Knuckles Week 2024 Roundtable: How We Became Knuckles Fans

[nuckles87]

All of us here at Sonic Stadium are Sonic fans, so naturally we all have a little more than a passing familiarity with his red, dreadlocked companion Knuckles the Echidna. Some of us like him. Others love him. Both myself and this website’s owner have named our online handles after him.

So for Knuckles week, we decided to give our staff members a chance to reminisce over how we became fans of him. This is what we had to say!

GX

For me, as a child of the 90s who owned Sonic & Knuckles but distinctly not Sonic 3, Knuckles took a game series already built on sprawling, layered levels, and gave you a whole new way to traverse them. Then through Sonic & Knuckles' lock-on feature, gave me the ability to do the same in Sonic 2, further opening up a game that was already dense with places to explore and alternate paths to take.

My other childhood interpretation was deeply rooted in the Archie series. He would fill the role that Shadow would eventually horn in on, Sonic's "Friendly Nemesis." He had his own adventures, his own cast, his own buddies, and... a heck of a lot of mythology. Sometimes too much. But his relationship to Sonic was always interestingly complicated: Sonic is reckless and flippant, while Knuckles is stalwart and reserved. Yet both were strong-willed and always closely matched. Perhaps not friends, but uneasy allies and respectable rivals.

Though as an adult, I'd be hard pressed to find a version of him I liked more than in the Sonic Boom animated series. Sonic Boom inherently cranked all the characters' archetypes up to 11 (opting to be a zany sitcom over rather than an action-adventure series), and Knuckles was the lifeblood of that comedy. It's not that he was simply dim, but he had a style of writing that was nearly Philip J. Fry-esque. If Eggman is Sonic's ineptly sinister Neuman, Knuckles is his Kramer, the scene's punchline of unfiltered and unpredictable reaction.

Failinhearts

I was like, five when I met Knuckles. Like many kids, my first experience with Sonic and his friends was through Sonic X. But as a child with little grasp of nuance in character relationships beyond the black and white "good guys" and "bad guys", the rivalry of Sonic and Knuckles never registered with me. 

I only really started paying attention to Knuckles with my first game, Sonic Heroes, where Knuckles was treated as another one of Sonic's best friends. That delicious idea of a trinity of blue, yellow and red. Now that captivated little old me. It's just really cool to see a trio of best friends, you know? And that's how I saw them. It's cool, the speed, smarts and brawn dynamic.

Now that I'm older, of course I appreciate that Knuckles isn't just a follower of Sonic. He's very much often a lone wolf, and an equal to Sonic in his own way. But that only makes me appreciate the times when they join forces all the better. And I look forward to seeing how this current iteration of Knuckles, and his film variation will evolve those traits going forward.

Nuckles87

Given my name, it’s probably pretty easy to tell that I’m a Knuckles fan. But unlike with Sonic, I don’t really have any one “moment” where I became a fan of the rad red. Being a latecomer to the 90s Sonic scene in late 1995, I already had access to basically the entire Sonic trilogy for the Genesis, even if I didn’t really realize that. I would play games as my parents got them, and as I learned about some of them via Archie adaptations.  And out of all the Sonic games I would soon play, no character nor game left as much of an impression on me as Knuckles in Sonic & Knuckles.

I initially rented the game from Blockbuster some time after getting the Archie adaptation at a book store (which came in a 2-pack with issue 25, the Sonic CD adaption). While I didn’t get very far at the time, I quickly fell in love with one thing: Knuckles. He could climb, he could glide, and he felt just as fast as Sonic. He could be a good guy, but didn’t get along with Sonic. He was Sonic, but better. Why would anyone think otherwise?

At around the same time, Knuckles was also appearing a lot more in the comics. My first time seeing him was in the Sonic Triple Trouble one-shot, which came out shortly after I started reading. Increasingly, it was his more serialized stories that kept me coming back to the book, which would eventually lead to me reading his mini series, and eventually his monthly book. I really enjoyed these comics as a kid, and still have fond memories of them, which I explored in an article I wrote a few years ago. Check it out if you want something more in-depth!

My love for Knuckles has never disappeared, and it’s been awesome seeing him get so much love in recent years. He is better than Sonic after all. Why shouldn’t he? I’m going to end this on one thing I couldn’t find a place for in this entry: among the many things I got wrong in those books, I initially thought he was a girl due to his dreads, and to this day I still give Archie Knuckles a nearly androgynous, tomboy voice in my head.

 

Ryannumber1gamer

Initially becoming a Knuckles fan for the petty reason of Tails being ruined by Sonic Lost World, as the years passed, I gained a lot of more legitimate reasons for why Knuckles remains my favourite character in the series. I really enjoy the dynamic he has with Team Sonic, his big brother role to Tails, how his attitude contrasts against Amy's personality, and of course - him and Sonic's playful and friendly rivalry, where they poke fun at each other but do so in that way friends do where they don't really mean it too much, especially shown in Frontiers and Archie.

In terms of personality, It's easy to peg Knuckles as just a total idiot who falls for every trick under the sun, and some versions of him definitely fit that bill, but personally, I always found this as a rather boring and basic way to interpret his character. I always liked how Knuckles tows that line between serious straight man, and honourable guardian, naive and believing the best in others against better judgement, and outright trickster, egotist, and goof.

It puts Knuckles in a unique spot in terms of the cast, as a multi-layered character to the point different games, and parts of the franchise home in on it for different variants of Knuckles. Some like Archie and IDW do the serious guardian/competitive rival route, while others focus on his paranoia and antagonism against Sonic (X, which is a product of their dynamic back then), or Boom focusing on the dumb muscle aspect. He can be silly, he can be egocentric, he can be serious and duty-bound by legacy, he can be competitive, kind-hearted, naive or antagonistic. Knuckles is one of the most flexible characters in the series IMO.

I think it really says a fair bit how a lot of Knuckles' variants can still be enjoyed for tackling different aspects of the character. Comics sticking much closer to that serious guardian, and friendly rival, while something like Boom went all in on dumb muscle for him, and the movie focused on the legacy aspect, and used *that* to give him both intellect in some matters, and naivety and quirks in other aspects. Even the likes of X being so antagonistic to Sonic can be attributed to a specific era where they were constantly butting heads and fighting each other. Even if I don't personally like Boom's version, I do have to admit he's very funny and entertaining.

I'm really happy with seeing him now being back to his roots, especially with the movie popularizing it, and I can't wait to see what the series does for him, and where the games continue to take him after Frontiers.

There’s a lot of love for Knuckles here at Sonic Stadium. Be sure to stay tuned for more Knuckles content over the coming days!

What About YOU?

When did you become a Knuckles the Echidna fan? From his very first appearance, from the comics, or something else? Let us know in the comments section below - any interactions on our Knuckles Week content will receive Sonic Stadium Achievement rewards!

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