from CD so I would have to look at her from before then. My starting point was again the Japanese manual of Sonic Drift where, according to what my younger brother translated, the car that Sonic drove was praised by the hedgehog for being nearly as fast as he was. That meant that since Amy was competing that she was driving a car that could nearly keep up with Sonic. Taken in context that means she had the strength and reflexes to control such a car and actually race against Sonic. This was taken to its extreme in Sonic R where Tails supposedly upgraded her car and she was now competitive with a cast of characters who could keep up with Sonic on foot in one way or another. She was significantly more impressive than some average person or damsel in distress. But how much further back could I trace this astounding competence of Amy’s. As it turned out, all the way to Sonic CD where she debuted and Sonic Team Japan presented her as a damsel in distress. What they did not do though was make her helpless. She traveled to Never Lake under her own power led on by nothing but a message from her cards and a love for mysterious things. Upon arriving she didn’t just hang around the lake but got herself up on Little Planet which the only demonstrated way up within the game and manual was Eggman’s chain, which can be inferred to mean that Amy made her way up there by that method. Then on Little Planet she demonstrates enough strength to hold Sonic in place if he is moving slowly enough and makes it through Palmtree Panic to Collision Chaos before Sonic. Later in the game once she is rescued from Metal Sonic she appears at the end of Metallic Madness after Eggman’s defeat, but is shown catching up with Sonic. This can be inferred to mean that she made it through Metallic Madness on her own, navigating all of the death traps designed to stop Sonic himself. But what about her being a damsel in distress? Considering she was captured by Metal Sonic who even Sonic cannot straight up defeat in head on confrontation instead having to simply outrun him, then Amy’s capture makes sense. She’s not as fast as Sonic and even Sonic can’t beat Metal so of course she is captured. Not because she is helpless, but rather because she was simply outclassed by something beyond her abilities. In light of this, when discussions about Mania and Amy being included were ongoing I proposed that Amy did not need her hammer and could be included without it. This resulted in me being ostracized due to a general love of Amy’s hammer and her Sonic Advance 1 gameplay amongst the community. Faced with such a reaction I decided to look at the place of Amy’s hammer in the games and the more I studied the more I disliked the hammer and the more I believed that Mania was a chance to re-explore Amy without it as it had no place in Naka’s original rolling gameplay that gave birth to the franchise itself, no less Sonic the Hedgehog, the object of Amy’s affection and the hedgehog who she has enough respect and admiration for to use the -sama honorific in pre-Adventure content.

I don’t recall where I first heard the story but I have seen it revisited several times over the years; how Naka when tasked with creating a paltformer franchise created rolling momentum based gameplay based on the movement of a ball so as to allow continuous movement without stopping to attack, instead bumping into enemies to defeat them. While that formula was tweaked heavily over the years, and even abandoned for a time, it is still something that is genius in its execution and simplicity. Using a hedgehog, a creature that naturally curls into a ball to defend itself, was even a further stroke of genius as it created the necessary imagery to connect the concepts of attacking and rolling together due to a hedgehog’s quills and the motion of a ball. When Sonic curls into a ball you know instinctively that a ball of spikes will do damage, so it is naturally affiliated with attacking, especially since when Sonic jumps he curls into a ball and damages any enemy he bumps into. Then the fact that Sonic curls into a ball when he ducks tells the player that if Sonic curls into a ball while running he will roll and carry any momentum that he had while running. It is absolute genius simplicity that provides both depth and ease of play. There is no memorizing numerous button inputs and combinations, just running and curling into a ball. Deceptively simple, but when combined with solid, engaging, and imaginative level design the possibilities are near endless, and above all, fluid. The intention of achieving continuous movement is met with this simple design that is both easy to pick up and play and provides as much depth as the levels have variety. It is this formula which the franchise built itself upon and that always pulls me back on the gameplay side of things. As much as I enjoyed Amy’s Hammer Vault in Sonic Adventure it was never as engaging beyond just enjoying doing it. It required sometimes excessive effort to pull off and in turn was frustrating in level where it was meant to be used. The compromise for this was to create a complex command system for Amy that has been described by many as a hard mode in Sonic Advance and excludes all traces of the original rolling gameplay to defeat enemies by bumping into them. Simplicity was gone and what should have been intuitive instead required major experimentation to even begin. Yet in the same game the traditional gameplay still existed and could be used to complete the game without the use of any other ability tacked on. So why make Amy so complicated? I’ve heard plenty of arguments, some ranging from thematically to others that argued for uniqueness. None though could ever address the fact that Amy is a hedgehog who lacks her natural ability to curl into ball and take advantage of the original gameplay design. But gameplay complications further arise from there

Jump /\ /__\ Run       Roll

Jump /\ /__\              Run           Swing Hammer

Take the two triangles above. They describe the basic gameplay that the franchise began with and Amy’s gameplay. While they are similar, 1/3 of Amy’s gamplay is completely different and leads into a series of complex additional commands as well as a focus on melee gameplay which requires stopping to fight instead of maintaining the flow of continuous movement. As the versatility of “Swing Hammer” becomes even more in depth the triangle become unbalanced and you no longer have a platformer but a brawler with platforming elements. It is fairly disingenuous and betrays the simplicity and intention of rolling so as to not need to stop to defeat an enemy. It puts an emphasis on combat based gameplay instead of movement based gameplay. When approaching Mania and its return to the top triangle and the simplicity it relies on there is no room for the hammer, and thus Amy if she must have it. As someone who wanted Amy playable in Mania and was starting to have a desire to see how she could be explored without the hammer in a setting where it was not as much a part of her character, the insistence that she had to have that overly complicated gameplay even in a setting that thrived on the use of simple gameplay played into my dislike of the hammer. In a way, it was keeping one of my favorite characters and gameplay styles separate. I could not have both and that just seemed wrong since Amy originated in that gameplay era.

Further discussions I would have about Amy’s hammer and its use in the franchise would only fuel my dislike of it as I began to see it as a rather twisted and horrible tool. To me, Amy is a genki girl, or a girl who is overwhelmingly positive, optimistic, energetic, and is always trying to get everybody to have as much fun as she is so that they too can be happy. She is joy incarnate in a way, yet the hammer is the very opposite of that. While it is designed as a toy, a hammer is technically a tool for building things but that is far from what Amy primarily uses it for. She doesn’t build anything with it beyond fear as she wields it as either a sledge hammer or war hammer destroying everything that gets in her path. This destructive use of the hammer combined with the temper introduced to her character in Sonic X would convert what was once a silly toy into weapon of entitlement where any time Amy would not get her way she would bring out her hammer and get her way in an instant. She was no longer a genki girl, but an over entitled brat that no one would put in her place for overwhelming fear of her hammer. If she didn’t like something, just swing the hammer and the world would fall in place, a far cry from the bubbly and energetic girl who could win people over with kind words and a smile by calling out their inner good. To make matters even worse, she would turn that same hammer against Sonic, the very hedgehog who holds her affection and who she was once demonstrated as having enough respect and admiration for to use the –sama honorific when addressing him. But even beyond Sonic, her supposedly best friend Cream is also an unfortunate victim of hammer abuse if some her lines throughout the franchise are anything to go by. As the lead heroine of the franchise I find this type of behavior from her completely inappropriate, and further, as someone who sees the franchise as a children’s franchise it is content that can teach children all kinds of twisted values. It shows that if you want something bad enough you just have to swing anything you can make a weapon out of, even your toys, as hard as you can and everyone will fall in line. It’s a horrible lesson and not one that should be being taught on any level. For example, take Knuckles and his ability to punch. In his debut game he is demonstrated punching on a number of occasions, including at Sonic and Tails, but once he is playable his punching is a not an option for the player unless they try to use his glide leaving him instead to use Sonic’s special abilities. To a small child this can appear as only villains punch people and it is very hard for a good guy to punch anything, but instead a good guy has special abilities that they use to defeat bad guys. This can leave a profoundly positive effect on a child and can even potentially lead to a child having an interest in learning the right ways to deal with bad guys and maybe even becoming real life heroes like our police, firefighters, doctors, and soldiers. In contrast, Amy’s hammer encourages a more villainous approach of using weapons to get what you want and that if you act sweet enough everyone will let you get away with. It is disingenuous and is a horrible message to pass along to children. But it gets even worse. When Amy is using her hammer against her friends they are shown as weaker then weapons which undermines the roles of the heroes having special abilities to beat the bad guys. But then, if you take Amy’s hammer away from her she is usually made to be completely useless and helpless promoting a need for weapons and self armament. It is spectacularly tonally dissonant with the rest of the series and her optimistic ways.

Over the years the Sonic franchise has gone through many changes but one thing has stayed consistent; the image of a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog running with a confident smirk on his face to his next adventure. It is so iconic an image that at one point back in the nineties I remember hearing that Sonic was more globally recognizable than even Mickey Mouse. It’s lavish praise for a simple blue hedgehog who loves adventure but it speaks strongly of his image; red shoes for running and a shade of blue that evokes the freedom of the open sky and peacefulness of that scene. He may have a strong sense of justice and won’t stand for injustice but at the end of the day even he enjoys the peaceful times when he can run to his heart’s content. And that brings me to the image of Amy’s hammer. What does it imply if not combat. When it comes out everyone knows that Amy is intending to do harm. That does not evoke the peace that Sonic fights for and represents just by being. It instead evokes the very images of the conflict that Sonic puts an end to and is an opposite image of the optimistic girl that Amy is supposed to be. While it can be said that combat is as much a part of the Sonic franchise as adventure, to me part of what works is not glorifying traditional combat and instead using the fantastical specialness of a hedgehog’s ability to curl into a ball. It makes Sonic and his cast of characters unique from other franchises and can make any blue ball evoke thoughts of Sonic, or yellow with Tails, and red with Knuckles. But what about Amy? Well, when I see hammers I think of construction work, or the Animaniancs, or Thor and his hammer Mjolnir, or even Harley Quinn from Batman with the Tales of series usual being my first thought when I see the type of hammer that inspired Amy’s. It also doesn’t help that a hammer does not make me think of Sonic gameplay in any way and it does not conjure up images of rolling and running. As an Amy fan who wants to see more of her this lack of strong identifying imagery means that most people outside of the fanbase would not think Amy if you showed them a picture of a hammer limiting demand to see her. Even in fanbase it is not good as her hammer is usually affiliated with her violent representations where she uses the hammer in ways as to make people feel like she is a yandere, a type of character who harms those who show interest in their affection even going so far as to kill their affection so no one can have them. Further, when the hammer appears arguments for combat centric gameplay arise and sense of adventure is washed away in the wake of a clamoring for action. Praise is constantly heaped onto the hammer for its deep and involving platforming and combat. No mention is made of exploration and discovery with the worst parodies of the hammer simplifying Amy down to a cheep Incredible Hulk knock off. Imagery like this while made in good fun in some cases is disingenuous with Amy’s character. When you can show her on one hand as a bright and cheerful girl who you can’t help but smile at and then on the other where she is a hammer wielding force of terror it can be horribly jarring. While it could be argued that it shows multiple facets of her personality it can also be argued that she is treated almost as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde character due to how different the personalities are. This change in imagery though is all controlled by whether or not her hammer is out. When there is no sign of it she is typically cute and adventurous with an all around cheerful disposition. Once the hammer comes out though, she becomes something else which is almost always affiliated with combat and destruction. This dual imagery is not conductive for a character that is intended to have a single image, especially one of being, curious, optimistic, cheerful, and adventurous. By affiliation with her hammer Amy is portrayed as having two extremes she can exist in which, while reconcilable are rarely shown as such with her either being in hammer mode or normal mode. As a fan of Amy’s character, hammer mode feels like a detraction to me that smothers the genki girl that she is at her best.

Amy’s affiliation with her hammer does more than just give her an unneeded violent image, it also affects her interactions with those around her. The first thing that typically comes to mind even in universe when Amy’s hammer appears is typically fear. Or occasionally in the reverse the sign of hammers will make the characters think of Amy. Her affiliation with her hammer makes her interchangeable with the sight of any hammer, effectively reducing her role to just hammer. If something needs hammered everyone thinks of Amy. It is a gross simplification of her potential in the franchise. She is never addressed as an adventurer or someone who has a great sense of intuition, or even just someone who can listen to your troubles and lend a hand. Her affiliation with her hammer and overreliance on it also cuts off her own potential for growth. As mentioned above, I see Amy as spectacularly competent and that she has been since Sonic CD when she debuted in the games years before she was given the hammer. Like Tails, she idolized Sonic and made every attempt to chase after him. Unlike Tails though who was gifted with the concept of flying like a helicopter to keep up with Sonic, Amy was given nothing back in that period and when she finally was adapted into a main game she still was not given gameplay that would reflect her pursuit of Sonic. Instead she was severely undermined and was even slower than Big the Cat. In a platformer series where you run fast and plow through enemies without stopping by curling into a ball she was made excruciatingly slow and provided a weapon that brought her to a stop every time it was swung unless she was going fast enough to Hammer Vault. In fact, her affiliation with her hammer at that time required you had to be going fast enough to attack without slowing down which was counter intuitive with Sonic design up to that point where you attacked by rolling so you did not slowing down. In other words, her hammer represented slow methodical gameplay in a franchise that was about moving fluidly with speed as a reward. Amy was instead rewarded with fluidity for moving fast but to tell you that you were going fast enough to be rewarded you had to wait for her hammer to appear, an almost cruel reminder of what it was that was keeping you slow in the first place. Even when the problem was resolved in the Sonic Advance series by giving her speed, she was still deprived of the classic rolling gameplay which allowed for fluid play as soon as you picked up the controller. But her hammer association would not get better from there as her next and final in her modern design platformer gameplay appearance in 06 sacrificed everything she had built up in prior games. From there it would not get better. Her violent image continued to get worse outside of the games and she was only considered relevant if she had her hammer. Her hammer became so relevant that when the Archie Comics did their 25th anniversary celebration with the Mega Drive Comic, Amy was only allowed to follow along because of her hammer and how it was useful with Sonic even then seeing her as at risk if Eggman decided to go after her. Her hammer is treated as so representative of her that when Eggman is bested in Cascade Temple Zone and everyone attacks him, Amy is left off screen with only her hammer being visible. In the next volume things get even more out of hand with the hammer as it is practically the only reason Amy, Tails, and Knuckles are able to best a dragon robot as swinging the hammer keeps Amy safe from its attack. Yet in the same issue her hammer is then useless against an animal container that Sonic can plow through with ease using the classic spin attack which is shared by Tails and Knuckles. She is again shown as useless if her hammer is unavailable even though she herself is a hedgehog who chases after Sonic and should be able to imitate him if Tails can. The fact that she doesn’t at all also cuts off some of her potential as a motivating character. Her and Tails were both introduced as characters who idolized Sonic and chased after him with Amy being the optimistic and cheerful one and Tails being the one who struggled to be confident. From a narrative standpoint it was a perfect opportunity to create a relationship between Tails and Amy as Amy cheered on Tails’ efforts to be like his hero even going so far as to give her best examples to show him that one could be like Sonic without being Sonic. Unfortunately it was a wasted opportunity and now outside of Sonic Mania even Tails has not attempted to be like his Hero in well over a decade. Amy meanwhile is waiting for a game where her hammer can fit in so she can finally be playable again. If she was not so affiliated with and dependent on it she would already be playable again and accomplishing who knows what. Just like Tails, the game she was introduced in showed she could keep up with Sonic and make it through Eggman’s death traps with only the most extreme of circumstances being beyond her, in her case a metal doppelganger of Sonic even he could not directly fight in game. It was a theme at that time that could have been followed to spectacular effect showing how Sonic could motivate young children to be all they could be in pursuit of what motivated them without fear of what others thought while subtly hinting at what is good and bad. Instead Amy out of all of the main cast, barring games like Sonic and the Black Knight and Shadow the Hedgehog, was the only character to be given a permanent weapon and not to have any lessons attached to it creating an image dissonance between a sweet bubbly character and nightmarish over entitled brat who even her friends were terrified of. It brings nothing to her character or her best moments, but her affiliation with it bars her from more traditional takes on the series and leaves her with a violent psychopathic imagery at its worse.

Though argued by many, I, after my long history with the franchise was able to look back and see it as the children’s franchise that it was supposed to be. A story about a blue hedgehog and his adventures and all of those he met and inspired along the way. As a children’s franchise the characters who best represented that were Tails and Amy, but where Tails was able to be like his hero for a while Amy was left out until she was given a hammer that did not allow her to truly belong. In light of the current times where equality and equal opportunity for all is being fought for in the public eye again, as well as equal representation for women, it really is a shame that Amy is held back from being able to achieve what Tails did in favor of a hammer. A message is left with Amy for any girl who wants to chase their dreams and that is that they will never be able to catch up to their heroes and so they might as well take up arms and make a ruckus until the world bends over backwards for them. That is one reason amongst the many above that I have detailed for why I dislike Amy’s hammer. I acknowledge its iconic place in the franchise but I would like to see Amy put it down for good and become a character like Sonic who fights for what is right and what she believes in without relying on the way of villains. I want to see her smiling brightly as she chases after Sonic with her heart on her sleeve and believing that she can catch up him. To me, as long as she holds onto her hammer she never will, because all she will be is the one who hammers, and not Amy Rose.

Whew that’s a lot. Anyway, I hope anyone who took the time to read this can at least see where I’m coming from. Not trying to change anyone’s mind, just trying to help them see why I have the stance I do.

#sonic the hedgehog #Amy Rose #piko piko hammer

[spiritsonic]

Hi Evan! Loving the current issue :) I was just wondering, if sonic weren't a ghost, would he be capable of growing out his face fur like Shadow, or is that genetic like chest fur? Thx :)

He could grow out his muzzle fur, but not much; Hybrids have different levels of body/facial hair the same as Humans do, and Sonic’s not particularly gifted in that department. When he was alive, he probably shaved to avoid the Hybrid equivalent of an awkward teenage almost-mustache. When he doesn’t shave, his facial/arm/chest hair is light blue/white like it was in his Werehog form. 

I’ve started my day by talking about Sonic the Hedgehog’s body hair. I don’t know what this says about me and my life choices.

#GOTF lore