Sonic Mania Adventures

[E-122-Psi]

Just now, Sonic Fan J said:

What are you talking about. She spends almost the entire episode interacting with Sonic 

Props to her for NOT mistaking Metal for Sonic at any point.

[Failinhearts]

D'awww, this episode just warms my heart. In an era where many shows don't try as much for fun Christmas Special, at least I can count on Sega this year to gove me something warm and fluffy to get me in the holiday mood!

[-Robin-]

I guess the Classic verse is just ok with Angel Island being so accessible to everyone now.

 

You don't go to a secretive and hidden island for a simple winter stroll, Amy.

[Red Hot Jack]

I didn't expect that! I expected Amy because of the hashtag but definitely not how the plot went, or the focus on Amy either. It was just so sweet, I need more!

Happy Holidays, guys 

[Sonic Fan J]

10 minutes ago, -Robin- said:

You don't go to a secretive and hidden island for a simple winter stroll, Amy.

Don't forget that in her debut game despite going to Never Lake by the order of the cards (by the Japanese manual's story anyway) she still randomly decides to go up onto Little Planet as well. She didn't have the nickname of Rosy the Rascal for nothing I'd wager.

[LongcrierCat]

This warmed my heart.

Sweet little Amy shown the poor sad and broken metal boy some love and brought him back home. 

It almost makes you think back to how empathetic and wonderful she was in Sonic Adventure. Can we please stick with this Amy please? She can be allowed to fight but I want her spirit to keep being this bright beacon of hope. 

[Celestia]

19 minutes ago, -Robin- said:

You don't go to a secretive and hidden island for a simple winter stroll, Amy.

Look, Amy goes where she wants.

(See also: being on Prison Island inexplicably in SA2.)

[Lord-Dreamerz]

... I now want a game where as Amy you help bring back broken badniks home to Eggman as the end level goal of every zone. xD

[Red Hot Jack]

Here's the big snowy poster. Thanks to Parax!

[Jango]

Really nice to see both Mushroom Hill and Ice Cap in this, as well as Collision Chaos and Tidal Tempest remixes.

Now this. This is the kinda of Sonic I think is the right one. Simple, charming, fun. It doesn't try hard, nor it has to, it's just the characters being themselves and well writen. These people get Sonic. I have every finger crossed for their stay in the franchise for new projects, be it games, animations, soundtracks. Their hearts are in the right place.

Merry Christmas.

[E-122-Psi]

16 minutes ago, LongcrierCat said:

This warmed my heart.

Sweet little Amy shown the poor sad and broken metal boy some love and brought him back home. 

It almost makes you think back to how empathetic and wonderful she was in Sonic Adventure. Can we please stick with this Amy please? She can be allowed to fight but I want her spirit to keep being this bright beacon of hope. 

I think the obstacle was that pre-SA2 didn't have Cream, who kind of took over as the empath of the group, but didn't really have any other traits or importance to make her as three dimensional. Boom did bring this aspect of Amy back, unfortunately it also did away with a lot of her other traits, it was probably the one that best demonstrated this dynamic in a developed way though, trying to be nice and charitable despite sometimes getting frustrated at being taken advantage of or getting overpersistent with characters who don't want her help. Not the usual ticking time bomb who plays nice until you trigger her psycho rage.

[SoniClub]

That was lovely; great to see Amy introduced into the universe beyond a cameo. 

[LongcrierCat]

5 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

I think the obstacle was that pre-SA2 didn't have Cream, who kind of took over as the empath of the group, but didn't really have any other traits or importance to make her as three dimensional. Boom did bring this aspect of Amy back, unfortunately it also did away with a lot of her other traits, it was probably the one that best demonstrated this dynamic in a developed way though, trying to be nice and charitable despite sometimes getting frustrated at being taken advantage of or getting overpersistent with characters who don't want her help. Not the usual ticking time bomb who plays nice until you trigger her psycho rage.

That's understood. I just don't understand the part where the characters have to be completely different from one another to the point where they only have one or two defining character traits or devoid of them completely such as the majority of Sonic Forces' cast. 

They're cartoons and are meant to be exaggerated, yes. They're also meant to be very malleable and character parallels happen all the time. It's part of good character foiling. There'll be the opposite personalities but there will also be the characters who get along really well because "one character sees themselves in the other" you know. 

Sonic and Tails. Tails sees the hero he can be in Sonic. 

Amy's dynamic with Cream feels like it was meant to be the same, so it's super confusing when it... doesn't play like that. Cream is just naturally sweet and due to her being that core trait it's also been a huge reason why she's been absent for... years now in games? Geezus, Sega. Find someone with passion for the Modern Sonic branch of this series who can do what Sonic Mania has been for Classic Sonic. Sheesh. 

But no, multiple characters can still serve similar purposes. I mean, yeah, some people kind of forget that and other characters are better suited to doing it than others. But it's no need to suddenly strip the characters of meaningful traits. Because yeah. 

This empathetic Amy is the best I've seen her in years. They spoke so loudly to the core of her being a sweet girl who may be a little over excited sometimes. They nailed it. This stuff needs to stick around. When there's more personality to the characters in non voiced short films, then it shows a strong problem in Sega's major Sonic Team to be able to tell a story and keep the characters intact. 

[Fire-N-Space]

This was a lovely episode so warm so cute and I like how Sonic is following Amy now!

[StaticMania]

Amy in this part is more akin to Sonic Adventure's Amy to E-102 Gamma...though she's just being nice and bringing Metal back to Eggman instead.

[Marcello]

I think this might be my favorite episode. It was really cool seeing Amy again and I loved her portrayal. I hope them finally using her means they're also ready to use her in the next 2D Sonic game.

1 hour ago, E-122-Psi said:

Holy crap, they used Amy. Nice to see her classic form in a cartoon at last (besides five seconds of the CD FMV), they even remembered her 'classic' hammer is a 'squeaker' toy.

 

Her modern hammer is a squeaky toy, too.

[Sgt Nate V]

Would've worked better if Amy had given Metal a rose

[E-122-Psi]

23 minutes ago, Marcello said:

I think this might be my favorite episode. It was really cool seeing Amy again and I loved her portrayal. I hope them finally using her means they're also ready to use her in the next 2D Sonic game.

Her modern hammer is a squeaky toy, too.

Yeah, but they used its Fighters design here with the more blatant springy base.

[Kuzu]

This was a very simple yet charming episode. Nice to see that Amy wasn't completely left out of the action.

Eggman is a dick, Metal lives a sad existence, Amy is pure, and Sonic is just "wtf bro".

It never ceases to be funny how these simple, 5 minute shorts show far better characterization than any modern game in the past 19 years.

[E-122-Psi]

52 minutes ago, LongcrierCat said:

That's understood. I just don't understand the part where the characters have to be completely different from one another to the point where they only have one or two defining character traits or devoid of them completely such as the majority of Sonic Forces' cast. 

They're cartoons and are meant to be exaggerated, yes. They're also meant to be very malleable and character parallels happen all the time. It's part of good character foiling. There'll be the opposite personalities but there will also be the characters who get along really well because "one character sees themselves in the other" you know. 

Sonic and Tails. Tails sees the hero he can be in Sonic. 

Amy's dynamic with Cream feels like it was meant to be the same, so it's super confusing when it... doesn't play like that. Cream is just naturally sweet and due to her being that core trait it's also been a huge reason why she's been absent for... years now in games? Geezus, Sega. Find someone with passion for the Modern Sonic branch of this series who can do what Sonic Mania has been for Classic Sonic. Sheesh. 

But no, multiple characters can still serve similar purposes. I mean, yeah, some people kind of forget that and other characters are better suited to doing it than others. But it's no need to suddenly strip the characters of meaningful traits. Because yeah. 

This empathetic Amy is the best I've seen her in years. They spoke so loudly to the core of her being a sweet girl who may be a little over excited sometimes. They nailed it. This stuff needs to stick around. When there's more personality to the characters in non voiced short films, then it shows a strong problem in Sega's major Sonic Team to be able to tell a story and keep the characters intact. 

I think the issue is that a lot of the time when a character has limited screentime to establish themselves a key quirk takes over, and in Amy's case it was her bratty temper. This worked fine originally since it made a fun juxtoposion, she meant well but she had a limit and could still be self indulgent. The issue is that, like tons of 'nice but temperamental' characters this gradually got exaggerated into Amy being a thinly veiled psychopath who tries to look all sweet and empathetic but turns into a violent tantrum throwing thug the instant things don't go her way (Sonic X suffered from this the most blatantly). Seriously, I think only a few 'Beware the Nice Ones' characters, particularly female ones, have avoided this type of flanderization (Fluttershy is the best example I can think of, though even then you can see the show tottering delicately with the number of 'evil/ticked off Fluttershy' gags).

The heavier amount of new characters making her old role redundant and her prominence slowly fading with each game didn't help and after a while Amy just interchanged between obnoxious comic relief and generic girl. Seriously if Tails and Knuckles and arguably even Sonic himself suffered from this treatment, Amy didn't really stand a chance.

[Blue Blood]

29 minutes ago, Sgt Nate V said:

Would've worked better if Amy had given Metal a rose

It's the Collision Chaos flower;  the place where Amy and Metal first met. Quite fitting, imo.

[JosepHenry]

Man... Why can't we have the same thing as this but with the modern cast included?

[MetalSkulkBane]

4 hours ago, TheOcelot said:

This version of Amy feels so true to her pre-Adventure design and personality.

 

Right, because Classic Amy has shown numerous times that she's a sweet soul. Like... um... the way she drove her car in Sonic R?

And of course, Adventure 1 is when she was ruined forever, protecting little birds and being nice to Gamma... wait.

I would argue that even Adventure 2 Amy just wanted to help. She got frustrated for being left behind, but at the end, she remembered what's important. Heroes and Battle is a little more complicated.

[Marco9966]

This has the Adventure 1 spirit all over it. Reminds me of Amy being kind and helping E-102 and Shadow. I love it.

[Your Vest Friend]

Gotta admit, that's a point there. Classic Amy as per the games of that time comprised of looking overly cutesy but throwing tantrums at the drop of a goddamn dime.