The Path to Metal Overlord - An Analysis of Neo Metal Sonic in Sonic Heroes

#AceCardGaming #NeoMetalSonic #SonicTheHedgehog Welcome to Byte Sized Metal Madness. A mini series on everyone’s favorite hedgehog terminator, Metal Sonic. In this series, we’re going to take a look at, and analyze byte sized sections of the Sonic universe where Metal Sonic and his many variants have appeared over the years. Metal Sonic is consistently one of, if not the most popular villain in the Sonic series. And there’s a good reason for that! But quite often his potential has been completely wasted in the games he appears in. Or at best, has been very underutilized. So join me for a series that seeks to right those wrongs, and give Metal Sonic the recognition he deserves! In this episode, we will be analyzing Metal Sonic's appearance as Neo Metal Sonic in Sonic Heroes.

[HannahBanina]

_Sonic Heroes_ is one of those stories that just gets funnier the more you think about it. Metal gets this huge upgrade and decides he wants to go rebellious teenager mode -- he doesn't even kill his Eggdad, just locks him up (though, to be fair, I'll go ahead and assume that was because he needed him alive for some reason). And he didn't strictly _need_ to disguise himself as Flesh Sonic to kidnap Froggy and Chocola, but 1) why expose himself before it's necessary? and 2) in his eyes, any chance to make Sonic look bad is an opportunity that must be taken, petty little douche that he is and I love him. His holographic letter to Team Sonic is pretty funny, too, in my opinion. "Hey Sonic! I wanna show you something cool please come to the Egg Fleet 🙃"
Not to mention, his role in Team Dark's story is especially hilarious when you remember that, as far as the story is concerned, he wasn't around for _SA2_ and likely actually _doesn't_ know what Shadow's talking about when he asks about his memory, just that there are a bunch of Shadow Androids hanging out in storage and I'd bet my bottom dollar he's absolutely bluffing about it. "Your memory? Uh... what do you mean, 'your memory'? You, uh... don't _have_ a past...."
_("Nailed it")_

On a more serious note, I do think _Heroes_ would have really benefitted, not necessarily from a darker story, but just a more cohesive one. What made the _Adventure_ games and arguably two thirds of Sonic 06 really work as stories was that everyone had their own thing going on and their individual plots intersected only when they needed to. _SA2_ really hammered that in by having entirely unique levels for everyone in both stories, and the characters only really crossed paths when the plot called for it (e.g., the rival fights). By giving everyone not only the same levels, but the exact same progression of them, _Heroes's_ plot progression ends up...not really making a whole lot of sense, and this is especially evident in the endings for Teams Sonic, Dark, and Rose's campaigns, where the three teams explicitly end up meeting up, but surely the game should have _shown_ how many people were actually fighting the Egg Emperor, right? Surely there weren't _actually_ four separate Egg Albatrosses for Metal to copy the heroes' data from after their destruction(s), right? Actually, Metal wasn't even shown to properly copy Chaos's data until after Team Rose's Egg Emperor fight, but his dialogue after the Egg Albatross fight in Team Sonic's campaign would seem to indicate that he copied _their_ data last *("All* life form data successfully copied.").

But whatever. _Heroes_ was still awesome for Metal Sonic; before the Metal Overlord fight I wouldn't have thought he was even capable of fear. This game definitely did the most for his character and for that (and the formation of Team Dark and grand return of Team Chaotix) I'll always appreciate it. Even though I didn't have a GameCube growing up and haven't actually played this game. Actually the only _Sonic_ game I've played so far is _Sonic CD_ on mobile and I still love it even though I'm kinda bad at it and still haven't gotten the good ending even once haha 😅

One last thing: I do tend to think that Metal still harbors a bunch of resentment toward Eggman, he just can't do anything about it anymore. He may have had his obedience programmed back into him, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. I also tend to flip-flop on whether or not his betrayal might have been partially motivated by his "brothers" Metal Knuckles and Tails Doll getting decommissioned (at least as far as we know...).

[GameApologist]

Fantastic analysis! I hated that Overlord design when it first was shown but the more I dig into it the more I appreciate this take on the robot

[bahamutbomb]

Finally Neo Metal gets some love. So many people forget about him so always good to get vids on him. Great video - keep it up.

[Eldarin]

YES! I could only imagine when this game originally came out the amount of hype there was when Metal was shown as the main antagonist since people haven't seen him since what a decade? Him and Chaos will always be my favorite villains! great video as always :D

I also think Metal is quite a tragic character due to his inferiority complex and I'd love to see him come back unhinged once again and pick up on those storybeats and darker narrative tone you were speaking of in the second half of the video...who knows this sounds like the groundwork for a Sonic Adventure 3 plot!

[hugoflores]

Heroes was my introduction to Metal, it was so good on that game that i'll always got exited when i see it on anything

I enter it right after the Adventure games and the story felt like a very natural progresion, which is weird knowing they didn't put as much thought as the Adventure games, just shows how the passion for the series can still shine even when they have other priorities

[SuperSonicWarrior]

Not only does Ryan Drummond need to officially return as Sonic, he should ALSO return to voice Metal Sonic again as well.

[WebstersYouTube]

I always wondered if the plot of Sonic Heroes was inspired or influenced by Fleetway's Brotherhood of Metallix arc, so I'm glad you brought it up.

Tricks for easily getting the Chaos Emeralds in Heroes? What are those? I was one of the many people who never managed to grab them all back in the day.

RE availability of the game, yeah I hadn't thought about it. GameCube version's locked to one piece of hardware, the Xbox release sadly isn't backward compatible on either Xbox 360 or Xbox One, the PS2 version got a PS2 Classics release on PS3, and the PC version seemingly can't run on Windows 10 without fan made patches.

[SuperSonicWarrior]

They need to make Metal Sonic talk again in future games.

[Animeman]

They should explore Metal by giving him a big presence like he had in Heroes. The fact he was given a voice really emphasized his point in how he wanted to prove he's the superior Sonic. If only we got to see him in combat as Neo, maybe that wouldve helped given him the edge fighting base form Sonic.

[shardsoftime]

Can you do shard the metal sonic next?

[alexanderwsm]

Have you watched Sonic the Hedgehog OVA, released in 1996? This is were the idea for Metal to copy Sonic's powers comes from.

[LittleLexi]

Metal Sonic is my favourite Sonic character

[rickyronny]

Metal Sonic peaked in this game. He was never this good again, at least in the games

[bertcarroll]

This game kinda confused me when I was little😅 It was more like an investigation.

[takeshikujo]

Definitely wished things were darker. Especially since he looks a lot more like Shadow in his Neo form than he does Sonic.

Speaking of which, did anyone else think that he was actually a Metal Shadow because of the streaks and how his ‘quills’ looked?

[maximoomega]

Sonic heroes was easily the best appearance of metal Sonic and his most utilized appearance I just wish the game could have had a darker tone like the adventure games but who knows darker isn't always better either way I love Neo metal Sonic

[SuperSonicWarrior]

I think if they were to remake this game, they should give the story a darker approach (on the scale of the Adventure games).

[OmegaSon]

Neo Metal is really cool. I wish we could’ve saw more of him vs Shadow. Cause he was clearly messing with him with the android at bullet station. Idk I just feel like it would be a very interesting match up

[leandrothehedgehog]

Totally agree on how the topic of AI against humanity is a great way to make Metal Sonic a big challenge to defeat, that combined with Metal Overlord design and the song What I'm Made Of will be such a great story to get deeper in!

[sharax]

Excellent video and I'm thoroughly enjoying this mini series! Metal is such a great character and it's interesting to see how his appearances in each game differed. Heroes was definitely his moment to shine but, like you, I feel a darker tone overall would have suited it better. A story can be menacing while still aimed at children if done correctly!

Also, love the humour in your videos, Mr Bean got me good 😅