Is Amy a real 'classic'?

[Blacklightning]

Personally Amy's hammer jumps in SA1 and Advance makes me envision that hammer of hers as basically just a spring on a stick that can break things, and I kinda wonder how you could adapt that to gameplay if it behaved that way for pretty much everything she whacks - floors, walls, enemies, items, the whole shebang. Imagine being able to instashield into a wall to cause a walljump-like bounce, or get back most of your height from a fall if you use it against the ground. Hell, make it deflect projectiles, like the shields did in S3&K.

[Tara]

I know it might betray the Genesis simplicity, but I think Amy could best benefit from Mania's less linear stage design.  I think SA1 had a pretty interesting idea by giving her more "puzzle" based platforming, even though it doesn't work amazingly well for the game in question.  So I think it would be neat to give her puzzles that don't take too long to figure out, when mastered can be achieved quick enough so as not to hinder a speed run, and can be used to access areas that offer neat incentives such as unlockable media, alternate pathways, or whatever else the gameplay might have to offer.  Though I'm aware Amy's not exactly the most thought-oriented character, I like the idea of giving her a bit of resourcefulness to differentiate herself from Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles' physical abilities of speed, flight, and slightly-less-flight.  It would take longer to master, which might deter some, but I don't know.  I think it could be interesting.

[Salamander]

Whenever I try to think of a fresh moveset for Amy, I just find myself thinking of Hammer Kirby instead.  He jumps and spins the hammer around him, that's a spin attack; he can twirl the hammer sideways around him while running, that's a spin dash...

Following on from the hammer-as-spring idea, you could have Amy quickly smack the hammer down in front of herself to bounce upwards to jump, also damaging anything in front of her and giving her a boost from springs she's stood next to; press the jump button again in mid-air to spin the hammer in mid-air, which turns into another hammer-jump if she hits the ground while doing so, etc.  It's a little more technical than what Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles do, but it gives her more or less the same base abilities, which is important.  With that said, there's really no reason why Amy shouldn't have a standard spin-dash and spin-attack, either; she's a hedgehog, after all.  Tails and Knuckles don't even have spikes in the right places, but they manage.

[Potada]

Another thing that(slightly) differentiates each character in the classic gamea are their jump heights. Sonic and Tails jump the same height, but Knuckles has a lower jump. Maybe Amy could have the highest jump of the group to give her a bit of an edge?

[Tara]

Weren't the differing jump heights shown awhile ago to like... not be a thing?

I've been playing the games most of my life and never noticed a difference.

[Diogenes]

Knuckles absolutely does jump lower than Sonic and Tails; it's responsible for at least one route difference that I can remember.

That's the only stat difference between the characters, though.

[Tara]

Ah, I guess I just hadn't been paying close enough attention.  My mistake.

[MadmanRB]

Actually I almost say that pre adventure Amy is different that post adventure Amy  becuse of trher direction her character took post Sonic adventure 2.

Heck she is so broken after heroes for me I think her CD-SA2 is a totally seperate character and the new one is one of Robotniks (or Eggman whatever) experiments gone horribly wrong

[Blazey Firekitty]

I like the uniqueness of the hammer gameplay from Advance and the romhacks of the classics, but I think Amy having the Fleetway crossbow could potentially be cool. Maybe she'd be kind of a glass cannon, able to hit enemies and bosses from far away, but still having a harder time defending herself without a spin attack.

[Scape]

What if the crossbow was wrist mounted like in Deus Ex 1?

[Tara]

I'm not very keen on the idea of Amy having a crossbow.  It's just conceptually not as cute and absurd as Sonic spinning into a ball, Tails flying with his tails (or, as in Tails Adventure, using Looney Tunes-style bombs), and things like that, thus isn't really something I personally like to see from the series.  And in 2-D platforming, I don't feel like long-distance attacks work particularly well unless your enemies are pretty much standing still, especially when you have things like arrow physics taken into account.  

[Indigo Rush]

Whenever I think of Amy in a Sonic platformer, I think of wildly acrobatic double/triple-jumping, wall-jumping, swinging on poles with her hammer, running on grindrails with perfect balance, making huge hammer jumps twice the height of Sonic's and using her hammer to launch off of springs at twice the speed, using her mid-air hammer spin to bounce off of enemies and such. Basically, I'd like it if Amy's method of keeping flow is through various ways to jump and propel herself with appropriate timing; with her being difficult to master, but potentially OP when in the right hands. 

 

[FriendBot]

28 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Whenever I think of Amy in a Sonic platformer, I think of wildly acrobatic double/triple-jumping, wall-jumping, swinging on poles with her hammer, running on grindrails with perfect balance, making huge hammer jumps twice the height of Sonic's and using her hammer to launch off of springs at twice the speed, using her mid-air hammer spin to bounce off of enemies and such. Basically, I'd like it if Amy's method of keeping flow is through various ways to jump and propel herself with appropriate timing; with her being difficult to master, but potentially OP when in the right hands. 

 

So mix of elements from Advance and Rise of Lyric? I can get down with that.

[Blazey Firekitty]

I like Scape's suggestion of strapping the crossbow to the wrist, but in hindsight maybe the crossbow idea was me kinda putting my classic Megaman nostalgia into classic Sonic nostalgia in a way. Like Tara said, it's a method of attack that seems less fitting to the cartoony-ness of the classic games, and you'd have to keep up with the physics of your shots as well as the physics of your character, convoluting things a little.

I like Indigo's idea of trying to make Amy as acrobatic as possible with the hammer, maybe Rise of Lyric was onto something with using the hammer to grapple and swing from poles. Maybe well timed hammer swings could deflect projectiles like Tails and Knuckles do when they fly or glide.