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Knuckles the Echidna
First Appearance: Sonic the Hedgehog 3

So from the jump, Knuckles the Echidna is just cool as hell. He's pitched as the rival to Sonic with a contrastic red color scheme, he's got the big spiked gloves, and he's got the dreads. And then you factor in his gliding and climbing and he's just freaking cool.

And he has a hell of a first impression too. The first time you see him, he literally punches the Chaos Emeralds out of Super Sonic. It doesn't really get more cool than that. After that, he just smugly trolls you and impedes you at every turn, and you really get the sense of wanting to beat the crap out of him later in the game.

But I think Sonic 3 & Knuckles does an awesome job with him. The game gets overlooked a lot for it's story, but I think it tells a great story with the limitations. You have Knuckles working with Robotnik, duped by him into thinking Sonic is the bad guy trying to take the Master Emerald. And so he just makes Sonic's life hard constantly to stop you from getting to Robotnik. Eventually, you do get the opportunity to beat up Knuckles and it goes well! Only Sonic and Knuckles tire each other out and Robotnik seizes the opportunity to take the Master Emerald. Knuckles immediately jumps to action, trying to save the Master Emerald, because he's determined. But he also cares about what's right. Because with the last of his strength, he helps Sonic go forward to stop Robotnik. It's honestly really simple but it does such a great job telling us Knuckles' story.

From there, Knuckles was so popular he even got his own game with Knuckles' Chaotix! But we don't need to talk too much about that aside from him seeming cool in there as well.

They continue the story of Knuckles with an important role in Sonic Adventure 1 as he's still watching over that Master Emerald and that plays a big role, and Knuckles is important here. Even in Sonic Adventure 2, he's less important but they still give him a purpose by messing around with the Master Emerald. He also has a solid story with Rouge the Bat.

Knuckles absolutely peaks in Sonic 3 & Knuckles though, and from Sonic Heroes onward, he's varying degress of "Why are you here?" They just have no reason for Knuckles to be in these games, but his presence is usually nice. He's still cool, he can have fun banter with the various characters. I'll never say no to having Knuckles in a game, but I think they need to do more with him. Abandon the Master Emerald stuff or do something different with it, because it's only holding him back at this point (especially since they can't ever stick to one idea for the Master Emerald and Angel Island).

As far as Sonic characters go, Knuckles is definitely towards the top. They've dabbled with him in other stuff such as the live action movie, Sonic Boom, and Ken Penders' perverted mythology in the Archie comics, and I think those for the most part are really good portrayals, even if they branch out a little bit from what the character was originally. But there's good ideas there branching off from the general character that I think they can toss in the games.

But hey, we got Sonic Frontiers coming up. I think it's a good time to hit the reset button on a lot of things, including Knuckles, since you know he'll be in that game in some way.

Give me more Knuckles though. I love him, he's cool, and when done really well, he adds a lot to the games.

Rank: A

https://youtu.be/r8sB8N44eBE