The Chaotix Detective Agency vs The Freelance Police
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. ” - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Chaotix Detective Agency, a trio of private investigators with $0.000.000 in their bank account.
The Freelance Police, a wacky crime solving duo with a questionable track record.
Before We Start…
You should already know what media will be used for Chaotix. Like always, all mainline Sonic games and IDW will be the main sources, including numerous spin offs, mobile games and general side media. Speed Simulator will also be used. While the game itself is kind of impossible to be canon despite what SEGA says about it, it does still follow mainline canon for its stories and even had an event that tied into Chaotix Casefiles, so it’s fine as supplementary material (not like it’s gonna add anything crazy for this blog).
Sam and Max are also very straightforward. They have their few comics, the cartoons and their 5 games. There’s also a lot of art pieces that Steve Purcell has made about them throughout the years even to this day. While these were accounted for, due to being stand alone artworks they were largely ignored. I mean one of them has Sam as Godzilla and one Max as Yoda, you can see how that tracks. But even if we were to use them, they offer very little stuff and don’t change anything about the verdict
Also huge shout out to Z1/ZeeOne哲学 for providing calcs for Sam & Max and to JJ/jjmangoman for helping out on the Sonic side of things. This blog wouldn’t have been possible without them
Background
Team Chaotix
“Y’know what? Who cares if we're still stuck in the same office, with the same rattly ceiling fan and the same bills piling up? We infiltrated an impregnable Eggman base and saved the world from Infinite! I say we should be proud of ourselves. Because we are certified hard-boiled detectives!”
Many years ago, on a small island in the South Sea, a crisis was brewing, as the maligned Dr. Robotnik sought to use the power of the Dark Rings to fuel his ambitions to conquer the world. In a bid to protect the Master Emerald, Knuckles the Echidna journeyed to the island, and met up with a group of up-and-coming heroes in their own time: the trio, the Chaotix, Espio, Charmy and Vector! And Mighty too but he’s not part of this.
Together, the group journeyed to the apex of the Newtrogic High Zone, where they encountered Robotnik alongside a rebuilt and upgraded Metal Sonic, enhanced by the power of the largest Dark Ring seen yet to become Devil Metal Sonic (or Kai). No match for these future detectives, however, and Robotnik’s plans were scrambled once more.
This would be the last major action the trio would see for a while, as they set up a new office and made painstaking attempts to keep in the black, with minimal success. That is, until a chance delivery of a radio transceiver, informing of a huge cash payout for the completion of some odd jobs. Fueled by a wish to appease the debt collectors, the Chaotix journeyed through land, sea and sky to find their client, who turned out to be…Eggman??? Nothing that our stalwart croc investigator couldn’t discern, anyway. You know how the story goes, Metal Sonic turns into a dragon, gets brought down by the real super power of teamwork, and the Chaotix (presumably) get paid.
While their role in the limelight has been relatively sparse since then, they always make sporadic appearances here and there, contributing in their own special way to save the day, be it broadcasting a message from Gerald in a bid to stop the Black Arms, putting down Metal Sonic again in the Free Riders EX World Grand Prix, or taking down Eggman and the Metal Virus after they swarmed the globe en masse. No matter what threat rears its ugly head, these detectives are ones you want on your side…provided you have the coin.
Freelance Police
“MAX! I thought you were… Wait a second, where’s the past ME?”
“Oh yeah about that: we were on a case and you got turned into a giant monster with electromagnetic powers, so I kinda had to blow you up. It was horrible! …… Sooooo wanna stop some crimes?”
“Let’s!”
Looking through 1313 Straight Street you’ll find some uhh, interesting places. Whether you wanna grab a bite in Stinky’s Diner, buy something from Bosco’s Inconvenience or whatever new thing Sybil is doing. But if it's a mystery you want solved, then you better come knocking at the door of Sam & Max, Freelance Police.
An anthropomorphic duo that's been best buds ever since they were children. Sam is calm, collective and likes to make very roundabout terminologies. While Max on the other hand is a lot more silly, reckless, destructive and very violent. Despite this massive difference in personality, they get along just fine and deeply care about each other.
Together they've been through some of the wackiest adventures you can imagine. They've been sent to the moon to stop giant cockroaches from eating rats, they've stopped Hugh Bliss's plan of mind controlling the entire world, they've exorcised Santa Clause of the Shambling Corporate Presence, they've travelled through time a ton of times and they've even stopped the Soda Poppers from re-enacting the original sins on Earth.
But we can't forget their biggest adventure by far, needing to obtain the Devil's Toybox, a powerful container of various magical toys that others would seek to use for nefarious means. This entire goose chase would result in Max having turned into a giant monster that was rampaging across the city. However, in a very surprising twist of fate, Max would show concern for Sybil's safety with whatever little control he had left. A never before seen level of sympathy for anyone other than Sam. This was able to convince his Super Ego to help them teleport Max out of the city before he blew up, sending him into space towards the spaceship of the man who started all this trouble, general Skun-ka'pe.
With Max gone now Sam was, as expected, really sad about his little buddy's death. But of course, nothing is separating these two, as Max from a different time, one where Sam was blown up instead, would show up. Together they got inside the time travelling elevator, ready for their next big adventure (if you know, Steve wants to do a season 4 that is).
Experience & Skill
Team Chaotix
While not necessarily fighting geniuses, the Chaotix are certainly not ones to underestimate. In their quest to get paid, they have journeyed through all manner of locales, from alligator infested swamps, to macabre magical castles, and even hopping across cannon-loaded airships in the upper atmosphere, taking down armies of Eggman robots with barely a sweat. All in 3 days! Even Metal Madness, an upgraded version of Sonic’s most fierce rival, could not put down the combined might of these three, as they discerned weaknesses in every one of his attacks and countered. The three have also branched off into their own unique sub-classes of competition, with Espio entering a fighting tournament and holding his own with classic Sonic, and Vector riding his Extreme Gear against all comers, mastering the art of the hoverbike nigh-instantly despite its complex mechanics involving the Kutta-Joukowski lift theorem.
Their intelligence is nothing to scoff at either. While they may look bumbling and inept, the Chaotix *are* still detectives. Vector was able to discern who his client was during the Metal Sonic crisis from only a few context clues of the missions he was given and some conversations with the faceless clientele, Espio mixes detective work with ninjutsu, and the team’s cross-examinations of multiple witnesses across the Chaotix casefiles gave them all the tools needed to unmask the renegade illusionist Infinite and defeat him with the help of Sonic and friends, despite Infinite being a trained mercenary who effortlessly overcame Sonic during Eggman’s takeover. Sonic was completely helpless, despite his ability to defeat masters of all martial arts like Zavok and Master Zik, analyze fighting styles at a glance, learn kung-fu in two training sessions, master swordplay in one day to surpass those who trained their whole lives, study kenpo, and even defeat Emerl in 30 seconds, a Gizoid copycat unique to the world who was designed to take every armed and unarmed martial art to its highest possible caliber, crashed multiple supercomputers off nothing but the raw data on armed and unarmed styles, brought down an entire civilization on its own, and even potentially can reach infinite different variations of styles. While the Chaotix do get help in many of these endeavors, they are still able to hold their own, and an alternate universe Vector in the Sonic Boom world even solved a case of Amy’s missing hammer.
Freelance Police
They might not seem as much, but Sam and Max have dealt with a lot of wacky bullshit. Dealing with zombies, clingy fans, demons, aliens, eldritch gods etc. is kind of the norm for them, yet they still manage to come out on top.
Due to the nature of their games, they are also pretty smart and crafty, since you know, they do actually manage to solve their cases. Though Sam is really the one that does most of the detective work and pieces all clues together. At the start of the last episode of Save the World, he was able to figure out that Hugh Bliss was behind all the weird events that were occurring throughout their cases up to that point. He was able to also do the same in Beyond Time and Space, figuring out that the main culprits were the Soda
Poppers a few seconds before they revealed themselves.
Although they haven’t been in many head on fights, they have shown some fighting capabilities. Both showed some impressive athletic capabilities during a saloon shoutout and have even taken many Molemen rushing at them with some questionable martial arts. Max even beat Charlie Ho-Tep in a 1v1 psychic fight, where he baited him into destroying the toybox, a rare case of Max outsmarting someone. Sam is also an incredible shot, capable of shooting a coffee cup from far away and while running on a treadmill, throws his badge with enough precision to hit the stop button.
Equipment
Team Chaotix
Rings
The omnipresent currency of the Sonic universe. While rings can, of course, just be used to buy things, they also have secondary purposes:
Can be used to negate damage to their holder, even when said damage comes from entities like Supreme, a being who rivals Sonic’s strongest super transformation. Less incoming damage translates to less rings dropped.
Can be used for healing
When in large enough quantities, can amplify statistics of strength and speed by 2x.
Item Boxes
A very common trait of Sonic games that has been there since day 1. It should be noted that the Chaotix have all been playable only in Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic Heroes and Crossworlds (which is sad to think about). A lot of the other games they appear in it’s either just Vector or Espio. Espio for example is the only member of the team to be in Sonic Rivals 2, while Vector is the only one in Free Riders and Team Sonic Racing. This shouldn’t really affect their usage honestly, it’s weird to think they can’t all use them. I just figured I’d mention it anyway.
Knuckles Chaotix
Sonic Heroes
Sonic Rivals 2
Sonic Runners
Sonic Forces: Speed Battle
(Vector)
(Espio)
(Charmy)
Sonic Free Riders
Team Sonic Racing
Sonic Racing Crossworlds
Costumes
In Sonic Forces Speed Battle (and Sonic Dash), Espio and Vector have certain skins that give them access to a few items unique to those skins. While the usage of these are kinda debatable, they really don’t give them anything crazy, plus some of these things they can already do without them.
Ninja Espio
DJ Vector
Detective Vector
Bound Rings
The Bound Rings are 2 special rings that are connected to each other by an invisible rubber band/space-time connection, used by any possible duo in Knuckles Chaotix. These can be used in a few interesting ways. If one person stays still while the other one starts running in one direction, this will create a slingshot effect that can send them flying and give them a burst of speed. This can be used to get up into higher areas or to get one character up on a ledge.
Racing vehicles
Due to being the only playable member of the team in Free Riders, Vector has his own extreme gear called the Hard-Boiled, a bike extreme gear with increased power but less maneuverability. Vector is also the only one playable in Team Sonic Racing, since SEGA just loved to put him in trios that weren’t his own. There his signature car is the Beat Monster, which eventually became the Chaotix’s main mode of transportation. Vector also has access to various performance parts that can be used to swap its front part, rear part or wheels, and can even use different Extreme Gear altogether.
Thankfully however, all 3 characters would become playable in Sonic Racing Crossworlds, which has a much wider assortment of vehicles to choose from. These can be classified into 5 different types:
Speed types: Machines with a higher top speed, with average handling and power but low acceleration and boost
Acceleration types: Machines that can reach top speed faster and can recover quicker from getting hit. They have average speed and power but low handling and boost
Boost types: Machines that make the boost gauge charge faster, with average acceleration and handling but low speed and power
Handling types: Machines that allows for better control when making turns, with average acceleration and boost but low speed and power
Power types: Machines that can withstand more damage and won’t lose rings when crashing into walls. They have average speed and boost, but low handling and acceleration
All the different machines can be found here. There’s also various different combinations that can be made with all the different machine parts, but this can only be done with both parts being of the same type.
Gear Parts
The predecessor to the gadgets. Gear parts can be equipped on to the extreme gear, allowing for various different skills. In Zero Gravity, each extreme gear had only a handful of specific gear parts that you could access, but Free Riders allows every character to use any of them. A list of them can be seen here. None of them are particularly noteworthy, with the exception of Invisible, which makes you intangible for a short time. Vector can also only equip only one additional extra part, as the Hard-Boiled always has the Power Skill equipped (which allows it to smash obstacles). Unless, he swaps to another Gear.
Gadgets
Modifiers that can be equipped on each vehicle’s gadget plate. The gadget plate has a total of 6 slots, with different gadgets being able to to take 1, 2 or 3 slots depending on their helpfulness. All of them fit into different categories, offering various options that can help in whatever you need. There’s ones that can help in gaining rings, increasing stats, helping with specific item types, upgrading the charge gauge and many more. Once again, a list of them can be found here (there’s just too many of them to list individually).
Ninja Gear
Espio wouldn’t be a ninja without carrying any ninja weapons on him. He always has many shurikens or kunai on himself to throw at enemies, and can even use said kunai as a blade for cqc combat. He can even attach rope to them to use them like a grappling hook or tie others up. He also carries smoke bombs.
Bubblegum
By inflating his bubblegum, Vector can use it to glide or elevate his team high up with the use of fans (not like one of his teammates can’t already fly).
Chaos Rings
These 6 magical rings sort of act as the chaos emerald equivalent to Knuckles Chaotix. They are crystallized pillar energy produced by the Master Emerald, having been formed in the dimension of the Newtrogic High Zone’s (the island the game takes place at) special zone. Naturally, items like these should be pretty powerful, right? Well you’d think that wouldn’t you.
Aside from needing to have all of them to get the true ending, they do absolutely nothing in the game. It’s possible they played a part in Metal Sonic Kai’s defeat, as Eggman was able to make a space-time connection between them and the Dark Ring that Metal was using, but they don’t display anything in-game. It doesn’t help that they’ve never been brought up in anything outside of Knuckles Chaotix ever again.
Chaos Emeralds (debatable)
While the Chaotix can’t transform into a super state (not yet, anyway), they have on occasion had the opportunity to collect 1, or even all, of the Chaos Emeralds, with Espio using them to help tap into a “hyper form” to amplify his speed further. Baseline, the Chaos Emeralds can do a multiple of things, including:
Restore plant life.
Negate storms.
Counteract memory alteration and subjective reality by keeping an imprint of the previous world within them.
Draw energy from nature.
Maintain their function after being transmuted or having their spatio-temporal energy removed.
Grant “unlimited power”.
Amplify strength by at least 2x, and amplify speed by an incredible amount via wishes.
Can be used to restore technology.
Grant wishes and create miracles, such as turning Vector into a superhero, or buffing Silver’s psychokinesis in a crisis.
Resurrect the dead
Protect against the biological metallurgic transmutation and brainwashing of the Metal virus.
Restore their energy if they are drained via strong emotional thoughts, or re-absorb their energy from a source that has taken it.
Now of course, Espio is the only one that has ever used the emeralds and that was only in Sonic the Fighters and nothing else, so the Chaotix being given all of them is just a very questionable decision, even compared to other characters who aren’t known for using them much. However, this overall doesn’t change anything for them here and their usage will be talked about more during the verdict.
Misc. Equipment
Freelance Police
Pistols
While Sam and Max have carried various other weapons and guns throughout their years, nothing beats their main firearms that they always carry with them. Sam’s weapon of choice is the Big Kill, a big Smith & Wesson looking revolver with a slightly longer barrel. Max on the other hand carries around the Lugermorph, based on the Luger P08 pistol. Max can also equip it with a silencer.
DeSoto
Sam and Max’s iconic car. Aside from being their main mode of transportation, it does also have a few interesting quirks. For starters it has the inexplicable ability to fly, as the duo has used to fly all the way to the moon or just traverse space in general. If that ain’t enough it also has a button that allows it to launch itself into the air (also was used to get to the moon). The vehicle is also possessed by demons which could make it act up, but it doesn’t seem to have that issue anymore. Moreover, the car has some pretty insane durability, as it could tank Lactose the Intolerant’s eye beams that could destroy planets.
For more miscellaneous stuff, it can shoot rockets from its headlights, has a parachute installed and has enough space to fit an entire class full of children.
Tear Gas
A grenade launcher (salad shooter) that shoots tear gas (onions). Good way to make someone cry on the spot. But they do also have actual tear gas.
Hypnosis blocker
A helmet that was made for Sam by Bosco in order to block hypnotism. He eventually integrated it into his hat so he can always be protected.
Voice Modulator
A helium balloon that Sam uses to win a singing competition, giving him a higher pitched voice that can ever shatter glass.
Listening device
A small cockroach that’s capable of recording the voices of anyone it’s close to. Good tool for gathering information.
Talismans
Spoon Bend Talisman: Allows Sam to telekinetically bend spoons or anything that is somewhat spoon like.
Gastrokinesis Talisman: Makes others puke rainbows
Lead Vision Talisman: Allows Sam to be able to see through anything made of lead
Earthquake Maker
A remote control that controls Bosco’s satellite defense system. When pressed, it will crash the satellite into the ground.
Christmas Spirits
The spirits of Christmas past, present and future that are contained inside a bottle in Santa’s workshop. After Sam and Max missed the step of containing the demon that was possessing Santa, they had to seek out their help to defeat it. Before they helped them however, they opened 3 portals to their respective time periods and tasked Sam and Max to fix some kind of wrong in said time periods. After that was done, they helped in defeating the demon by turning it into jell-o.
Ceremonial Urn
After tricking the sea chimps into thinking Max is the real high priest, he was given their urn. Its special water allows Max to see the future, although the one time it did it was for things that happened seconds later. This water is also holy in nature, capable of negatively affecting beings like vampires.
Soul Mater
A weird little device that we never got a proper explanation on how it exactly works. What we do know though is that it is capable of forcefully attracting souls into its general direction.
Maimtron 9000
A giant robot that loves to quote song lyrics. It was originally sent to destroy Sam and Max, but they were able to turn it off. After installing a different AI into it, it abandoned the need to kill them. They are able to control it with a toy remote. Aside from being strong enough to throw Sybil’s workplace, it doesn’t really have any other known capabilities. It does have a gun on its head though, even if it’s never shown using it.
Time travel equipment
Sam and Max have access to the time traveling elevator of T.H.E.M. It does however have a very specific way of working. After scanning an individual, they will acquire a punchcard that they can use on it. These punchcards correspond to a specific place and time, so not as versatile as it seems.
Thankfully they also have a special watch that allows them to also time travel, this time more freely.
Santa’s Sleigh
After they were cast into a pit in hell, Sam and Max would receive help by their past selves, giving them Santa’s sleigh. Aside from using it to fly out of the pit, they were also able to spawn a lot of snow in the process, freezing all of hell almost instantly.
Prison badge
A homing beacon that is also a prison badge, originally belonging to general Skun-ka’pe. This badge ensures that escaped convicts will be returned back into the Penal Zone, an interdimensional prison. Sam and Max would place it on Skun-ka’pe, and by pressing its remote switch, a portal to the zone would be opened, sucking him into it. Although it should be noted that when Skun-ka’pe tricked Sam and Max into getting trapped in the Penal Zone instead, both of them got sucked in despite only Sam having the beacon on him, so it might also work on anyone that’s really close to it (or it’s just an inconsistency to not separate them). Also, the remote control to activate it can only be used once.
Dimensional Rift Generator
After failing to trap Skun-ka’pe into the Penal Zone, Sam and Max were given this rift generator by Mama Bosco. This thing is capable of creating an entire new dimension, but it can only work in places where the borders of reality and nonsense have broken down. And well, the street Sam and Max lived qualified as such, so they used it to create a new Penal Zone inside their building. However in order to work it needed an extraordinary amount of energy, something only the Devil’s Toybox would provide.
C.O.P.S.
The Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society consists of Bob Bell, Curt 286, Chippy and Bluster Blaster, a group of 4 sentient computers. They currently live in the DeSoto, with the exception of Bluster Blaster, as he went to Vegas with Bosco to count cards. While they don’t really do much, this changed when Carol became their new 4th member. She is capable of analyzing clues and determining if they connect to the current investigation. She can also analyze 2 clues at the same time to unlock new areas that are worth exploring.
Ceremonial dagger
A special dagger that was used by the player to dispel fiends from the 12th circle of hell. While the player was the one that used it, it was given to Max for like, a few seconds so I guess it’s fine to count. It also helped in exorcising Max, although it only played a part in an entire process to actually exorcise him.
Mecha-Max
A giant mech that was built by Geek from Sam and Max to use in order to save the earth from a meteor. This was done by pulling out a giant bat out of its hand and hitting back into orbit. It can also pull out other random stuff from its fingers.
The Devil’s Toybox (debatable)
One of the, if not the most powerful things in Sam and Max’s world. Said to have infinite power, it is the property of Yog-Soggoth’s grandson, Junior. Inside exist various powerful toys that can be used by those with psychic powers. With the right words, Max was able to summon Yog-Soggoth himself, but the process needed someone to also be used as a sacrifice (and well, that person didn’t really die but instead got fused with Yog-Soggoth).
While Max himself has never done this, someone else with the Gift (Sammun-Mak) was able to use the Toybox to create an all new reality to match his vision and alter everyone’s minds to his liking.
And, if the Toybox were to be filled with all the toys, its user would have the power to destroy all of existence.
Now whether Max should be given the Toybox is up for debate. Him and Sam were able to use it in the first episode to power the rift generator, and did briefly acquire it before Sammun-Mak used it. But otherwise they’ve mostly been chasing after it and even destroyed it later on. They did have it for a good majority of episode 2, but that doesn’t count because it was Sammeth and Maximus that had it, they were just astral projecting into their minds. Its inclusion will be talked about more during the verdict.
Misc. Equipment
Truth serum (vodka)
Magic hat (can only pull Jimmy out of it (a rat))
Elf tears (make plants grow)
Water from the fountain of youth (makes you young for a short time)
Jesse Jame’s hand (sentient hand)
Chia-Noggin (watergun that can grow trees)
Team Chaotix
Rings
The omnipresent currency of the Sonic universe. While rings can, of course, just be used to buy things, they also have secondary purposes:
Can be used to negate damage to their holder, even when said damage comes from entities like Supreme, a being who rivals Sonic’s strongest super transformation. Less incoming damage translates to less rings dropped.
Can be used for healing
When in large enough quantities, can amplify statistics of strength and speed by 2x.
Item Boxes
A very common trait of Sonic games that has been there since day 1. It should be noted that the Chaotix have all been playable only in Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic Heroes and Crossworlds (which is sad to think about). A lot of the other games they appear in it’s either just Vector or Espio. Espio for example is the only member of the team to be in Sonic Rivals 2, while Vector is the only one in Free Riders and Team Sonic Racing. This shouldn’t really affect their usage honestly, it’s weird to think they can’t all use them. I just figured I’d mention it anyway.
Knuckles Chaotix
Sonic Heroes
Sonic Rivals 2
Sonic Runners
Sonic Forces: Speed Battle
(Vector)
(Espio)
(Charmy)
Sonic Free Riders
Team Sonic Racing
Sonic Racing Crossworlds
Costumes
In Sonic Forces Speed Battle (and Sonic Dash), Espio and Vector have certain skins that give them access to a few items unique to those skins. While the usage of these are kinda debatable, they really don’t give them anything crazy, plus some of these things they can already do without them.
Ninja Espio
DJ Vector
Detective Vector
Bound Rings
The Bound Rings are 2 special rings that are connected to each other by an invisible rubber band/space-time connection, used by any possible duo in Knuckles Chaotix. These can be used in a few interesting ways. If one person stays still while the other one starts running in one direction, this will create a slingshot effect that can send them flying and give them a burst of speed. This can be used to get up into higher areas or to get one character up on a ledge.
Racing vehicles
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Due to being the only playable member of the team in Free Riders, Vector has his own extreme gear called the Hard-Boiled, a bike extreme gear with increased power but less maneuverability. Vector is also the only one playable in Team Sonic Racing, since SEGA just loved to put him in trios that weren’t his own. There his signature car is the Beat Monster, which eventually became the Chaotix’s main mode of transportation. Vector also has access to various performance parts that can be used to swap its front part, rear part or wheels, and can even use different Extreme Gear altogether.
Thankfully however, all 3 characters would become playable in Sonic Racing Crossworlds, which has a much wider assortment of vehicles to choose from. These can be classified into 5 different types:
Speed types: Machines with a higher top speed, with average handling and power but low acceleration and boost
Acceleration types: Machines that can reach top speed faster and can recover quicker from getting hit. They have average speed and power but low handling and boost
Boost types: Machines that make the boost gauge charge faster, with average acceleration and handling but low speed and power
Handling types: Machines that allows for better control when making turns, with average acceleration and boost but low speed and power
Power types: Machines that can withstand more damage and won’t lose rings when crashing into walls. They have average speed and boost, but low handling and acceleration
All the different machines can be found here. There’s also various different combinations that can be made with all the different machine parts, but this can only be done with both parts being of the same type.
Gear Parts
The predecessor to the gadgets. Gear parts can be equipped on to the extreme gear, allowing for various different skills. In Zero Gravity, each extreme gear had only a handful of specific gear parts that you could access, but Free Riders allows every character to use any of them. A list of them can be seen here. None of them are particularly noteworthy, with the exception of Invisible, which makes you intangible for a short time. Vector can also only equip only one additional extra part, as the Hard-Boiled always has the Power Skill equipped (which allows it to smash obstacles). Unless, he swaps to another Gear.
Gadgets
Modifiers that can be equipped on each vehicle’s gadget plate. The gadget plate has a total of 6 slots, with different gadgets being able to to take 1, 2 or 3 slots depending on their helpfulness. All of them fit into different categories, offering various options that can help in whatever you need. There’s ones that can help in gaining rings, increasing stats, helping with specific item types, upgrading the charge gauge and many more. Once again, a list of them can be found here (there’s just too many of them to list individually).
Ninja Gear
Bubblegum
By inflating his bubblegum, Vector can use it to glide or elevate his team high up with the use of fans (not like one of his teammates can’t already fly).
Chaos Rings
These 6 magical rings sort of act as the chaos emerald equivalent to Knuckles Chaotix. They are crystallized pillar energy produced by the Master Emerald, having been formed in the dimension of the Newtrogic High Zone’s (the island the game takes place at) special zone. Naturally, items like these should be pretty powerful, right? Well you’d think that wouldn’t you.
Aside from needing to have all of them to get the true ending, they do absolutely nothing in the game. It’s possible they played a part in Metal Sonic Kai’s defeat, as Eggman was able to make a space-time connection between them and the Dark Ring that Metal was using, but they don’t display anything in-game. It doesn’t help that they’ve never been brought up in anything outside of Knuckles Chaotix ever again.
Chaos Emeralds (debatable)
While the Chaotix can’t transform into a super state (not yet, anyway), they have on occasion had the opportunity to collect 1, or even all, of the Chaos Emeralds, with Espio using them to help tap into a “hyper form” to amplify his speed further. Baseline, the Chaos Emeralds can do a multiple of things, including:
Restore plant life.
Negate storms.
Counteract memory alteration and subjective reality by keeping an imprint of the previous world within them.
Draw energy from nature.
Maintain their function after being transmuted or having their spatio-temporal energy removed.
Grant “unlimited power”.
Amplify strength by at least 2x, and amplify speed by an incredible amount via wishes.
Can be used to restore technology.
Grant wishes and create miracles, such as turning Vector into a superhero, or buffing Silver’s psychokinesis in a crisis.
Resurrect the dead
Protect against the biological metallurgic transmutation and brainwashing of the Metal virus.
Restore their energy if they are drained via strong emotional thoughts, or re-absorb their energy from a source that has taken it.
Now of course, Espio is the only one that has ever used the emeralds and that was only in Sonic the Fighters and nothing else, so the Chaotix being given all of them is just a very questionable decision, even compared to other characters who aren’t known for using them much. However, this overall doesn’t change anything for them here and their usage will be talked about more during the verdict.
Misc. Equipment
Freelance Police
Pistols
While Sam and Max have carried various other weapons and guns throughout their years, nothing beats their main firearms that they always carry with them. Sam’s weapon of choice is the Big Kill, a big Smith & Wesson looking revolver with a slightly longer barrel. Max on the other hand carries around the Lugermorph, based on the Luger P08 pistol. Max can also equip it with a silencer.
DeSoto
Sam and Max’s iconic car. Aside from being their main mode of transportation, it does also have a few interesting quirks. For starters it has the inexplicable ability to fly, as the duo has used to fly all the way to the moon or just traverse space in general. If that ain’t enough it also has a button that allows it to launch itself into the air (also was used to get to the moon). The vehicle is also possessed by demons which could make it act up, but it doesn’t seem to have that issue anymore. Moreover, the car has some pretty insane durability, as it could tank Lactose the Intolerant’s eye beams that could destroy planets.
For more miscellaneous stuff, it can shoot rockets from its headlights, has a parachute installed and has enough space to fit an entire class full of children.
Tear Gas
A grenade launcher (salad shooter) that shoots tear gas (onions). Good way to make someone cry on the spot. But they do also have actual tear gas.
Hypnosis blocker
A helmet that was made for Sam by Bosco in order to block hypnotism. He eventually integrated it into his hat so he can always be protected.
Voice Modulator
A helium balloon that Sam uses to win a singing competition, giving him a higher pitched voice that can ever shatter glass.
Listening device
A small cockroach that’s capable of recording the voices of anyone it’s close to. Good tool for gathering information.
Talismans
Spoon Bend Talisman: Allows Sam to telekinetically bend spoons or anything that is somewhat spoon like.
Gastrokinesis Talisman: Makes others puke rainbows
Lead Vision Talisman: Allows Sam to be able to see through anything made of lead
Earthquake Maker
A remote control that controls Bosco’s satellite defense system. When pressed, it will crash the satellite into the ground.
Christmas Spirits
The spirits of Christmas past, present and future that are contained inside a bottle in Santa’s workshop. After Sam and Max missed the step of containing the demon that was possessing Santa, they had to seek out their help to defeat it. Before they helped them however, they opened 3 portals to their respective time periods and tasked Sam and Max to fix some kind of wrong in said time periods. After that was done, they helped in defeating the demon by turning it into jell-o.
Ceremonial Urn
After tricking the sea chimps into thinking Max is the real high priest, he was given their urn. Its special water allows Max to see the future, although the one time it did it was for things that happened seconds later. This water is also holy in nature, capable of negatively affecting beings like vampires.
Soul Mater
A weird little device that we never got a proper explanation on how it exactly works. What we do know though is that it is capable of forcefully attracting souls into its general direction.
Maimtron 9000
A giant robot that loves to quote song lyrics. It was originally sent to destroy Sam and Max, but they were able to turn it off. After installing a different AI into it, it abandoned the need to kill them. They are able to control it with a toy remote. Aside from being strong enough to throw Sybil’s workplace, it doesn’t really have any other known capabilities. It does have a gun on its head though, even if it’s never shown using it.
Time travel equipment
Sam and Max have access to the time traveling elevator of T.H.E.M. It does however have a very specific way of working. After scanning an individual, they will acquire a punchcard that they can use on it. These punchcards correspond to a specific place and time, so not as versatile as it seems.
Thankfully they also have a special watch that allows them to also time travel, this time more freely.
Santa’s Sleigh
After they were cast into a pit in hell, Sam and Max would receive help by their past selves, giving them Santa’s sleigh. Aside from using it to fly out of the pit, they were also able to spawn a lot of snow in the process, freezing all of hell almost instantly.
Prison badge
A homing beacon that is also a prison badge, originally belonging to general Skun-ka’pe. This badge ensures that escaped convicts will be returned back into the Penal Zone, an interdimensional prison. Sam and Max would place it on Skun-ka’pe, and by pressing its remote switch, a portal to the zone would be opened, sucking him into it. Although it should be noted that when Skun-ka’pe tricked Sam and Max into getting trapped in the Penal Zone instead, both of them got sucked in despite only Sam having the beacon on him, so it might also work on anyone that’s really close to it (or it’s just an inconsistency to not separate them). Also, the remote control to activate it can only be used once.
Dimensional Rift Generator
After failing to trap Skun-ka’pe into the Penal Zone, Sam and Max were given this rift generator by Mama Bosco. This thing is capable of creating an entire new dimension, but it can only work in places where the borders of reality and nonsense have broken down. And well, the street Sam and Max lived qualified as such, so they used it to create a new Penal Zone inside their building. However in order to work it needed an extraordinary amount of energy, something only the Devil’s Toybox would provide.
C.O.P.S.
The Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society consists of Bob Bell, Curt 286, Chippy and Bluster Blaster, a group of 4 sentient computers. They currently live in the DeSoto, with the exception of Bluster Blaster, as he went to Vegas with Bosco to count cards. While they don’t really do much, this changed when Carol became their new 4th member. She is capable of analyzing clues and determining if they connect to the current investigation. She can also analyze 2 clues at the same time to unlock new areas that are worth exploring.
Ceremonial dagger
A special dagger that was used by the player to dispel fiends from the 12th circle of hell. While the player was the one that used it, it was given to Max for like, a few seconds so I guess it’s fine to count. It also helped in exorcising Max, although it only played a part in an entire process to actually exorcise him.
Mecha-Max
A giant mech that was built by Geek from Sam and Max to use in order to save the earth from a meteor. This was done by pulling out a giant bat out of its hand and hitting back into orbit. It can also pull out other random stuff from its fingers.
The Devil’s Toybox (debatable)
One of the, if not the most powerful things in Sam and Max’s world. Said to have infinite power, it is the property of Yog-Soggoth’s grandson, Junior. Inside exist various powerful toys that can be used by those with psychic powers. With the right words, Max was able to summon Yog-Soggoth himself, but the process needed someone to also be used as a sacrifice (and well, that person didn’t really die but instead got fused with Yog-Soggoth).
While Max himself has never done this, someone else with the Gift (Sammun-Mak) was able to use the Toybox to create an all new reality to match his vision and alter everyone’s minds to his liking.
And, if the Toybox were to be filled with all the toys, its user would have the power to destroy all of existence.
Now whether Max should be given the Toybox is up for debate. Him and Sam were able to use it in the first episode to power the rift generator, and did briefly acquire it before Sammun-Mak used it. But otherwise they’ve mostly been chasing after it and even destroyed it later on. They did have it for a good majority of episode 2, but that doesn’t count because it was Sammeth and Maximus that had it, they were just astral projecting into their minds. Its inclusion will be talked about more during the verdict.
Misc. Equipment
Truth serum (vodka)
Magic hat (can only pull Jimmy out of it (a rat))
Elf tears (make plants grow)
Water from the fountain of youth (makes you young for a short time)
Jesse Jame’s hand (sentient hand)
Chia-Noggin (watergun that can grow trees)
Abilities
Team Chaotix
Vector
Vector Breath
A move where Vector will spin around and shoot projectiles from his mouth. This move has 3 different levels, as it gets upgraded with each power core. The first level has him shoot out concentrated soundwaves. In gameplay this move looks like he’s just spitting out musical notes, but the comics have shown a more accurate depiction of what it’s like. The second level allows him to spit out fire, because why not, and in the third level he spits bubblegum bubbles that will explode on contact.
Fireball
Espio and Charmy will roll into a ball inside Vector’s mouth as he spits them out as a projectile with great force.
Power Boost
An ability where Vector can dash towards any direction mid jump.
Musical Notes
So Vector can just make musical notes to throw at you. Probably just a simpler application of the Vector Breath’s level 1 attack.
Team Ultimate
A move appearing in Team Sonic Racing. Once the ultimate meter has been filled, Vector and his team gain a massive speed boost for a short time. It also doubles as invincibility, allowing them to smash through obstacles and ramming into other racers. Now the thing with this move is that he was performing it while teaming up with Silver and Blaze, not Espio and Charmy. But realistically there’s really nothing suggesting they wouldn’t be able to do it, since every team in that game could do it no problem.
Espio
Camouflage
His most iconic ability. Espio is capable of camouflaging himself in a way that makes him invisible to anyone. This even let him do stuff like pass through lasers without triggering them. However this doesn’t make him intangible, as he can still be interacted with…sometimes.
There’s been moments where Sonic has bumped into him which caused him to become visible again, but there’s also been moments where something like that happened and still remained camouflaged. But in Sonic Generations, he was able to turn fully intangible, with Sonic having to shine light on him to become tangible again.
When camouflaged, he is also immune to any of the homing versions of the items in Sonic Rivals 2 (but not other damage sources) and even gets a slight speed increase.
Wall Crawling
Espio is capable of sticking on surfaces and running along them just fine.
Axel Spin
A move where Espio spins really fast horizontally, attacking anyone he runs into.
Rocket Accel
A move where Espio rolls into a ball and is pushed by his teammates, propelling him at high speeds.
Leaf Swirl
Espio can create powerful cyclonic vortexes. These can be used to fling opponents into the air or to ascend poles. Leaf Swirl however also seems to be a more general form of wind manipulation, as Espio has also used it to propel wind towards others. As seen above, the wind also makes him translucent, and invisible to enemies.
Body Replacement
A technique that you’d recognise from a certain ninja anime. A split second switch between the user and an object. Perfect for misdirection.
Mind Reading (debatable)
Through ninjutsu, Espio can communicate through the subconscious to understand thoughts. However, Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is not canon (despite how many times characters from it and the costumes get acknowledged), so whether he has this ability in the canon is undetermined. Espio in general has highly tuned senses, even being able to read the Time Eater’s soul?
Sonic the Fighters moves
Thanks to being in a fighting game, Espio can perform various combo attacks, all of which can be seen here. It’s mostly just basic attacks like kicking, slapping and punching. But his most unique one is being able to stretch his tongue out to attack from a distance.
In Fighters characters also start with a certain number of barriers, allowing them to shield themselves. But these can be broken with certain moves, so if one breaks then the counter goes down.
Hyper Mode
By collecting all the chaos emeralds, Espio can enter Hyper Mode at the cost of his barriers. While in this state the speed of all of his attacks is increased and can gain access to a few special moves exclusive to Hyper Mode.
Charmy
Flying
You’re not gonna believe what a bee can do.
Stinger
You’re also not gonna believe what the main attack method of a bee is.
Thundershoot
Charmy can shout out Espio and Vector as projectiles. The more the move is upgraded the more enemies can be taken out with one shot and its paralysis effect becomes more potent. It can also magnetically grab nearby rings.
Pollination
As a bee, Charmy can use his stinger to open certain flowers. Unless the flower has something useful in it, this does nothing else.
Whirlwind
Charmy can spin fast enough to create small scale whirlwinds that can act as platforms.
“Hacking”
Why’d I bother spending 4 years getting a Comp Sci degree…
Shared
Spindash
A move that Vector and Espio have displayed in Knuckles Chaotix. While Charmy never did in that game, he did do something similar with Vector at one point. But that doesn’t really matter since all 3 of them can do it in Sonic Dash just fine.
The spindash has allowed Sonic to keep up with Metal Sonic’s V-Maximum Overdrive, a 4x speed amplification, and in Sonic Prime allowed Sonic to see enemies on or above his normal speed tier as almost frozen while in use due to the speed increase.
Homing Attack
A classic staple of the series. While Espio used to be the only one that could perform it (due to being the speed type of the group) all of them have been shown to do it in Sonic Dash.
Non-Physical Interaction
Capable of attacking the pumpkin ghosts from Hang Castle.
Chaotix Recital
The team blast of the Chaotix. A move that includes them jamming out really hard and destroying all enemies on screen. Upon destruction the enemies will be turned into rings.
Freelance Police
Max
The Gift
Individuals that have The Gift gain access to various psychic powers that they can use through the Toys of Power. These toys belong to the one and only Yog-Soggoth, which are contained inside the Devil’s Toybox. The Gift is said to be wielded only by those who have a special brain, which is usually the insane, the defective or the simple.
After Yog-Soggoth unlocked Max’s inner potential, he gained the ability to be able to float in the air, was now able to use the abilities provided by the Toys of Power without needing the actual toys and got a major upgrade for some of them.
It should also be noted that Max can still use his psychic powers even without his body, as he was able to use them as just a brain.
The Eyes of Yog-Soggoth
3D toy goggles that allow Max to see the future. Not only can he see the future of others, but he can also see the future events surrounding certain objects. With this knowledge Max can change the future itself, as he was able to save Flint Paper from getting killed, or when general Skun-ka’pe used it to change the entire sequence of events that led to his defeat at the start of the episode.
Astral Projector
Gives Max the ability of astral projection. By inserting a film reel or a photograph into it, Sam and Max can transfer their consciousness into other people's minds depicted in it. However this only works with people that are similar to them, as they were only able to do it because they were going into the minds of their great grandfathers, Sameth and Maximus. And when Sam tried it again with photos, it only worked because he was going into the minds of clones of himself.
Telephone-tor
Gives Max the ability of teleportation, though in a very specific way. He can only teleport next to phones, needing the corresponding phone number in order to do that. Sam, and pretty much anyone else, can teleport together with him if they’re touching him.
Mind-Reading Cards
A deck of playing cards that allows Max to read minds. After Yog-Soggoth unlocked Max’s potential, this ability got a major upgrade. Now Max can also bring out the mental images out of someone's mind.
Rhinoplasty
A piece of clay that gives Sam the power of shapeshifting. By spreading it over a picture or drawing of any object (and only works on inmate objects) the object will be imprinted onto the clay. After that’s done, Max can then freely turn into said object. He has used it to turn into a plant, a rocket launcher, the DeSoto or even crazier stuff like a thundercloud. If destroyed, Max will revert back into his initial state, such as when Sammun-Mak (when he was in Max’s body) was blown up as a blimp, but still reformed back to his initial state.
When upgraded, its power could be combined with the mind reading cards. Now Max can also use it to shapeshift into the mental images provided by the cards. He could do stuff like turn into eternal darkness, fire, a mind plague or even Charlie Ho-Tep (the guy he was fighting).
Charlie Ho-Tep
A ventriloquist dummy that allows Max to talk through other people or objects. Helpful in tricking others. Its upgraded version allowed him to perfectly mimic any voice he wanted, since at first he was using his own.
While Charlie Ho-Tep did eventually reveal himself as a sentient toy that went against Sam and Max, Max could still use his abilities in their fight.
Nutri-Specs
A toy that can be found in a hidden area. Shows Max the nutritional contents inside people and objects. So yeah, pretty useless all things considered.
The Cthonic Destroyer
The ultimate psychic toy. This little robot shoots lasers that are powerful enough to drive the elder gods back to their home dimension.
Superego
Towards the end of The Devil’s Playhouse, we find out that the narrator that’s been talking to us since the start is actually the manifestation of Max’s superego. Due to being part of Max’s mind, he was able to use his psychic abilities even when Max was transformed into a giant monster and had little control over himself. While originally not very fond of Max and didn’t really mind if he died, he changed his mind once he witnessed Max wanting to save Sybil, a never before seen selfless act.
Consciousness Transference
After Max got vaporised by some lasers, he was able to transfer his consciousness upon death into Sam’s right arm. This could also imply Max could maybe possess people, but that’s never been shown.
Size alteration
After escaping from the nanoverse, some side effects lingered on Max. This allowed him to change his size and even come back as a giant. There’s a possibility these changes are outside of his control but the game never specifies anything.
Mind Meld
In order to show Lactose the marvels of modern civilisation, Sam induced the Lagomorphic Mind Meld, a process where Max transfers information into his mind.
Shared
Overall physiology
Mostly seen in the cartoon, Sam and Max have done some interesting things with their bodies. They can squeeze through impossibly tight areas, get flattened or get stretched. Max’s body especially can do some weird stuff, like turning into a parachute when grabbed by his ears, inflating himself by pulling his belly button, can have his head opened like a jar, eat people whole and his tail has a mind of its own, capable of removing itself and biting others. Sam can also collapse all his organs and bones.
Gags
Sam and Max can also do some weird low scale reality warping where they will manifest a scenario for a short gag. They’ve created a game show type scenario that gave them the right password or even Sam posing as a doctor to revive their TV.
Luck
Sam and Max seem to have some degree of supernatural luck, as there have been times where extraordinary circumstances occur to save them. The first one is when someone was ready to sacrifice Max by stabbing him, only to be saved by him spontaneously combusting on the spot. The second is when pirates were ready to boil them alive, but a bunch of octopi they knew suddenly appeared to save them. There’s been other times where this has happened, but these 2 scenes are the ones that specifically point to some stroke of luck saving them, as Max makes comments like “A stroke of luck!” or “I feel very fortunate".
Resurrection
Sam and Max have displayed a few ways of returning to life. One of them was when they got turned into zombies after Jurgen had killed them. But this might’ve been an after effect of him having harvested their souls. There is also the time when both of their souls got kicked out of heaven and back into their bodies due to how annoying they were.
Telekinesis
Limited telekinesis that Max has displayed, though he really only used it on a coffee cup and nothing else. Sam also tried it, but accidentally levitated the both of them.
4th wall awareness
There have been numerous occasions where Sam and Max have acknowledged they’re in a cartoon/game. They’ve acknowledged the season format of the games, the fact their cartoon was in its final episode and have pointed out the intro sequence and end credits. They have even done stuff like initiate the intro sequence or cut straight to the next scene.
Time travel
Remember that elevator and watch that let them time travel? Well forget all about that since they can just do it freely themselves. A running gag in the comics is that they will suddenly just appear in whatever time period they’re needed at.
Spiritual communication
Sam and Max are capable of communicating with the dead. Sam himself also knows some incantations (which he found online), one of which helped in exorcising Max. Although this process involved the ceremonial dagger and some other steps to work.
Suspended animation
A gag done at the end of This Time It’s Virtual. But it could’ve also been done as a joke outside their control.
Godhood
After succeeding at getting Zeus and Hera back together, the two turned Sam and Max into gods among men. Sam was made the god of High Caloric Snacks and Cakeage and Max made the god of Vulgar Novelty Items. So what’s the perks of becoming gods? Who the hell knows, we never see them do anything with them.
Existence Erasure (?)
So at some point Sam looks at a computer in Mama Bosco’s lab and realizes that it’s scientifically impossible for him and Max to exist, which temporarily erases them from existence until he realizes that he read things wrong. Now this probably isn’t something they can do normally (or have even done anything remotely close to that before) as it seems it’s just tied to the overall joke that was happening.
Team Chaotix
Vector
Vector Breath
|
A move where Vector will spin around and shoot projectiles from his mouth. This move has 3 different levels, as it gets upgraded with each power core. The first level has him shoot out concentrated soundwaves. In gameplay this move looks like he’s just spitting out musical notes, but the comics have shown a more accurate depiction of what it’s like. The second level allows him to spit out fire, because why not, and in the third level he spits bubblegum bubbles that will explode on contact.
Fireball
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Espio and Charmy will roll into a ball inside Vector’s mouth as he spits them out as a projectile with great force.
Power Boost
An ability where Vector can dash towards any direction mid jump.
Musical Notes
|
So Vector can just make musical notes to throw at you. Probably just a simpler application of the Vector Breath’s level 1 attack.
Team Ultimate
|
A move appearing in Team Sonic Racing. Once the ultimate meter has been filled, Vector and his team gain a massive speed boost for a short time. It also doubles as invincibility, allowing them to smash through obstacles and ramming into other racers. Now the thing with this move is that he was performing it while teaming up with Silver and Blaze, not Espio and Charmy. But realistically there’s really nothing suggesting they wouldn’t be able to do it, since every team in that game could do it no problem.
Espio
Camouflage
His most iconic ability. Espio is capable of camouflaging himself in a way that makes him invisible to anyone. This even let him do stuff like pass through lasers without triggering them. However this doesn’t make him intangible, as he can still be interacted with…sometimes.
There’s been moments where Sonic has bumped into him which caused him to become visible again, but there’s also been moments where something like that happened and still remained camouflaged. But in Sonic Generations, he was able to turn fully intangible, with Sonic having to shine light on him to become tangible again.
When camouflaged, he is also immune to any of the homing versions of the items in Sonic Rivals 2 (but not other damage sources) and even gets a slight speed increase.
Wall Crawling
Espio is capable of sticking on surfaces and running along them just fine.
Axel Spin
A move where Espio spins really fast horizontally, attacking anyone he runs into.
Rocket Accel
|
A move where Espio rolls into a ball and is pushed by his teammates, propelling him at high speeds.
Leaf Swirl
|
Espio can create powerful cyclonic vortexes. These can be used to fling opponents into the air or to ascend poles. Leaf Swirl however also seems to be a more general form of wind manipulation, as Espio has also used it to propel wind towards others. As seen above, the wind also makes him translucent, and invisible to enemies.
Body Replacement
A technique that you’d recognise from a certain ninja anime. A split second switch between the user and an object. Perfect for misdirection.
Mind Reading (debatable)
Through ninjutsu, Espio can communicate through the subconscious to understand thoughts. However, Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is not canon (despite how many times characters from it and the costumes get acknowledged), so whether he has this ability in the canon is undetermined. Espio in general has highly tuned senses, even being able to read the Time Eater’s soul?
Sonic the Fighters moves
|
Thanks to being in a fighting game, Espio can perform various combo attacks, all of which can be seen here. It’s mostly just basic attacks like kicking, slapping and punching. But his most unique one is being able to stretch his tongue out to attack from a distance.
In Fighters characters also start with a certain number of barriers, allowing them to shield themselves. But these can be broken with certain moves, so if one breaks then the counter goes down.
Hyper Mode
|
By collecting all the chaos emeralds, Espio can enter Hyper Mode at the cost of his barriers. While in this state the speed of all of his attacks is increased and can gain access to a few special moves exclusive to Hyper Mode.
Charmy
Flying
You’re not gonna believe what a bee can do.
Stinger
You’re also not gonna believe what the main attack method of a bee is.
Thundershoot
|
Charmy can shout out Espio and Vector as projectiles. The more the move is upgraded the more enemies can be taken out with one shot and its paralysis effect becomes more potent. It can also magnetically grab nearby rings.
Pollination
|
As a bee, Charmy can use his stinger to open certain flowers. Unless the flower has something useful in it, this does nothing else.
Whirlwind
|
Charmy can spin fast enough to create small scale whirlwinds that can act as platforms.
“Hacking”
Why’d I bother spending 4 years getting a Comp Sci degree…
Shared
Spindash
A move that Vector and Espio have displayed in Knuckles Chaotix. While Charmy never did in that game, he did do something similar with Vector at one point. But that doesn’t really matter since all 3 of them can do it in Sonic Dash just fine.
The spindash has allowed Sonic to keep up with Metal Sonic’s V-Maximum Overdrive, a 4x speed amplification, and in Sonic Prime allowed Sonic to see enemies on or above his normal speed tier as almost frozen while in use due to the speed increase.
Homing Attack
|
A classic staple of the series. While Espio used to be the only one that could perform it (due to being the speed type of the group) all of them have been shown to do it in Sonic Dash.
Non-Physical Interaction
|
Capable of attacking the pumpkin ghosts from Hang Castle.
Chaotix Recital
|
Freelance Police
Max
The Gift
|
Individuals that have The Gift gain access to various psychic powers that they can use through the Toys of Power. These toys belong to the one and only Yog-Soggoth, which are contained inside the Devil’s Toybox. The Gift is said to be wielded only by those who have a special brain, which is usually the insane, the defective or the simple.
After Yog-Soggoth unlocked Max’s inner potential, he gained the ability to be able to float in the air, was now able to use the abilities provided by the Toys of Power without needing the actual toys and got a major upgrade for some of them.
It should also be noted that Max can still use his psychic powers even without his body, as he was able to use them as just a brain.
The Eyes of Yog-Soggoth
3D toy goggles that allow Max to see the future. Not only can he see the future of others, but he can also see the future events surrounding certain objects. With this knowledge Max can change the future itself, as he was able to save Flint Paper from getting killed, or when general Skun-ka’pe used it to change the entire sequence of events that led to his defeat at the start of the episode.
Astral Projector
Gives Max the ability of astral projection. By inserting a film reel or a photograph into it, Sam and Max can transfer their consciousness into other people's minds depicted in it. However this only works with people that are similar to them, as they were only able to do it because they were going into the minds of their great grandfathers, Sameth and Maximus. And when Sam tried it again with photos, it only worked because he was going into the minds of clones of himself.
Telephone-tor
Gives Max the ability of teleportation, though in a very specific way. He can only teleport next to phones, needing the corresponding phone number in order to do that. Sam, and pretty much anyone else, can teleport together with him if they’re touching him.
Mind-Reading Cards
A deck of playing cards that allows Max to read minds. After Yog-Soggoth unlocked Max’s potential, this ability got a major upgrade. Now Max can also bring out the mental images out of someone's mind.
Rhinoplasty
A piece of clay that gives Sam the power of shapeshifting. By spreading it over a picture or drawing of any object (and only works on inmate objects) the object will be imprinted onto the clay. After that’s done, Max can then freely turn into said object. He has used it to turn into a plant, a rocket launcher, the DeSoto or even crazier stuff like a thundercloud. If destroyed, Max will revert back into his initial state, such as when Sammun-Mak (when he was in Max’s body) was blown up as a blimp, but still reformed back to his initial state.
When upgraded, its power could be combined with the mind reading cards. Now Max can also use it to shapeshift into the mental images provided by the cards. He could do stuff like turn into eternal darkness, fire, a mind plague or even Charlie Ho-Tep (the guy he was fighting).
Charlie Ho-Tep
A ventriloquist dummy that allows Max to talk through other people or objects. Helpful in tricking others. Its upgraded version allowed him to perfectly mimic any voice he wanted, since at first he was using his own.
While Charlie Ho-Tep did eventually reveal himself as a sentient toy that went against Sam and Max, Max could still use his abilities in their fight.
Nutri-Specs
A toy that can be found in a hidden area. Shows Max the nutritional contents inside people and objects. So yeah, pretty useless all things considered.
The Cthonic Destroyer
The ultimate psychic toy. This little robot shoots lasers that are powerful enough to drive the elder gods back to their home dimension.
Superego
Towards the end of The Devil’s Playhouse, we find out that the narrator that’s been talking to us since the start is actually the manifestation of Max’s superego. Due to being part of Max’s mind, he was able to use his psychic abilities even when Max was transformed into a giant monster and had little control over himself. While originally not very fond of Max and didn’t really mind if he died, he changed his mind once he witnessed Max wanting to save Sybil, a never before seen selfless act.
Consciousness Transference
After Max got vaporised by some lasers, he was able to transfer his consciousness upon death into Sam’s right arm. This could also imply Max could maybe possess people, but that’s never been shown.
Size alteration
|
After escaping from the nanoverse, some side effects lingered on Max. This allowed him to change his size and even come back as a giant. There’s a possibility these changes are outside of his control but the game never specifies anything.
Mind Meld
|
Shared
Overall physiology
|
Mostly seen in the cartoon, Sam and Max have done some interesting things with their bodies. They can squeeze through impossibly tight areas, get flattened or get stretched. Max’s body especially can do some weird stuff, like turning into a parachute when grabbed by his ears, inflating himself by pulling his belly button, can have his head opened like a jar, eat people whole and his tail has a mind of its own, capable of removing itself and biting others. Sam can also collapse all his organs and bones.
Gags
Sam and Max can also do some weird low scale reality warping where they will manifest a scenario for a short gag. They’ve created a game show type scenario that gave them the right password or even Sam posing as a doctor to revive their TV.
Luck
Sam and Max seem to have some degree of supernatural luck, as there have been times where extraordinary circumstances occur to save them. The first one is when someone was ready to sacrifice Max by stabbing him, only to be saved by him spontaneously combusting on the spot. The second is when pirates were ready to boil them alive, but a bunch of octopi they knew suddenly appeared to save them. There’s been other times where this has happened, but these 2 scenes are the ones that specifically point to some stroke of luck saving them, as Max makes comments like “A stroke of luck!” or “I feel very fortunate".
Resurrection
Sam and Max have displayed a few ways of returning to life. One of them was when they got turned into zombies after Jurgen had killed them. But this might’ve been an after effect of him having harvested their souls. There is also the time when both of their souls got kicked out of heaven and back into their bodies due to how annoying they were.
Telekinesis
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Limited telekinesis that Max has displayed, though he really only used it on a coffee cup and nothing else. Sam also tried it, but accidentally levitated the both of them.
4th wall awareness
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There have been numerous occasions where Sam and Max have acknowledged they’re in a cartoon/game. They’ve acknowledged the season format of the games, the fact their cartoon was in its final episode and have pointed out the intro sequence and end credits. They have even done stuff like initiate the intro sequence or cut straight to the next scene.
Time travel
Remember that elevator and watch that let them time travel? Well forget all about that since they can just do it freely themselves. A running gag in the comics is that they will suddenly just appear in whatever time period they’re needed at.
Spiritual communication
Sam and Max are capable of communicating with the dead. Sam himself also knows some incantations (which he found online), one of which helped in exorcising Max. Although this process involved the ceremonial dagger and some other steps to work.
Suspended animation
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A gag done at the end of This Time It’s Virtual. But it could’ve also been done as a joke outside their control.
Godhood
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After succeeding at getting Zeus and Hera back together, the two turned Sam and Max into gods among men. Sam was made the god of High Caloric Snacks and Cakeage and Max made the god of Vulgar Novelty Items. So what’s the perks of becoming gods? Who the hell knows, we never see them do anything with them.
Existence Erasure (?)
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Resistances
Chaotix
Vector
Transmutation (debatable): Vector, like other characters in Team Sonic Racing, is able to withstand being hit by blue wisp projectiles, with the blue wisp granting the power to trap enemies in cubes, and then destroy them with a touch, leaving behind blue rings. However, it’s also likely that the blue wisps are not trying to transmute due to it being a friendly race.
Espio
Mind Control (debatable): Unlike Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge, Espio is never controlled by the Ifrit in any scenario, despite its ability to bind the soul and control the mind of targets, seemingly from a distance. That said, it possibly doesn’t do this because Metal Sonic 3.0 is fighting Espio instead of another playable character.
Shared
Speed Simulator Resistances (debatable): Includes being able to touch lava and extremely cold environments in Hill Top Zone, and travel through poisonous chemicals in the…Chemical Plant (albeit touching the chemical water pits simply induces a respawn, as opposed to the leaking chemicals, so a resistance here is likely limited. Sonic has this resistance, it’s just unclear if the Chaotix do as well).
Space Survival: They regularly are unaffected in the vacuum of space (every Speed Simulator playable character can come to the ARK).
Possibly Radiation: Team Sonic and Dark are capable of touching the radioactive energy in the Power Plant and take normal damage, and Team Chaotix can presumably also survive these conditions, but never actually have the opportunity to explore this part in their run of the stage (but do get within a couple hundred feet of an open radiation pit with no issue).
Acid: Unaffected by the acid rain of the black frogs.
Freelance police
Max
Mind control: While Sam needs equipment to resist it, Max is naturally resistant to mind control
Item Transference: When a robot tried to remove Max’s items with a scanning beam, she couldn't because she couldn’t figure out where he stores them
Venom: Was fine after having some poured on his arm
Shared
Lack of oxygen: Both characters can breathe in space and underwater just fine
Extreme cold: They are unaffected by the cold weather of the North Pole
Electrocucion: Both of them have shaken off getting electrocuted in Hit the Road
Feats
Chaotix
Vector
Transmutation (debatable): Vector, like other characters in Team Sonic Racing, is able to withstand being hit by blue wisp projectiles, with the blue wisp granting the power to trap enemies in cubes, and then destroy them with a touch, leaving behind blue rings. However, it’s also likely that the blue wisps are not trying to transmute due to it being a friendly race.
Espio
Mind Control (debatable): Unlike Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge, Espio is never controlled by the Ifrit in any scenario, despite its ability to bind the soul and control the mind of targets, seemingly from a distance. That said, it possibly doesn’t do this because Metal Sonic 3.0 is fighting Espio instead of another playable character.
Shared
Speed Simulator Resistances (debatable): Includes being able to touch lava and extremely cold environments in Hill Top Zone, and travel through poisonous chemicals in the…Chemical Plant (albeit touching the chemical water pits simply induces a respawn, as opposed to the leaking chemicals, so a resistance here is likely limited. Sonic has this resistance, it’s just unclear if the Chaotix do as well).
Space Survival: They regularly are unaffected in the vacuum of space (every Speed Simulator playable character can come to the ARK).
Possibly Radiation: Team Sonic and Dark are capable of touching the radioactive energy in the Power Plant and take normal damage, and Team Chaotix can presumably also survive these conditions, but never actually have the opportunity to explore this part in their run of the stage (but do get within a couple hundred feet of an open radiation pit with no issue).
Acid: Unaffected by the acid rain of the black frogs.
Freelance police
Max
Mind control: While Sam needs equipment to resist it, Max is naturally resistant to mind control
Item Transference: When a robot tried to remove Max’s items with a scanning beam, she couldn't because she couldn’t figure out where he stores them
Venom: Was fine after having some poured on his arm
Shared
Lack of oxygen: Both characters can breathe in space and underwater just fine
Extreme cold: They are unaffected by the cold weather of the North Pole
Electrocucion: Both of them have shaken off getting electrocuted in Hit the Road
Team Chaotix
Team Chaotix
Overall
Defeated Metal Sonic Kai and saved Newtrogic High Zone
Snuck up on Sonic during his birthday.
Cracked the mystery behind their mysterious radio contact and worked together to defeat Metal Sonic
Infiltrated the personal databases of Eggman and Gerald Robotnik to uncover secret videos to save the human race
Competed in multiple racing grand prixs
Helped the resistance defeat Dr. Eggman after he conquered the world
Helped fend off the Metal Virus for a time
Uncovered Infinite’s latest scheme and worked with Team Sonic to defeat him
Espio MURDERED Sonic the Hedgehog
Strength
Vector can shatter stone blocks
Speed
Durability
Freelance Police
Defeated Metal Sonic Kai and saved Newtrogic High Zone
Snuck up on Sonic during his birthday.
Cracked the mystery behind their mysterious radio contact and worked together to defeat Metal Sonic
Infiltrated the personal databases of Eggman and Gerald Robotnik to uncover secret videos to save the human race
Competed in multiple racing grand prixs
Helped the resistance defeat Dr. Eggman after he conquered the world
Helped fend off the Metal Virus for a time
Uncovered Infinite’s latest scheme and worked with Team Sonic to defeat him
Espio MURDERED Sonic the Hedgehog
Strength
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Vector can shatter stone blocks
Speed
|
Durability
Freelance Police
Overall
Made Max president of the United States
Saved the world from Hugh Bliss’s mind control
Saved Easter Island from getting destroyed by a volcano
Stopped the Soda Poppers from bringing hell on earth
Put up with Lorne’s bullshit
Beat a full on team up of various enemies of theirs
Defeated general Skun-ka’pe
Put an end to Charlie Ho-Tep attempting to bring Junior into our reality
Stopped monster Max from destroying Manhattan
Strength
Speed
Probably scale to Jurgen, who’s fast enough to catch bullets
Sam and Max had 14 seconds to deliver a heart to the white house. During that time they drove through Pennsylvania, Mexico and Antarctica, but still made it in time - (0.019c)
Durability
Made Max president of the United States
Saved the world from Hugh Bliss’s mind control
Saved Easter Island from getting destroyed by a volcano
Stopped the Soda Poppers from bringing hell on earth
Put up with Lorne’s bullshit
Beat a full on team up of various enemies of theirs
Defeated general Skun-ka’pe
Put an end to Charlie Ho-Tep attempting to bring Junior into our reality
Stopped monster Max from destroying Manhattan
Strength
Speed
Probably scale to Jurgen, who’s fast enough to catch bullets
Sam and Max had 14 seconds to deliver a heart to the white house. During that time they drove through Pennsylvania, Mexico and Antarctica, but still made it in time - (0.019c)
Durability
Scaling
Team Chaotix
Sonic Heroes (and friends)
Even as far as post-Forces, the Chaotix have demonstrated they are on a combative tier that allows them to contribute significantly against a horde of Phantom Ruby clones, which were capable of combatting Sonic at the beginning and aftermath of the six month period of Eggman’s takeover, and were able to contribute in fighting Master Overlord alongside the other heroes. As such, they should scale to the power level of the base Sonic cast comfortably.
Silver telekinetically stops the Death Egg
Sonic and Knuckles dodge lasers real good, yeah? Yeah (5.64 to 7.79 c with spindash, 1.41-1.92 c baseline).
Sonic breaks the chains holding Little Planet to his world (3.282 Teratons, possibly 7.54-919.45 Exatons of TNT)
Sonic is stated to reach the speed of light in order to time travel using time posts.
Sonic flies past many stars
Shadow can control his movements while traveling along the lightspeed circuit (7.87 c)
Sonic’s friends travel to the corners of End of the World, a distorted pocket of space-time, in order to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds
The Violet Wisp creates a black hole
Sonic’s speed allows him to restart the flow of time and fix space, returning color, life and energy to the different zones in White Space, some being spaces full of stars, and some even being entire universes.
Team Sonic flies to the center of Maginaryworld, a fourth-dimensional space of potential infinite size.
Sonic, combined with the Avatar, unleashes a burst of speed allowing them to break through the boundaries of Null Space, an “endless” space closed off from all other dimensions.
Sonic withstood the explosion of the Paradox Prism, which shattered his universe into six pieces.
Sonic Foes (Mostly)
As this is a series where the good guys tend to win, the base Sonic cast usually triumphs over most foes, save very special ones that require a super form to take down. As such, the Chaotix would also scale to these, with them most recently helping to fight and damage Master Overlord.
Captain Bemoth, amped by the Water Blue ring, can control storms, namely the one over the Pirate Storm area.
The Death Egg Robot is stated to be the strongest armament of the entire Death Egg, which can destroy planets, with the defeat of the Robot causing the base to cease functioning.
Metal Sonic Kai was amped by a giant dark ring, which are equal to special rings that can sustain entire special stages.
The Eclipse Cannon can pierce stars/planets, destroy half of the moon, and destroy the planet itself when charged on 6 or 7 Chaos Emeralds.
Emerl captured the full “greatly gigantic power” of the Final Egg Blaster, which can destroy several “hoshi” (translated as stars) in one shot.
Erazor Djinn absorbed half the pages and text of the Arabian Nights dimension into himself, and the Ifrit Golem can burn the other half to nothing, with the text and pages being the essence of the entire Nights and giving it shape and form.
Master Core: ABIS can act as the core of a supermassive black hole that can consume Sonic’s planet, and is the power source for the entire Babylon Garden, including its treasure space that acts as an infinite size digital dimension.
The Phantom Ruby can create dimensions of “endless” size, closed off from all other dimensions, with their own unique flow of time.
Iblis reduced the surface of the planet to a fiery hellscape upon being unleashed.
The Eggmobile withstood being sucked into a massive black hole
The Lost World EggRobo is amplified by the life energy of an entire planet.
Void, with its power of darkness, can consume the entirety of Maginaryworld, an infinite four-dimensional space, and erase it from existence, with the base Sonic cast surviving hits from Void’s strongest form without Rings.
The Chaos Emeralds (Base)
Throughout the series, the Sonic cast has regularly taken on foes channeling the power of 1, several, or even all 7 of these powerful artifacts, including the deity Chaos and the Gizoid Emerl, as well as Metal Sonic in Sonic Mania Adventures. Importantly, this is when they are NOT amplifying the user into an actual super form, which is a different level beyond that of the basic Chaos Emeralds. As such, the Chaotix can scale to the Chaos Emeralds, but not super forms (at least power-wise).
The reawakening of a Chaos Emerald moved a continent back into place in seconds.
The negative energy of all 7 Chaos Emeralds enabled Eggman’s cannon to crack the planet into seven pieces.
A chaos control from a single Chaos Emerald split Sonic’s world into 7 different pocket realities.
The Emeralds can stop and start the movement of Sonic’s universe as they please.
A depowered Chaos Emerald repelled the incomplete Time Eater, who could erase and obliterate “all of time and space”.
The Chaos Emeralds provide power to the entirety of the Ancients’ cyberspace, which Eggman described as “containing a data count beyond quantification” and “endless”, surpassing any digital space he has come up with, and includes recreations of parts of cyberworlds with infinite size like the G.U.N. mainframe.
Chaos Emeralds in Silver’s hands 200 years in the future fly to Mephiles’ side for his ritual.
Super Forms (Debatable)
To get it out of the way, NO, the Chaotix don’t scale to the strength or durability of super forms. But…there have been times where base forms have been able to keep up with super forms or super form level threats in speed (e.g., Sonic outrunning a bloodlusted Wyvern chasing him in Frontiers, Knuckles keeping up with Super Mecha Sonic in Sonic and Knuckles, base Sonic outspeeding shots from the complete Time Eater and repelling its incomplete variant with a boost in Generations 3DS). As such, downscaling from the speed feats of super forms is a notable topic of discussion for the Chaotix. As super forms are stated to be the supreme and infinite power in the verse, to the point Eggman considers their full potential “unimaginable”, they should scale to every feat of speed in the verse, on top of their own feats (Sonic Advance).
The Final Egg Blaster reaches a distant “hoshi” cluster in seconds.
Super Sonic and Burning Blaze fly to the Exception, a rift between Sonic and Blaze’s universes, in seconds.
Super Sonic and the Eggmobile fly to the Nonaggression Zone, which has a design similar to that of a nebula, from Earth in seconds.
The Time Eater in its incomplete form unleashes a wave of deletion that spreads across at least Sonic’s universe, potentially reaching across the entirety of Sonic’s multiverse across all of time.
Solaris does this as well, on top of planning to use its power to obliterate the concept of time itself.
Super Sonic flies into and through a separate dimension, referred to as the “end of time”, to fight the Time Eater.
Super Sonic, Super Shadow, and Super Silver each take turns going against Solaris, who exists in past, present and future simultaneously, and dodge its projectiles, which exist at every point in time that Solaris is and can consume all of time.
Devil Doom spreads a Doom Zone across his section of white space, which includes multiple different pieces of time, in a couple seconds.
Super Sonic flies past many stars to fight the Nega Mother Wisp.
Paradox Prism boosted Sonic can be in two places at once, seemingly off pure speed.
The Paradox Prism unleashes a shockwave that shatters Sonic’s universe, and Sonic with a small bit of prism energy unleashed a shockwave spreading throughout the entirety of the New Yoke dimension and beyond. Shadow fights Sonic with this boost and keeps up with him.
Freelance Police
Dark Dimension residents and items
To get it out of the way, Sam and Max themselves absolutely do not scale to any of the Elder Gods. However, there are arguments to be made for the Cthonic Destroyer to be able to. It’s the ultimate toy and the only one that could actually match their power and even drive them back to the dark dimension. This could also extend to the Devil’s Toybox too, considering the whole purpose of its toys is to keep Junior in check, so he can be assumed to be stronger than this, and generally any other great feat in the series. The overall context for most of these feats will be talked about more in BtV.
The Devil’s Toybox:
Created an entire new reality consisting of a city and a possibly sun
When filled with all the toys, it had enough power to break the borders between the Dark Dimension and our reality, which would’ve destroyed it in the process
Monster Max with just a bit of energy from the dark dimension would’ve blown up majority of the northeastern United States
The explosion itself could be seen from space
Junior’s:
Wailing shattered Pangea (a super-continent from 200 - 335 million years ago that consisted of majority of the world’s landmass)
First steps sunk the proto-civilisation of Subarctica
Power is said to be able to destroy the omniverse
Considering his status as an Elder God, we can assume he’s stronger than a spaceship that pulled a bunch of stars to form a message - (9.16573e+43 Joules)
Team Chaotix
Sonic Heroes (and friends)
Even as far as post-Forces, the Chaotix have demonstrated they are on a combative tier that allows them to contribute significantly against a horde of Phantom Ruby clones, which were capable of combatting Sonic at the beginning and aftermath of the six month period of Eggman’s takeover, and were able to contribute in fighting Master Overlord alongside the other heroes. As such, they should scale to the power level of the base Sonic cast comfortably.
Silver telekinetically stops the Death Egg
Sonic and Knuckles dodge lasers real good, yeah? Yeah (5.64 to 7.79 c with spindash, 1.41-1.92 c baseline).
Sonic breaks the chains holding Little Planet to his world (3.282 Teratons, possibly 7.54-919.45 Exatons of TNT)
Sonic is stated to reach the speed of light in order to time travel using time posts.
Sonic flies past many stars
Shadow can control his movements while traveling along the lightspeed circuit (7.87 c)
Sonic’s friends travel to the corners of End of the World, a distorted pocket of space-time, in order to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds
The Violet Wisp creates a black hole
Sonic’s speed allows him to restart the flow of time and fix space, returning color, life and energy to the different zones in White Space, some being spaces full of stars, and some even being entire universes.
Team Sonic flies to the center of Maginaryworld, a fourth-dimensional space of potential infinite size.
Sonic, combined with the Avatar, unleashes a burst of speed allowing them to break through the boundaries of Null Space, an “endless” space closed off from all other dimensions.
Sonic withstood the explosion of the Paradox Prism, which shattered his universe into six pieces.
Sonic Foes (Mostly)
As this is a series where the good guys tend to win, the base Sonic cast usually triumphs over most foes, save very special ones that require a super form to take down. As such, the Chaotix would also scale to these, with them most recently helping to fight and damage Master Overlord.
Captain Bemoth, amped by the Water Blue ring, can control storms, namely the one over the Pirate Storm area.
The Death Egg Robot is stated to be the strongest armament of the entire Death Egg, which can destroy planets, with the defeat of the Robot causing the base to cease functioning.
Metal Sonic Kai was amped by a giant dark ring, which are equal to special rings that can sustain entire special stages.
The Eclipse Cannon can pierce stars/planets, destroy half of the moon, and destroy the planet itself when charged on 6 or 7 Chaos Emeralds.
Emerl captured the full “greatly gigantic power” of the Final Egg Blaster, which can destroy several “hoshi” (translated as stars) in one shot.
Erazor Djinn absorbed half the pages and text of the Arabian Nights dimension into himself, and the Ifrit Golem can burn the other half to nothing, with the text and pages being the essence of the entire Nights and giving it shape and form.
Master Core: ABIS can act as the core of a supermassive black hole that can consume Sonic’s planet, and is the power source for the entire Babylon Garden, including its treasure space that acts as an infinite size digital dimension.
The Phantom Ruby can create dimensions of “endless” size, closed off from all other dimensions, with their own unique flow of time.
Iblis reduced the surface of the planet to a fiery hellscape upon being unleashed.
The Eggmobile withstood being sucked into a massive black hole
The Lost World EggRobo is amplified by the life energy of an entire planet.
Void, with its power of darkness, can consume the entirety of Maginaryworld, an infinite four-dimensional space, and erase it from existence, with the base Sonic cast surviving hits from Void’s strongest form without Rings.
The Chaos Emeralds (Base)
Throughout the series, the Sonic cast has regularly taken on foes channeling the power of 1, several, or even all 7 of these powerful artifacts, including the deity Chaos and the Gizoid Emerl, as well as Metal Sonic in Sonic Mania Adventures. Importantly, this is when they are NOT amplifying the user into an actual super form, which is a different level beyond that of the basic Chaos Emeralds. As such, the Chaotix can scale to the Chaos Emeralds, but not super forms (at least power-wise).
The reawakening of a Chaos Emerald moved a continent back into place in seconds.
The negative energy of all 7 Chaos Emeralds enabled Eggman’s cannon to crack the planet into seven pieces.
A chaos control from a single Chaos Emerald split Sonic’s world into 7 different pocket realities.
The Emeralds can stop and start the movement of Sonic’s universe as they please.
A depowered Chaos Emerald repelled the incomplete Time Eater, who could erase and obliterate “all of time and space”.
The Chaos Emeralds provide power to the entirety of the Ancients’ cyberspace, which Eggman described as “containing a data count beyond quantification” and “endless”, surpassing any digital space he has come up with, and includes recreations of parts of cyberworlds with infinite size like the G.U.N. mainframe.
Chaos Emeralds in Silver’s hands 200 years in the future fly to Mephiles’ side for his ritual.
Super Forms (Debatable)
To get it out of the way, NO, the Chaotix don’t scale to the strength or durability of super forms. But…there have been times where base forms have been able to keep up with super forms or super form level threats in speed (e.g., Sonic outrunning a bloodlusted Wyvern chasing him in Frontiers, Knuckles keeping up with Super Mecha Sonic in Sonic and Knuckles, base Sonic outspeeding shots from the complete Time Eater and repelling its incomplete variant with a boost in Generations 3DS). As such, downscaling from the speed feats of super forms is a notable topic of discussion for the Chaotix. As super forms are stated to be the supreme and infinite power in the verse, to the point Eggman considers their full potential “unimaginable”, they should scale to every feat of speed in the verse, on top of their own feats (Sonic Advance).
The Final Egg Blaster reaches a distant “hoshi” cluster in seconds.
Super Sonic and Burning Blaze fly to the Exception, a rift between Sonic and Blaze’s universes, in seconds.
Super Sonic and the Eggmobile fly to the Nonaggression Zone, which has a design similar to that of a nebula, from Earth in seconds.
The Time Eater in its incomplete form unleashes a wave of deletion that spreads across at least Sonic’s universe, potentially reaching across the entirety of Sonic’s multiverse across all of time.
Solaris does this as well, on top of planning to use its power to obliterate the concept of time itself.
Super Sonic flies into and through a separate dimension, referred to as the “end of time”, to fight the Time Eater.
Super Sonic, Super Shadow, and Super Silver each take turns going against Solaris, who exists in past, present and future simultaneously, and dodge its projectiles, which exist at every point in time that Solaris is and can consume all of time.
Devil Doom spreads a Doom Zone across his section of white space, which includes multiple different pieces of time, in a couple seconds.
Super Sonic flies past many stars to fight the Nega Mother Wisp.
Paradox Prism boosted Sonic can be in two places at once, seemingly off pure speed.
The Paradox Prism unleashes a shockwave that shatters Sonic’s universe, and Sonic with a small bit of prism energy unleashed a shockwave spreading throughout the entirety of the New Yoke dimension and beyond. Shadow fights Sonic with this boost and keeps up with him.
Freelance Police
Dark Dimension residents and items
To get it out of the way, Sam and Max themselves absolutely do not scale to any of the Elder Gods. However, there are arguments to be made for the Cthonic Destroyer to be able to. It’s the ultimate toy and the only one that could actually match their power and even drive them back to the dark dimension. This could also extend to the Devil’s Toybox too, considering the whole purpose of its toys is to keep Junior in check, so he can be assumed to be stronger than this, and generally any other great feat in the series. The overall context for most of these feats will be talked about more in BtV.
The Devil’s Toybox:
Created an entire new reality consisting of a city and a possibly sun
When filled with all the toys, it had enough power to break the borders between the Dark Dimension and our reality, which would’ve destroyed it in the process
Monster Max with just a bit of energy from the dark dimension would’ve blown up majority of the northeastern United States
The explosion itself could be seen from space
Junior’s:
Wailing shattered Pangea (a super-continent from 200 - 335 million years ago that consisted of majority of the world’s landmass)
First steps sunk the proto-civilisation of Subarctica
Power is said to be able to destroy the omniverse
Considering his status as an Elder God, we can assume he’s stronger than a spaceship that pulled a bunch of stars to form a message - (9.16573e+43 Joules)
Weaknesses
Team Chaotix
The Chaotix, while working well together, definitely have their moments of incompetency, butting heads over the best way to complete a task and get paid. The Team Blast, while powerful, requires a long charge time. The tether ring effectively locks 2 of the Chaotix together, never letting them advance too far ahead of each other for fear of being bounced back at high speeds. Finally, the Extreme Gear runs on a supply of air, and without enough of it the Gear will stall.
For more character specific weaknesses, Espio’s camouflage isn’t perfect. Shining light on him or just bumping into him will make him visible again. He’s also shown to easily get upset on insults over his skills, even leading him into failing a stealth mission.
Charmy is also not as much of a fighter as his teammates. Sure he regularly fights badniks, but his capabilities are a lot simpler, relying on flying around and using his stinger.
Freelance Police
A big thing about Sam and Max is that uh, they’re not exactly known for their combat skills. Sure they’ve been into confrontations before and do have a few decent positive showings, but majority of the time said confrontations are very simple in nature and are resolved by outsmarting their opponent rather than just beating them in a head on fight. This also extends back into their items and abilities, as a good majority of them are not suited from combat and really only help with specific scenarios that require solving the case that they’ve been following.
Team Chaotix
The Chaotix, while working well together, definitely have their moments of incompetency, butting heads over the best way to complete a task and get paid. The Team Blast, while powerful, requires a long charge time. The tether ring effectively locks 2 of the Chaotix together, never letting them advance too far ahead of each other for fear of being bounced back at high speeds. Finally, the Extreme Gear runs on a supply of air, and without enough of it the Gear will stall.
For more character specific weaknesses, Espio’s camouflage isn’t perfect. Shining light on him or just bumping into him will make him visible again. He’s also shown to easily get upset on insults over his skills, even leading him into failing a stealth mission.
Charmy is also not as much of a fighter as his teammates. Sure he regularly fights badniks, but his capabilities are a lot simpler, relying on flying around and using his stinger.
Freelance Police
A big thing about Sam and Max is that uh, they’re not exactly known for their combat skills. Sure they’ve been into confrontations before and do have a few decent positive showings, but majority of the time said confrontations are very simple in nature and are resolved by outsmarting their opponent rather than just beating them in a head on fight. This also extends back into their items and abilities, as a good majority of them are not suited from combat and really only help with specific scenarios that require solving the case that they’ve been following.
Before The Verdict
Monster Max
So after defeating Charlie Ho-Tep, Max was exposed to some of the energy from the dark dimension, turning him into a big monster that can spawn flaming Max heads and was eventually gonna blow up part of the US. This obviously isn’t standard, as it was done against his will and only because he was exposed to the Dark Dimension’s energy.
The Big Bang
You might’ve seen this feat talked about a few times, involving the big bang and Mr Featherly. So Sam and Max used the time traveling elevator of T.H.E.M. to travel to the point before the creation of everything. In this void they find the singularity from which the universe will be created and Featherly, which implies he has existed since before the big bang. But once they talk to him we realise that’s not the case. He explains that during filming he was abducted by the Mariachi and was dropped at the beginning of the universe. They also take him away from there before the big bang happens. So yeah, no uni Sam and Max unfortunately.
Dark Dimension hype
So let's talk a bit about the Dark Dimension and its residents. As already established throughout almost the entirety of The Devil's Playhouse, the Elder Gods are a pretty big deal. They've existed long before man came to be, ruling over various dimensions while feeding off the fear of humans (and even feeding on humans at times too). While these gods have never showcased much of their power on screen, there are a few things that we can use to get a general idea of it.
Monster Max: The probably easiest showing would be when Max turned into a giant monster. This was a result of having inhaled just a bit of energy from the Dark Dimension, turning him into an eldritch kaiju that would've blown up most of the northeastern United States. Now obviously this never happened, as his Super Ego was able to teleport him away from the city, but the explosion itself could be seen from space.
This feat is super blatant so it’s valid for scaling.
The Devil's Toybox: Next would be the Devil's Toybox, the thing almost the entire season is centered around. It originally belonged to Yog-Soggoth, but he later on gave it to his grandson, Junior, in order to keep him distracted from destroying everything. This thing is said to have infinite power, could create an entire new reality and more importantly, if filled with all the Toys of Power, could destroy all of existence. When it was filled with all the toys, it had enough power to tear down the walls between the Dark Dimension and ours, which would've destroyed it in the process.
The reality Sammun-Mak created is a bit debatable, but it’s probably valid. Its entirety was fully tangible, so it can be assumed to be more than just changing how the city looked, considering Max could use Rhinoplacy on things specific to that reality. Its size depends on how you view the fact it was a sunny environment, since the main reality was at night time when it was created.
The Toybox being able to destroy the main reality when fusing it with the Dark Dimension is a feat that’s kinda hard to slap a universal label on. It’s true that it is said to be able to destroy all of existence and we can maybe assume Charlie’s ritual would’ve brought Junior immediately into our reality, which for that to happen the 2 dimensions would have to merge. But we still need to jump to conclusions from a vague statement and a feat we never even get to see. It doesn’t help that Charlie’s purpose with it was specifically to break the border between the two worlds, so the destruction of the main reality would’ve probably just happened as a result of that process rather than the Toybox affecting the realities on a universal scale.
The whole thing in general is valid for scaling, it’s just hard to argue for it being universal.
Junior: Lastly, there's Junior himself, said to be the most horrible of the elder gods. His cries upon birth split the super-continent of Pangea and his first steps could destroy entire civilizations. The reason Yog-Soggoth/Dr. Norrington gave him his toys in the first place was in order to keep him from destroying the omniverse. Considering his status and the fact the toybox and its toys are used as a mere distraction for him, there is some basis to assume he'd scale above them.
While the former feats are fine, his “destroying the omniverse” statement has like, nothing else to it aside from just that statement. We never get to see Junior in action or even any Elder God in general. So it’s also inapplicable. But if you were to buy cosmic level Junior, this can be backed up by the Toybox’s statements.
However, you can argue that Junior would scale above the one-off spaceship that was able to pull a bunch of stars to form a message. While the 2 have nothing to do with each other, the idea that a random spaceship that has nothing special to it being more powerful than the eldritch gods that terrorized humanity and whose power is generally hyped up to a cosmic scale is a bit silly, so it’s really not that far fetched to argue a scaling chain between them. Plus, there are quite a few references from Hit the Road in the Telltale games, so it’s clear that at the very least these 2 parts of the series are canon to each other. Overall, this scaling should most likely be valid.
There is one other feat that Junior would probably upscale from, that being the antim-matter bomb General Skun-ka’pe used that was able to destroy the Penal Zone, which is an entire separate dimension. Following similar logic to the spaceship, Junior scaling to the bomb should be valid, but this doesn’t really mean much. The Penal Zone has no exact size and the only area that is shown in game is incredibly small, so this feat is just not that impressive.
Now despite all of this, Sam and Max very much do not physically scale to any of this. There's almost nothing to even entertain the idea of them scaling aside from one feat, which will be talked about in a bit. However, the Cthonic Destroyer should pretty easily scale, as it's the only thing capable of being a threat to the Elder Gods. Afterall, it's the reason why they were driven back to their home dimension long ago. This would mean it should scale to pretty much all of the above mentioned feats, no matter what you buy for them.
There is a moment during the Charlie Ho-Tep and Max psychic fight however, where Charlie turns into the Cthonic Destroyer and shoots Max, with him being able to survive the hit. But this doesn’t really mean anything. Max gets one shot by it and, as we already know, you can get fully destroyed when shapeshifting and you’ll still reform back into your main body, so it’s invalid as a durability feat.
Cosmic Chaotix: Clever or Crackpot?
As a franchise, Sonic has had many instances of feats reaching a more cosmic tier of power. Of course, a heavy amount of scrutiny has been laid upon many of these feats, so do they actually hold up? Let’s go through some of them.
The Emeralds really hate continents: There are a few instances where individual, or all 7, Emeralds have been used to split the planet or moon apart. The most notable, being Sonic Advance 3, where Eggman uses Chaos Control to split the Earth into separate pieces with what appears to be one Chaos Emerald, Sonic Adventure 2 with the “you know what”, and Sonic Unleashed, where Eggman used the negative energy of seven Emeralds to split the planet, and Sonic uses the energy of single Emeralds to put the continents back. These feats generally get about 377 Zettatons (Planet level), up to 7.2 Yottatons (Large Planet level) or 32 Quettatons (Small Star level).
As for scaling, base Sonic tiers have regularly squared up against threats wielding the power of 6 or 7 Emeralds. Most notably, Chaos 6, and Emerl in his Ultimate and pre-Ultimate 7 Emeralds State, and generally the fights are pretty even. Emerl and Chaos also directly get stronger and get more powers as they absorb more Emeralds, so overall they are drawing stats out of the Emeralds directly. As such, it should be fine to scale these feats back to the Chaotix, as many of these threats are largely from the Adventure era, which the Chaotix are still able to match as of Forces due to dispatching clones of threats from that era. This scaling is acceptable.
Hyper-Go-On Black Hole: In the finale of Sonic Colors, Eggman’s amusement park is sucked into a black hole, and Eggman’s Eggmobile, along with Orbot and Cubot, also get sucked in. In the next cutscenes, it’s shown they survived no worse for wear. The power of the black hole averages out to 18.08 FOE, or Large Star Level. An obvious question is, is this a real black hole? And, it’s hard to say. Unlike something like the black hole in Sonic Riders, which was directly formed by a gravitational collapse and sucks in all light, the black holes in Colors are created by aliens using their own energy source, and thus arguably don’t qualify. However, some of the Wisps used to form the black hole are corrupted Cyan Laser Wisps, which allow Sonic to move as a light or laser beam, and the Violet Void, which actually bends space and time. As such, mileage may vary on whether this qualifies as a legitimate black hole, making the feat debatable. However, scaling is acceptable, as multiple entities that base Sonic can defeat, like the Zeti, can bring down and damage the Eggmobile.
Final Egg Blaster: During the climax of Sonic Battle, in an attempt to awaken a Link with Emerl to gain control over him, Eggman fired his Final Egg Blaster, a cannon that was stated by Eggman to have wiped out “all those stars over there!” Importantly, this cannon was NOT powered by the Chaos Emeralds, as they were all stored inside Emerl. Emerl, witnessing this new power, established a Link with the cannon, taking control over it, and aiming it at the planet itself, threatening to fire. Some things to establish:
How strong is the cannon?: At bare minimum, Eggman uses the term “hoshi”, which refers to any light giving celestial body, most commonly planets or stars. The localization chose the word star, and a reliable translator also went with that interpretation, but the series has been somewhat loose with the idea, using both in the context of a single event in a single game. At minimum, this cannon would have had to destroy 2 planets, or 118.88 Zettatons of TNT. On the high end, calculations assuming it wiped out an entire cluster or constellation of stars get to levels of 465 ExaFOE, or Multi-Solar System
Does Emerl scale?: At first glance, it seems fair to say he did. After the cannon fires, guides state that Emerl “captured its greatly gigantic power”, and he surpassed his limits by absorbing too much energy. It’s also important to note what kind of robot Emerl is, one who absorbs not only techniques, but even statistics, from opponents and entities that he forms links with, literally adding them to his own body. We even see after Emerl copies the Egg Blaster, that his overall fighting power and speed have drastically boosted, with Emerl moving faster and hitting harder than at any point in the game prior. Addressing a potential counterargument, while Emerl’s body was breaking down after absorbing the blaster’s energy, this was not due to the energy being too much for his body to contain. Rather, it was a built-in failsafe by Gerald to destroy Emerl should he surpass his limits. Emerl hurting *is* a result of absorbing that power, but he can still use it to its fullest until Sonic beats him down too much. So, it is a fair assumption that Emerl literally absorbed and copied the energy of the Egg Blaster, into himself. With that said, “captured” has a number of potential meanings, and it could merely be referring to how Emerl gained full control over the cannon via his link, thus “capturing” its power. It also does not directly state in the text that Emerl absorbed the entirety of the cannon’s power explicitly.
So, this line of scaling can be considered debatable.
Do future characters scale?: In terms of games explicitly set after Sonic Battle, it is a bit vague. While several guides mention that machines like the Egg Wyvern or the Egg Dragoon are “Eggman’s most terrifying/monstrous creation” or “the pinnacle of Eggman’s mad science”, this is not concrete proof these machines match the raw, destructive power of the Egg Blaster. The Egg Dealer, of all things, does have Eggman reference it as his “strongest” creation yet, but sadly, Shadow the Hedgehog likely comes before Battle, as Shadow makes reference to moving on from Maria and Gerald in Battle, a revelation he came to in Shadow the Hedgehog. Machines like the Egg Nega Wisp and the Lost World EggRobo are referred to as “special”, “invincible”, and having “immeasurable battle power”, which is a little more sound, but still not entirely concrete. Similarly, Infinite is referred to as Eggman’s “ultimate weapon” superseding the need for the Master Emerald. So, there is potential for the later machines to surpass the Egg Blaster, which by contrast is not hyped up by Eggman to the same degree, but still not conclusive.
This scaling is debatable.
Erazor Djinn and Ifrit Golem: As stated by Erazor himself, he has carved away half the pages of the book by the time he is confronted in the Evil Foundry, and he plans on using the Ifrit Golem to burn the rest of the book to nothing. Shahra notes earlier on that Erazor was outright *absorbing* the book’s contents into his being, something we see directly in his first boss fight, where he imbues himself with more words from the book to enhance his size and strength. As explained by Shahra, the words form the very life essence of the entire world, to the point them being removed from the pages was tantamount to the world itself being erased, seen more literally by how Sonic’s first entrance into the world, was via literally walking along the pages and text in the Lost Prologue, progressing further into the world by jumping paragraph by paragraph through. Even in his strongest form, wielding the power to reshape the world itself in the form of the world rings, Erazor’s ultimate attack is throwing the words of book itself directly at Sonic.
So, it’s fairly consistent that Erazor absorbing the words, and Ifrit Golem burning the words and pages, is equivalent to absorbing and destroying the Arabian Nights dimension itself. Buuut there are some things to address:
Erazor also uses the words to create all the djinn enemies in the game: While true, we see in scenes that each enemy corresponds to a few characters/words of the Nights. While the exact amount of words in the Arabian Nights fluctuates based on version, we can get a rough estimate from Richard Burton’s translation, the most complete version of the story. The Burton version has 10 volumes in total originally, with the first volume containing 36 tales and 174,478 words, including the commemoration and glossary. Assuming a similar count for the remaining volumes results in a total of 1,744,478 words, which we’ll drop to 1.7 million to account for removing the introductions. The amount of enemies confronted in the game is roughly 1350, with 177 of those being skeleton pirates that don’t visibly release words on defeat (yes, I counted). Since it’s stated that the Arabian Nights as a whole was disappearing, rather than specifically Sonic’s copy, using the most updated version of the story as of 2007 makes sense. As such, even if about 6,750 of the words in the Nights were not being channeled into Erazor, the amount he would be channeling would still be at least 49.5% of the dimension. This is assuming Erazor didn’t simply re-absorb those words later, as he’s seen visibly absorbing words to amplify himself right before fighting Sonic.
Sonic is required to collect world rings before challenging Erazor: In terms of the game’s progression, Sonic is only required to collect 3 world rings (the one from Skeleton Dome to open the way to the Night Palace, the Aqua Ring from Pirate Storm, and the Red Ring from Ifrit in Evil Foundry), before challenging Erazor’s first form, well after Erazor had carved up half the world. Specifically, the order is to do the first Sand Oasis mission, some other ones in Sand Oasis, then the first dinosaur jungle mission, some others in Dinosaur Jungle, then the first evil foundry mission and escape, then the first few Levitated Ruin missions (without getting the world ring), then defeat Captain Bemoth in Pirate Storm to get the Aqua Ring, defeat Ifrit Golem in Evil Foundry for the Red Ring, then complete all of Skeleton Dome for the White Ring and unlocking the Night Palace, where you can advance to the Erazor fight, and then hit a roadblock requiring the rest of the Rings. We also see that Sonic is capable of confronting and defeating bosses amplified by a single world ring without having rings himself, meaning that Sonic’s base potential is at least ⅓ of the power he used to fight Erazor in the Night Palace.
Sonic needed to weaken the Ifrit Golem to defeat it: While true, Shahra explains this is more a result of Sonic being tied to the flame, and thus being unable to harm another creature of fire, necessitating Sonic quash the flames to change its element. As confirmation, Erazor is referred to as the strongest djinn throughout the game, thus allowing Sonic to scale above the peak Ifrit Golem by the end of the story.
How big is the Arabian Nights?: We see in the game’s introduction that there is a night sky, filled with stars and a moon. One mission in the Night Palace, which is synonymous with a paragraph going off of the Lost Prologue, shows the Night Palace contains an entire pocket dimension space, filled with celestial cosmology, and its own temporal component that can be only manipulated inside of this space. As such, a single building in the Arabian Nights already contains its own dimension that is multi-solar system sized, and the greater Arabian Nights eclipses it severely (There is also a note in the Prima strategy guide that the Night Palace is infinite in size, but this will be excluded). Overall, the Arabian Nights dimension should be at minimum, Multi-Solar System in size, with potential for far higher, up to Universal+ depending on leniency.
Overall, base Sonic being able to fight and defeat Erazor Djinn, amplified by the words (and thus the overall spatial essence) of the Arabian Nights, should allow him, and thus the Chaotix, to downscale the total Arabian Nights cosmology. This would result in a power level of close to 23.27 PetaFOE (⅓ of 49.5% of the power to destroy a pocket dimension with a starry sky, or Multi-Solar System), up to 22.24 YottaFOE (49.5% of ⅓ the mass energy of the universe, or Multi-Galaxy) with sufficient leniency.
There are several other feats besides these, but they are overall more debatable in their legitimacy and require longer explanations, and thus will be elaborated on here.
In Conclusion: There are actually quite a few feats that land in the range of Multi-Solar System to 5x Universal+ for the Chaotix to scale to, and a lot of these are largely fine with some leeway. At the bare minimum, they would be on par with the Eclipse Cannon and its results of 377 Zettatons of TNT.
Scaling to Super Forms: Power
There has been a lot of discourse surrounding the idea of base form Sonic characters being able to grow and evolve to the point of matching their super forms from prior battles. It makes sense on the surface. Sonic carries over a lot of traits of shonen, and one of those is powercreep, the idea that previous foes that required transformations and immense power boosts, can be overcome by weaker forms in later battles. But, let’s go over the main talking points one by one, to see how they pan out.
Every fight that involves base characters getting hit by super form level threats and not dying: To list some examples, Knuckles surviving hits from Super Mecha Sonic, the Eggmobile withstanding being punted by Super Sonic into Ultimate Gemerl hard enough to force open its shell when Super Sonic can’t do it himself, Eggman turning his battle-scarred Eggmobile into a super form tier machine by just adding arms, and Base Sonic surviving being smacked around by Giganto and the Time Eater. I grouped these together because they all share a reason they’re not legitimate in common: Outlier, cutscene induced plot armor, or rings. Rings, as established by Supreme, allow base form characters to survive hits from enemies far beyond their power level, and thus explain away Super Mecha. For Time Eater and Giganto, Sonic can’t hurt these enemies at all, and they are admitted in those cutscenes to actively be going easy on base Sonic, so they are not valid for scaling base Sonic tiers to that level of power.
Phantom Ruby and Master Overlord: These are being grouped together because it’s a very similar concept: A Super form level threat that eventually can be matched by base forms.
With the Phantom Ruby, it was established in Sonic Mania to be able to amplify the Heavy King into the Phantom King, capable of matching Classic Super Sonic and damaging him. Then, in Forces, Base Classic Sonic, along with Base Modern Sonic and the Custom Avatar, match and defeat the Death Egg Robot, powered by an explicitly overclocked version of the Phantom Ruby.
With Master Overlord it’s a similar story. Metal Sonic turns into his super form, proceeds to wreck shop on base Sonic and base Knuckles, gets forced back into base form by Shadow, uses the Master Emerald to power up again (this time with extra biodata from Shadow), and then somehow can be damaged by base forms, despite this supposedly being Metal Sonic’s ultimate form in terms of power.
So, how can this be explained?
At least with Metal Sonic, it can be argued that Master Overlord isn’t invincible, and that’s why it can be damaged, but that doesn’t explain how base form characters can inflict notable damage if they’re supposed to be far weaker. Hell, the Chaotix themselves contribute to harming Master Overlord.
Similarly, the Phantom Ruby goes from being a Super form level threat to being outmatched by base forms within the span of one game, and there’s really no reason given beyond the vague idea that Sonic is “always growing” and evolving. Perhaps it’s a case where not everyone can draw out its full power, since Metal Sonic also was amped by it and lost to base classic Sonic, but that seems strange applied to Eggman who outright overclocked the Ruby.
Ultimately, this can be chalked up as an outlier, but perhaps in the future if more consistency arises for this idea, it can be reevaluated.
On a side note, Metal Overlord could have fallen in this camp, as he gets defeated by Shadow in Shadow Generations without a super form, but Shadow is being amped by Doom Powers throughout the story, so this is more a feat for Doom Shadow. Mephiles and Biolizard, similarly, have either a mutation established in the fight, or were already canonically capable of copying abilities and statistics from the shadows of opponents, which can justify them keeping up with this evolved Doom Shadow. Shadow even admits he has to lower his power level to make a fight between himself and base Sonic fair.
Perfect Chaos: He gets his own category because he sort of falls in between the two. He was a threat that required Sonic to turn Super and use the “full power of the Chaos Emeralds” according to Sonic Channel in his first appearance, proceeds to become a boss that base Sonic can defeat in Generations, has a power struggle with a clone of Chaos 0 in Forces, that same clone is one-shot by classic Sonic, and then post-Forces Sonic admits he would be one-shot in base form by Perfect Chaos before dissipating an army of them as Super Sonic. How does this work?
Well, in Sonic Adventure it’s stated a couple times that Sonic used the Chaos Emeralds to pacify Perfect Chaos. Some have taken this to mean Sonic held back in some regard, an idea reinforced by Sonic X, but this isn’t actually confirmed in the games. Something that is notable, though, is that Perfect Chaos’ brain weak spot is brittle enough that merely touching it causes Perfect Chaos to explode into particles.
This idea gets brought back in Sonic Generations, where the weak spot brain is the only way to harm Perfect Chaos once again. Sonic never actually damages any other part of Chaos’ body, even though he has actual skin this time, and he can only take hits with rings, so this part is somewhat consistent with base Sonic still being weaker than Perfect Chaos.
Base Sonic being weaker than Perfect Chaos continues to be shown in Forces and Otherworld Comedy, where Sonic struggles against a lesser form of Chaos, and then admits he would be vaporized by Perfect Chaos if he was hit directly. And finally, the clones of Perfect Chaos are stated in that story to be lacking qualities from the original, and are made with the Phantom Ruby, which is explicitly dissipated by Super Sonic, so Sonic simply power-nulled weaker clones of Perfect Chaos.
Overall, these stories serve to establish that Perfect Chaos is still above base Sonic, and likely remains comparable to Super Sonic to this day.
“THAT” Infinite statement + miscellaneous Eggman Robot hype: If you know Eggman, he has a tendency to say that his current robot is “his most powerful” or “greatest” creation to date, and sometimes these get repeated by manuals or strategy guides. As an example, the Egg Dealer is referred to as his “strongest creation” after he already made the Super Egg Robot that could fight Super Sonic, the Egg Wyvern is referred to as his “most monstrous mech”, the Egg Dragoon is his “pinnacle of mad science”, the Egg Nega Wisp is referred to as “special and invincible”, the EggRobo in Lost World is stated to have “immeasurable battle power”, etc. Now, Eggman evolving his machines to surpass prior weapons he had that were super form tier isn’t unreasonable, considering Eggman was able to make his Eggmobile relative to super forms after it was beat up in a fight with Sonic earlier by just attaching arms to it. But, for the most part these statements aren’t fully substantiated with direct scaling chains.
Then there’s Infinite. He was built up as a big deal, stated to be Eggman’s ultimate weapon, the Phantom Ruby being stated as potent he “didn’t need the Master Emerald”, a weapon that would pay Sonic back a trillionfold for all Eggman’s prior defeats, and “Sonic’s strongest foe to date” according to promotional material. Yet, despite his performance of beating base Sonic soundly twice, Infinite does still end up losing to base Sonic and the Rookie when both sides are at full power, meaning Base Sonic ends up relative to Infinite. So, does base Sonic scale to his prior super forms?
Well, it’s hard to really justify, since Infinite never actually fights super forms in Forces. There is one caveat, in that a Phantom Ruby clone of Infinite does match Super Shadow in Speed Simulator, a debatably canon title. But, to backscale this to base Sonic would require assuming the statement that all Phantom Ruby clones are equal to the original carries over to Speed Simulator, and the fight using the true Phantom Ruby instead of Infinite’s prototype. Overall there’s too many degrees of separation to say the Infinite in Forces = Infinite’s clone in Speed Simulator, unless you already scaled base Sonic to the true Phantom Ruby in Forces for reasons brought up earlier. So, these statements and upscaling are debatable, but likely inapplicable.
In Conclusion: Aside from two instances, base Sonic tiers are by and large still inferior to Super Sonic level bosses, no matter the era. While the series does have a form of growth and evolution present in some characters, they are still careful to keep the hierarchy between base and Super Sonic intact, and thus the Chaotix scaling to super form level bosses in power is largely an outlier.
Scaling to Super Forms: Speed
This gets its own section because there is a fair bit more nuance. We have instances like Base Knuckles being able to react to Super Mecha Sonic and Super Sonic (even landing his infamous sucker punch on the latter), base Sonic being able to outrun complete Time Eater, Knight’s shield, and a bloodlusted Wyvern, and Eggman and Sage being able to react to attacks from super form level threats to successfully defend against them (the Egg Wizard and Salamander are non-sentient and can’t react themselves, and Knuckles actively runs to intercept an attack from Sage when she was trying to eliminate Sonic). There are a couple of elements that act as wrinkles, though, so let’s address them.
Giant Zavok gets blitzed by Super Sonic: Giant Zavok, in its only other appearance in Lost World, is portrayed as rather slow and lumbering, so the idea of it getting blitzed by a super form is pretty in line.
Base Metal Sonic uses a single Chaos Emerald to outspeed Sonic: In a race the two had during Sonic Channel, a battered Metal was falling behind, so made an ardent wish on the Emerald to be able to beat Sonic in a race. The Emerald granted his wish, and allowed Metal to soar ahead, outpacing Sonic. This does seem rather damning, but it’s important to note that this was specifically a wish on the Emerald, which has similarly responded to wishes in the past to grant boosts to their characters. It’s not the default power of the Super form, as we have seen instances of base forms being able to adapt and keep up with characters in Emerald charged states in other points in time, such as the fight with Emerald Metal in Sonic Mania Adventures, and…
Super Neo Metal: This fight is sort of half and half, half of it is Metal blitzing Sonic and Knuckles before they can react, but there are also panels showing base Sonic being able to have spindash clashes with Super Neo Metal somewhat competently. Importantly, Metal also was stacking Sonic’s data on top of his own at the time, so his speed was equal to Sonic’s speed+more, effectively, and yet Sonic was still able to somewhat keep up.
In Conclusion: Though there are a couple anti-feats, by and large base form characters being able to keep up with super form level speed is a lot more justifiable and consistent than with strength. Your mileage may vary on the topic, however.
The Chaotix Zooming
And since this is Sonic, might as well address the notable speed feats.
Laser feats: The Sonic series has a plethora of these, and while some of them are fine, such as the ones for dodging the Nega Wisp’s cyan laser projectiles or moving in tandem with Hotaru (whose beams come from what are visibly lightbulbs and are called lasers), Beta’s beam is absolutely disqualified for erupting into a giant explosion. Otherwise, the feats get around 27% to 2.88 c.
Egg Destroyer zooms past stars: In the finale of Sonic Rivals, Eggman Nega takes his ship from a meteor processing station to Earth in order to turn it into a card. A calc has arisen trying to determine the ship as moving at massively faster than light speeds due to the parallaxing of stars in the background, and Sonic dodging meteors that can catch up to the ship, but this contradicts the plot of the game. It makes no sense to be light years away from Earth if the goal Eggman Nega had was, turning the Earth into a card. As such, this feat is likely inapplicable.
More parallaxing: Similarly, we have feats for Sonic in Sonic Runners Adventure and Sonic Colors DS of flying past stars to the point they’re a blur, getting values of 16.584 million c and 248.8 million c, respectively. These don’t really have narrative issues, with the Runners Adventure one being applicable to the Chaotix without question, and the Colors DS feat being acceptable if you choose to downscale them from Super Sonic’s speed. That said, in the Runners feat Sonic is using what appears to be his boost, so the actual values for the Chaotix would be 2.1 million c in base, and 8.4 million c with the spindash.
ABIS: There are two potentially massively faster than light speed feats induced by Master Core: ABIS via its gravity control. The first is moving closer to a distant galaxy within minutes, which is about 212.15 billion c. This one, however, fails because it contradicts the narrative. The stakes of this entire sequence are the Earth being sucked in. It makes no sense for Babylon Garden to suddenly be light years away. This feat is inapplicable.
The other potential feat is ABIS creating this entire pocket space within the black hole, and spinning galaxies super fast, which gets about 5.11 trillion c. While this would solve the issue of Babylon Garden’s location, this also runs into the problem of creating a completely inexplicable power for the Master Core being able to make pocket spaces. While there is a potential narrative explanation, being the use of hologram technology like in the Babylon Guardian’s chamber, this makes the feat ultimately non-viable because the galaxies are fake.
Overall, Master Core’s speed feats are largely inapplicable.
Nonaggression Zone: In the finale of Sonic Advance 3, Super Sonic and Eggman fly to a distant zone to combat Ultimate Gemerl. The background is a multicolored space, bearing striking resemblance to a nebula, and traveling this distance to a nebula would result in speeds of around 7.07 billion c. This feat definitely has more merit, with the counterargument being that Gemerl somehow managed to freefall all the way from Nonaggression back to Earth, which would mean a distance of several light years taking this location at face value. While it is truly absurd, it is a fictional game, and thus something that could happen if the writers said it could. That said, this isn’t really a good argument, and similarly it could be argued this background was simply chosen for aesthetic. As such, this feat will be treated as inapplicable.
The Final Egg Blaster: We covered its power level, but the blaster also needed to travel at speeds close to 58 billion c to reach the celestial bodies it destroyed. This power level had some merit to scale to Ultimate Emerl, but speed-wise there is no such chain. However, the Chaos Emeralds being considered the ultimate power source in the universe can justify Super forms scaling to this level of speed. As such, if one chooses to downscale the Chaotix from this tier of characters in terms of speed, this feat is debatable, likely acceptable.
Many of the higher-end speed feats require more elaboration, and will be discussed here.
In conclusion: Without any type of scaling to super form level threats, the highest the Chaotix can feasibly reach in terms of finite speed would be about 8.4 million c, being comparable to Sonic in Sonic Runners. With scaling to super forms and super form level threats, this number shoots up to about 61.92 quadrillion-1.46 quintillion c, with potential for infinite-immeasurable speed with enough leniency.
Espio’s Hyper Mode
In Sonic the Fighters, Espio is able to tap into his own “hyper mode” with the Chaos Emeralds, boosting his speed and giving him new techniques. This form is either accessed with 1 Chaos Emerald in standard vs matches, or all 8 (yes there’s 8) Emeralds in the end of story mode. So, does this mean Espio gets super form scaling?
No.
It’s important to note Espio only gets a speed boost. He doesn’t get any stronger. At most, this would reinforce the idea of a fully-kitted out Chaotix being able to match super form speeds. The form is overall comparable to Metal’s emerald powered form in Sonic Mania Adventures, being a middle ground between base and super forms with slightly better stats (better speed in this case), but not full-on matching super forms in power.
How does Chaotix Recital Work?
According to the Encyclospeedia and the game itself, the trio’s Team Blast is capable of turning enemies into rings. But, does it do this without calculating damage? Or does it require destroying the enemy and then turning them to rings?
Well, the Encyclospeedia and the general smoke effects that appear where enemies used to be after the Recital seem to point to the latter. Not much more to say there, it’s not great for bypassing durability, but it’s very useful for dealing with post-death immortality.
Monster Max
So after defeating Charlie Ho-Tep, Max was exposed to some of the energy from the dark dimension, turning him into a big monster that can spawn flaming Max heads and was eventually gonna blow up part of the US. This obviously isn’t standard, as it was done against his will and only because he was exposed to the Dark Dimension’s energy.
The Big Bang
You might’ve seen this feat talked about a few times, involving the big bang and Mr Featherly. So Sam and Max used the time traveling elevator of T.H.E.M. to travel to the point before the creation of everything. In this void they find the singularity from which the universe will be created and Featherly, which implies he has existed since before the big bang. But once they talk to him we realise that’s not the case. He explains that during filming he was abducted by the Mariachi and was dropped at the beginning of the universe. They also take him away from there before the big bang happens. So yeah, no uni Sam and Max unfortunately.
Dark Dimension hype
So let's talk a bit about the Dark Dimension and its residents. As already established throughout almost the entirety of The Devil's Playhouse, the Elder Gods are a pretty big deal. They've existed long before man came to be, ruling over various dimensions while feeding off the fear of humans (and even feeding on humans at times too). While these gods have never showcased much of their power on screen, there are a few things that we can use to get a general idea of it.
Monster Max: The probably easiest showing would be when Max turned into a giant monster. This was a result of having inhaled just a bit of energy from the Dark Dimension, turning him into an eldritch kaiju that would've blown up most of the northeastern United States. Now obviously this never happened, as his Super Ego was able to teleport him away from the city, but the explosion itself could be seen from space.
This feat is super blatant so it’s valid for scaling.
The Devil's Toybox: Next would be the Devil's Toybox, the thing almost the entire season is centered around. It originally belonged to Yog-Soggoth, but he later on gave it to his grandson, Junior, in order to keep him distracted from destroying everything. This thing is said to have infinite power, could create an entire new reality and more importantly, if filled with all the Toys of Power, could destroy all of existence. When it was filled with all the toys, it had enough power to tear down the walls between the Dark Dimension and ours, which would've destroyed it in the process.
The reality Sammun-Mak created is a bit debatable, but it’s probably valid. Its entirety was fully tangible, so it can be assumed to be more than just changing how the city looked, considering Max could use Rhinoplacy on things specific to that reality. Its size depends on how you view the fact it was a sunny environment, since the main reality was at night time when it was created.
The Toybox being able to destroy the main reality when fusing it with the Dark Dimension is a feat that’s kinda hard to slap a universal label on. It’s true that it is said to be able to destroy all of existence and we can maybe assume Charlie’s ritual would’ve brought Junior immediately into our reality, which for that to happen the 2 dimensions would have to merge. But we still need to jump to conclusions from a vague statement and a feat we never even get to see. It doesn’t help that Charlie’s purpose with it was specifically to break the border between the two worlds, so the destruction of the main reality would’ve probably just happened as a result of that process rather than the Toybox affecting the realities on a universal scale.
The whole thing in general is valid for scaling, it’s just hard to argue for it being universal.
Junior: Lastly, there's Junior himself, said to be the most horrible of the elder gods. His cries upon birth split the super-continent of Pangea and his first steps could destroy entire civilizations. The reason Yog-Soggoth/Dr. Norrington gave him his toys in the first place was in order to keep him from destroying the omniverse. Considering his status and the fact the toybox and its toys are used as a mere distraction for him, there is some basis to assume he'd scale above them.
While the former feats are fine, his “destroying the omniverse” statement has like, nothing else to it aside from just that statement. We never get to see Junior in action or even any Elder God in general. So it’s also inapplicable. But if you were to buy cosmic level Junior, this can be backed up by the Toybox’s statements.
However, you can argue that Junior would scale above the one-off spaceship that was able to pull a bunch of stars to form a message. While the 2 have nothing to do with each other, the idea that a random spaceship that has nothing special to it being more powerful than the eldritch gods that terrorized humanity and whose power is generally hyped up to a cosmic scale is a bit silly, so it’s really not that far fetched to argue a scaling chain between them. Plus, there are quite a few references from Hit the Road in the Telltale games, so it’s clear that at the very least these 2 parts of the series are canon to each other. Overall, this scaling should most likely be valid.
There is one other feat that Junior would probably upscale from, that being the antim-matter bomb General Skun-ka’pe used that was able to destroy the Penal Zone, which is an entire separate dimension. Following similar logic to the spaceship, Junior scaling to the bomb should be valid, but this doesn’t really mean much. The Penal Zone has no exact size and the only area that is shown in game is incredibly small, so this feat is just not that impressive.
Now despite all of this, Sam and Max very much do not physically scale to any of this. There's almost nothing to even entertain the idea of them scaling aside from one feat, which will be talked about in a bit. However, the Cthonic Destroyer should pretty easily scale, as it's the only thing capable of being a threat to the Elder Gods. Afterall, it's the reason why they were driven back to their home dimension long ago. This would mean it should scale to pretty much all of the above mentioned feats, no matter what you buy for them.
There is a moment during the Charlie Ho-Tep and Max psychic fight however, where Charlie turns into the Cthonic Destroyer and shoots Max, with him being able to survive the hit. But this doesn’t really mean anything. Max gets one shot by it and, as we already know, you can get fully destroyed when shapeshifting and you’ll still reform back into your main body, so it’s invalid as a durability feat.
Cosmic Chaotix: Clever or Crackpot?
As a franchise, Sonic has had many instances of feats reaching a more cosmic tier of power. Of course, a heavy amount of scrutiny has been laid upon many of these feats, so do they actually hold up? Let’s go through some of them.
The Emeralds really hate continents: There are a few instances where individual, or all 7, Emeralds have been used to split the planet or moon apart. The most notable, being Sonic Advance 3, where Eggman uses Chaos Control to split the Earth into separate pieces with what appears to be one Chaos Emerald, Sonic Adventure 2 with the “you know what”, and Sonic Unleashed, where Eggman used the negative energy of seven Emeralds to split the planet, and Sonic uses the energy of single Emeralds to put the continents back. These feats generally get about 377 Zettatons (Planet level), up to 7.2 Yottatons (Large Planet level) or 32 Quettatons (Small Star level).
As for scaling, base Sonic tiers have regularly squared up against threats wielding the power of 6 or 7 Emeralds. Most notably, Chaos 6, and Emerl in his Ultimate and pre-Ultimate 7 Emeralds State, and generally the fights are pretty even. Emerl and Chaos also directly get stronger and get more powers as they absorb more Emeralds, so overall they are drawing stats out of the Emeralds directly. As such, it should be fine to scale these feats back to the Chaotix, as many of these threats are largely from the Adventure era, which the Chaotix are still able to match as of Forces due to dispatching clones of threats from that era. This scaling is acceptable.
Hyper-Go-On Black Hole: In the finale of Sonic Colors, Eggman’s amusement park is sucked into a black hole, and Eggman’s Eggmobile, along with Orbot and Cubot, also get sucked in. In the next cutscenes, it’s shown they survived no worse for wear. The power of the black hole averages out to 18.08 FOE, or Large Star Level. An obvious question is, is this a real black hole? And, it’s hard to say. Unlike something like the black hole in Sonic Riders, which was directly formed by a gravitational collapse and sucks in all light, the black holes in Colors are created by aliens using their own energy source, and thus arguably don’t qualify. However, some of the Wisps used to form the black hole are corrupted Cyan Laser Wisps, which allow Sonic to move as a light or laser beam, and the Violet Void, which actually bends space and time. As such, mileage may vary on whether this qualifies as a legitimate black hole, making the feat debatable. However, scaling is acceptable, as multiple entities that base Sonic can defeat, like the Zeti, can bring down and damage the Eggmobile.
Final Egg Blaster: During the climax of Sonic Battle, in an attempt to awaken a Link with Emerl to gain control over him, Eggman fired his Final Egg Blaster, a cannon that was stated by Eggman to have wiped out “all those stars over there!” Importantly, this cannon was NOT powered by the Chaos Emeralds, as they were all stored inside Emerl. Emerl, witnessing this new power, established a Link with the cannon, taking control over it, and aiming it at the planet itself, threatening to fire. Some things to establish:
How strong is the cannon?: At bare minimum, Eggman uses the term “hoshi”, which refers to any light giving celestial body, most commonly planets or stars. The localization chose the word star, and a reliable translator also went with that interpretation, but the series has been somewhat loose with the idea, using both in the context of a single event in a single game. At minimum, this cannon would have had to destroy 2 planets, or 118.88 Zettatons of TNT. On the high end, calculations assuming it wiped out an entire cluster or constellation of stars get to levels of 465 ExaFOE, or Multi-Solar System
Does Emerl scale?: At first glance, it seems fair to say he did. After the cannon fires, guides state that Emerl “captured its greatly gigantic power”, and he surpassed his limits by absorbing too much energy. It’s also important to note what kind of robot Emerl is, one who absorbs not only techniques, but even statistics, from opponents and entities that he forms links with, literally adding them to his own body. We even see after Emerl copies the Egg Blaster, that his overall fighting power and speed have drastically boosted, with Emerl moving faster and hitting harder than at any point in the game prior. Addressing a potential counterargument, while Emerl’s body was breaking down after absorbing the blaster’s energy, this was not due to the energy being too much for his body to contain. Rather, it was a built-in failsafe by Gerald to destroy Emerl should he surpass his limits. Emerl hurting *is* a result of absorbing that power, but he can still use it to its fullest until Sonic beats him down too much. So, it is a fair assumption that Emerl literally absorbed and copied the energy of the Egg Blaster, into himself. With that said, “captured” has a number of potential meanings, and it could merely be referring to how Emerl gained full control over the cannon via his link, thus “capturing” its power. It also does not directly state in the text that Emerl absorbed the entirety of the cannon’s power explicitly.
So, this line of scaling can be considered debatable.
Do future characters scale?: In terms of games explicitly set after Sonic Battle, it is a bit vague. While several guides mention that machines like the Egg Wyvern or the Egg Dragoon are “Eggman’s most terrifying/monstrous creation” or “the pinnacle of Eggman’s mad science”, this is not concrete proof these machines match the raw, destructive power of the Egg Blaster. The Egg Dealer, of all things, does have Eggman reference it as his “strongest” creation yet, but sadly, Shadow the Hedgehog likely comes before Battle, as Shadow makes reference to moving on from Maria and Gerald in Battle, a revelation he came to in Shadow the Hedgehog. Machines like the Egg Nega Wisp and the Lost World EggRobo are referred to as “special”, “invincible”, and having “immeasurable battle power”, which is a little more sound, but still not entirely concrete. Similarly, Infinite is referred to as Eggman’s “ultimate weapon” superseding the need for the Master Emerald. So, there is potential for the later machines to surpass the Egg Blaster, which by contrast is not hyped up by Eggman to the same degree, but still not conclusive.
This scaling is debatable.
Erazor Djinn and Ifrit Golem: As stated by Erazor himself, he has carved away half the pages of the book by the time he is confronted in the Evil Foundry, and he plans on using the Ifrit Golem to burn the rest of the book to nothing. Shahra notes earlier on that Erazor was outright *absorbing* the book’s contents into his being, something we see directly in his first boss fight, where he imbues himself with more words from the book to enhance his size and strength. As explained by Shahra, the words form the very life essence of the entire world, to the point them being removed from the pages was tantamount to the world itself being erased, seen more literally by how Sonic’s first entrance into the world, was via literally walking along the pages and text in the Lost Prologue, progressing further into the world by jumping paragraph by paragraph through. Even in his strongest form, wielding the power to reshape the world itself in the form of the world rings, Erazor’s ultimate attack is throwing the words of book itself directly at Sonic.
So, it’s fairly consistent that Erazor absorbing the words, and Ifrit Golem burning the words and pages, is equivalent to absorbing and destroying the Arabian Nights dimension itself. Buuut there are some things to address:
Erazor also uses the words to create all the djinn enemies in the game: While true, we see in scenes that each enemy corresponds to a few characters/words of the Nights. While the exact amount of words in the Arabian Nights fluctuates based on version, we can get a rough estimate from Richard Burton’s translation, the most complete version of the story. The Burton version has 10 volumes in total originally, with the first volume containing 36 tales and 174,478 words, including the commemoration and glossary. Assuming a similar count for the remaining volumes results in a total of 1,744,478 words, which we’ll drop to 1.7 million to account for removing the introductions. The amount of enemies confronted in the game is roughly 1350, with 177 of those being skeleton pirates that don’t visibly release words on defeat (yes, I counted). Since it’s stated that the Arabian Nights as a whole was disappearing, rather than specifically Sonic’s copy, using the most updated version of the story as of 2007 makes sense. As such, even if about 6,750 of the words in the Nights were not being channeled into Erazor, the amount he would be channeling would still be at least 49.5% of the dimension. This is assuming Erazor didn’t simply re-absorb those words later, as he’s seen visibly absorbing words to amplify himself right before fighting Sonic.
Sonic is required to collect world rings before challenging Erazor: In terms of the game’s progression, Sonic is only required to collect 3 world rings (the one from Skeleton Dome to open the way to the Night Palace, the Aqua Ring from Pirate Storm, and the Red Ring from Ifrit in Evil Foundry), before challenging Erazor’s first form, well after Erazor had carved up half the world. Specifically, the order is to do the first Sand Oasis mission, some other ones in Sand Oasis, then the first dinosaur jungle mission, some others in Dinosaur Jungle, then the first evil foundry mission and escape, then the first few Levitated Ruin missions (without getting the world ring), then defeat Captain Bemoth in Pirate Storm to get the Aqua Ring, defeat Ifrit Golem in Evil Foundry for the Red Ring, then complete all of Skeleton Dome for the White Ring and unlocking the Night Palace, where you can advance to the Erazor fight, and then hit a roadblock requiring the rest of the Rings. We also see that Sonic is capable of confronting and defeating bosses amplified by a single world ring without having rings himself, meaning that Sonic’s base potential is at least ⅓ of the power he used to fight Erazor in the Night Palace.
Sonic needed to weaken the Ifrit Golem to defeat it: While true, Shahra explains this is more a result of Sonic being tied to the flame, and thus being unable to harm another creature of fire, necessitating Sonic quash the flames to change its element. As confirmation, Erazor is referred to as the strongest djinn throughout the game, thus allowing Sonic to scale above the peak Ifrit Golem by the end of the story.
How big is the Arabian Nights?: We see in the game’s introduction that there is a night sky, filled with stars and a moon. One mission in the Night Palace, which is synonymous with a paragraph going off of the Lost Prologue, shows the Night Palace contains an entire pocket dimension space, filled with celestial cosmology, and its own temporal component that can be only manipulated inside of this space. As such, a single building in the Arabian Nights already contains its own dimension that is multi-solar system sized, and the greater Arabian Nights eclipses it severely (There is also a note in the Prima strategy guide that the Night Palace is infinite in size, but this will be excluded). Overall, the Arabian Nights dimension should be at minimum, Multi-Solar System in size, with potential for far higher, up to Universal+ depending on leniency.
Overall, base Sonic being able to fight and defeat Erazor Djinn, amplified by the words (and thus the overall spatial essence) of the Arabian Nights, should allow him, and thus the Chaotix, to downscale the total Arabian Nights cosmology. This would result in a power level of close to 23.27 PetaFOE (⅓ of 49.5% of the power to destroy a pocket dimension with a starry sky, or Multi-Solar System), up to 22.24 YottaFOE (49.5% of ⅓ the mass energy of the universe, or Multi-Galaxy) with sufficient leniency.
There are several other feats besides these, but they are overall more debatable in their legitimacy and require longer explanations, and thus will be elaborated on here.
In Conclusion: There are actually quite a few feats that land in the range of Multi-Solar System to 5x Universal+ for the Chaotix to scale to, and a lot of these are largely fine with some leeway. At the bare minimum, they would be on par with the Eclipse Cannon and its results of 377 Zettatons of TNT.
Scaling to Super Forms: Power
There has been a lot of discourse surrounding the idea of base form Sonic characters being able to grow and evolve to the point of matching their super forms from prior battles. It makes sense on the surface. Sonic carries over a lot of traits of shonen, and one of those is powercreep, the idea that previous foes that required transformations and immense power boosts, can be overcome by weaker forms in later battles. But, let’s go over the main talking points one by one, to see how they pan out.
Every fight that involves base characters getting hit by super form level threats and not dying: To list some examples, Knuckles surviving hits from Super Mecha Sonic, the Eggmobile withstanding being punted by Super Sonic into Ultimate Gemerl hard enough to force open its shell when Super Sonic can’t do it himself, Eggman turning his battle-scarred Eggmobile into a super form tier machine by just adding arms, and Base Sonic surviving being smacked around by Giganto and the Time Eater. I grouped these together because they all share a reason they’re not legitimate in common: Outlier, cutscene induced plot armor, or rings. Rings, as established by Supreme, allow base form characters to survive hits from enemies far beyond their power level, and thus explain away Super Mecha. For Time Eater and Giganto, Sonic can’t hurt these enemies at all, and they are admitted in those cutscenes to actively be going easy on base Sonic, so they are not valid for scaling base Sonic tiers to that level of power.
Phantom Ruby and Master Overlord: These are being grouped together because it’s a very similar concept: A Super form level threat that eventually can be matched by base forms.
With the Phantom Ruby, it was established in Sonic Mania to be able to amplify the Heavy King into the Phantom King, capable of matching Classic Super Sonic and damaging him. Then, in Forces, Base Classic Sonic, along with Base Modern Sonic and the Custom Avatar, match and defeat the Death Egg Robot, powered by an explicitly overclocked version of the Phantom Ruby.
With Master Overlord it’s a similar story. Metal Sonic turns into his super form, proceeds to wreck shop on base Sonic and base Knuckles, gets forced back into base form by Shadow, uses the Master Emerald to power up again (this time with extra biodata from Shadow), and then somehow can be damaged by base forms, despite this supposedly being Metal Sonic’s ultimate form in terms of power.
So, how can this be explained?
At least with Metal Sonic, it can be argued that Master Overlord isn’t invincible, and that’s why it can be damaged, but that doesn’t explain how base form characters can inflict notable damage if they’re supposed to be far weaker. Hell, the Chaotix themselves contribute to harming Master Overlord.
Similarly, the Phantom Ruby goes from being a Super form level threat to being outmatched by base forms within the span of one game, and there’s really no reason given beyond the vague idea that Sonic is “always growing” and evolving. Perhaps it’s a case where not everyone can draw out its full power, since Metal Sonic also was amped by it and lost to base classic Sonic, but that seems strange applied to Eggman who outright overclocked the Ruby.
Ultimately, this can be chalked up as an outlier, but perhaps in the future if more consistency arises for this idea, it can be reevaluated.
On a side note, Metal Overlord could have fallen in this camp, as he gets defeated by Shadow in Shadow Generations without a super form, but Shadow is being amped by Doom Powers throughout the story, so this is more a feat for Doom Shadow. Mephiles and Biolizard, similarly, have either a mutation established in the fight, or were already canonically capable of copying abilities and statistics from the shadows of opponents, which can justify them keeping up with this evolved Doom Shadow. Shadow even admits he has to lower his power level to make a fight between himself and base Sonic fair.
Perfect Chaos: He gets his own category because he sort of falls in between the two. He was a threat that required Sonic to turn Super and use the “full power of the Chaos Emeralds” according to Sonic Channel in his first appearance, proceeds to become a boss that base Sonic can defeat in Generations, has a power struggle with a clone of Chaos 0 in Forces, that same clone is one-shot by classic Sonic, and then post-Forces Sonic admits he would be one-shot in base form by Perfect Chaos before dissipating an army of them as Super Sonic. How does this work?
Well, in Sonic Adventure it’s stated a couple times that Sonic used the Chaos Emeralds to pacify Perfect Chaos. Some have taken this to mean Sonic held back in some regard, an idea reinforced by Sonic X, but this isn’t actually confirmed in the games. Something that is notable, though, is that Perfect Chaos’ brain weak spot is brittle enough that merely touching it causes Perfect Chaos to explode into particles.
This idea gets brought back in Sonic Generations, where the weak spot brain is the only way to harm Perfect Chaos once again. Sonic never actually damages any other part of Chaos’ body, even though he has actual skin this time, and he can only take hits with rings, so this part is somewhat consistent with base Sonic still being weaker than Perfect Chaos.
Base Sonic being weaker than Perfect Chaos continues to be shown in Forces and Otherworld Comedy, where Sonic struggles against a lesser form of Chaos, and then admits he would be vaporized by Perfect Chaos if he was hit directly. And finally, the clones of Perfect Chaos are stated in that story to be lacking qualities from the original, and are made with the Phantom Ruby, which is explicitly dissipated by Super Sonic, so Sonic simply power-nulled weaker clones of Perfect Chaos.
Overall, these stories serve to establish that Perfect Chaos is still above base Sonic, and likely remains comparable to Super Sonic to this day.
“THAT” Infinite statement + miscellaneous Eggman Robot hype: If you know Eggman, he has a tendency to say that his current robot is “his most powerful” or “greatest” creation to date, and sometimes these get repeated by manuals or strategy guides. As an example, the Egg Dealer is referred to as his “strongest creation” after he already made the Super Egg Robot that could fight Super Sonic, the Egg Wyvern is referred to as his “most monstrous mech”, the Egg Dragoon is his “pinnacle of mad science”, the Egg Nega Wisp is referred to as “special and invincible”, the EggRobo in Lost World is stated to have “immeasurable battle power”, etc. Now, Eggman evolving his machines to surpass prior weapons he had that were super form tier isn’t unreasonable, considering Eggman was able to make his Eggmobile relative to super forms after it was beat up in a fight with Sonic earlier by just attaching arms to it. But, for the most part these statements aren’t fully substantiated with direct scaling chains.
Then there’s Infinite. He was built up as a big deal, stated to be Eggman’s ultimate weapon, the Phantom Ruby being stated as potent he “didn’t need the Master Emerald”, a weapon that would pay Sonic back a trillionfold for all Eggman’s prior defeats, and “Sonic’s strongest foe to date” according to promotional material. Yet, despite his performance of beating base Sonic soundly twice, Infinite does still end up losing to base Sonic and the Rookie when both sides are at full power, meaning Base Sonic ends up relative to Infinite. So, does base Sonic scale to his prior super forms?
Well, it’s hard to really justify, since Infinite never actually fights super forms in Forces. There is one caveat, in that a Phantom Ruby clone of Infinite does match Super Shadow in Speed Simulator, a debatably canon title. But, to backscale this to base Sonic would require assuming the statement that all Phantom Ruby clones are equal to the original carries over to Speed Simulator, and the fight using the true Phantom Ruby instead of Infinite’s prototype. Overall there’s too many degrees of separation to say the Infinite in Forces = Infinite’s clone in Speed Simulator, unless you already scaled base Sonic to the true Phantom Ruby in Forces for reasons brought up earlier. So, these statements and upscaling are debatable, but likely inapplicable.
In Conclusion: Aside from two instances, base Sonic tiers are by and large still inferior to Super Sonic level bosses, no matter the era. While the series does have a form of growth and evolution present in some characters, they are still careful to keep the hierarchy between base and Super Sonic intact, and thus the Chaotix scaling to super form level bosses in power is largely an outlier.
Scaling to Super Forms: Speed
This gets its own section because there is a fair bit more nuance. We have instances like Base Knuckles being able to react to Super Mecha Sonic and Super Sonic (even landing his infamous sucker punch on the latter), base Sonic being able to outrun complete Time Eater, Knight’s shield, and a bloodlusted Wyvern, and Eggman and Sage being able to react to attacks from super form level threats to successfully defend against them (the Egg Wizard and Salamander are non-sentient and can’t react themselves, and Knuckles actively runs to intercept an attack from Sage when she was trying to eliminate Sonic). There are a couple of elements that act as wrinkles, though, so let’s address them.
Giant Zavok gets blitzed by Super Sonic: Giant Zavok, in its only other appearance in Lost World, is portrayed as rather slow and lumbering, so the idea of it getting blitzed by a super form is pretty in line.
Base Metal Sonic uses a single Chaos Emerald to outspeed Sonic: In a race the two had during Sonic Channel, a battered Metal was falling behind, so made an ardent wish on the Emerald to be able to beat Sonic in a race. The Emerald granted his wish, and allowed Metal to soar ahead, outpacing Sonic. This does seem rather damning, but it’s important to note that this was specifically a wish on the Emerald, which has similarly responded to wishes in the past to grant boosts to their characters. It’s not the default power of the Super form, as we have seen instances of base forms being able to adapt and keep up with characters in Emerald charged states in other points in time, such as the fight with Emerald Metal in Sonic Mania Adventures, and…
Super Neo Metal: This fight is sort of half and half, half of it is Metal blitzing Sonic and Knuckles before they can react, but there are also panels showing base Sonic being able to have spindash clashes with Super Neo Metal somewhat competently. Importantly, Metal also was stacking Sonic’s data on top of his own at the time, so his speed was equal to Sonic’s speed+more, effectively, and yet Sonic was still able to somewhat keep up.
In Conclusion: Though there are a couple anti-feats, by and large base form characters being able to keep up with super form level speed is a lot more justifiable and consistent than with strength. Your mileage may vary on the topic, however.
The Chaotix Zooming
And since this is Sonic, might as well address the notable speed feats.
Laser feats: The Sonic series has a plethora of these, and while some of them are fine, such as the ones for dodging the Nega Wisp’s cyan laser projectiles or moving in tandem with Hotaru (whose beams come from what are visibly lightbulbs and are called lasers), Beta’s beam is absolutely disqualified for erupting into a giant explosion. Otherwise, the feats get around 27% to 2.88 c.
Egg Destroyer zooms past stars: In the finale of Sonic Rivals, Eggman Nega takes his ship from a meteor processing station to Earth in order to turn it into a card. A calc has arisen trying to determine the ship as moving at massively faster than light speeds due to the parallaxing of stars in the background, and Sonic dodging meteors that can catch up to the ship, but this contradicts the plot of the game. It makes no sense to be light years away from Earth if the goal Eggman Nega had was, turning the Earth into a card. As such, this feat is likely inapplicable.
More parallaxing: Similarly, we have feats for Sonic in Sonic Runners Adventure and Sonic Colors DS of flying past stars to the point they’re a blur, getting values of 16.584 million c and 248.8 million c, respectively. These don’t really have narrative issues, with the Runners Adventure one being applicable to the Chaotix without question, and the Colors DS feat being acceptable if you choose to downscale them from Super Sonic’s speed. That said, in the Runners feat Sonic is using what appears to be his boost, so the actual values for the Chaotix would be 2.1 million c in base, and 8.4 million c with the spindash.
ABIS: There are two potentially massively faster than light speed feats induced by Master Core: ABIS via its gravity control. The first is moving closer to a distant galaxy within minutes, which is about 212.15 billion c. This one, however, fails because it contradicts the narrative. The stakes of this entire sequence are the Earth being sucked in. It makes no sense for Babylon Garden to suddenly be light years away. This feat is inapplicable.
The other potential feat is ABIS creating this entire pocket space within the black hole, and spinning galaxies super fast, which gets about 5.11 trillion c. While this would solve the issue of Babylon Garden’s location, this also runs into the problem of creating a completely inexplicable power for the Master Core being able to make pocket spaces. While there is a potential narrative explanation, being the use of hologram technology like in the Babylon Guardian’s chamber, this makes the feat ultimately non-viable because the galaxies are fake.
Overall, Master Core’s speed feats are largely inapplicable.
Nonaggression Zone: In the finale of Sonic Advance 3, Super Sonic and Eggman fly to a distant zone to combat Ultimate Gemerl. The background is a multicolored space, bearing striking resemblance to a nebula, and traveling this distance to a nebula would result in speeds of around 7.07 billion c. This feat definitely has more merit, with the counterargument being that Gemerl somehow managed to freefall all the way from Nonaggression back to Earth, which would mean a distance of several light years taking this location at face value. While it is truly absurd, it is a fictional game, and thus something that could happen if the writers said it could. That said, this isn’t really a good argument, and similarly it could be argued this background was simply chosen for aesthetic. As such, this feat will be treated as inapplicable.
The Final Egg Blaster: We covered its power level, but the blaster also needed to travel at speeds close to 58 billion c to reach the celestial bodies it destroyed. This power level had some merit to scale to Ultimate Emerl, but speed-wise there is no such chain. However, the Chaos Emeralds being considered the ultimate power source in the universe can justify Super forms scaling to this level of speed. As such, if one chooses to downscale the Chaotix from this tier of characters in terms of speed, this feat is debatable, likely acceptable.
Many of the higher-end speed feats require more elaboration, and will be discussed here.
In conclusion: Without any type of scaling to super form level threats, the highest the Chaotix can feasibly reach in terms of finite speed would be about 8.4 million c, being comparable to Sonic in Sonic Runners. With scaling to super forms and super form level threats, this number shoots up to about 61.92 quadrillion-1.46 quintillion c, with potential for infinite-immeasurable speed with enough leniency.
Espio’s Hyper Mode
In Sonic the Fighters, Espio is able to tap into his own “hyper mode” with the Chaos Emeralds, boosting his speed and giving him new techniques. This form is either accessed with 1 Chaos Emerald in standard vs matches, or all 8 (yes there’s 8) Emeralds in the end of story mode. So, does this mean Espio gets super form scaling?
No.
It’s important to note Espio only gets a speed boost. He doesn’t get any stronger. At most, this would reinforce the idea of a fully-kitted out Chaotix being able to match super form speeds. The form is overall comparable to Metal’s emerald powered form in Sonic Mania Adventures, being a middle ground between base and super forms with slightly better stats (better speed in this case), but not full-on matching super forms in power.
How does Chaotix Recital Work?
According to the Encyclospeedia and the game itself, the trio’s Team Blast is capable of turning enemies into rings. But, does it do this without calculating damage? Or does it require destroying the enemy and then turning them to rings?
Well, the Encyclospeedia and the general smoke effects that appear where enemies used to be after the Recital seem to point to the latter. Not much more to say there, it’s not great for bypassing durability, but it’s very useful for dealing with post-death immortality.
Verdict
Stats
The matter of stats is a fairly straightforward topic to go through. Sam and Max have a few low scale stuff, like Sam breaking bones and Max surviving explosions. But then we also have crazier stuff, like Sam burping hard enough to fix the entire ozone layer. But their best feat by far would be when they survived getting blasted by Lactose the Intolerant's beams, which could destroy entire planets. Now their exact size is unknown, but if we used earth’s size as a basis, that gets it up to 1.24 Quettatons of TNT. Assuming they’re earth sized shouldn’t be an issue, since he was gonna destroy earth anyways if Sam and Max hadn’t stopped him.
The Chaotix are a lot more impressive on average, with Vector being able to shatter entire stone floors and even Charmy being able to smash through Badniks. But obviously, they can still scale higher. They have kept up with other characters numerous times in games like Fighters, Heroes, Rivals 2 etc. This is important, as said characters have squared up with others utilising the power of the emeralds. This wouldn’t obviously put them on a level of a super form, but they’d be able to scale to a few feats that the emeralds themselves have performed. This is usually Eggman using them as a power source to fuel some of his machines, which can piss on the moon, shatter the earth into pieces or even pierce through stars. These range from 377 Zettatons all the way to 32 Quettatons. This would make them around 25x stronger than Sam and Max’s best feat, enough of a gap to take the strength advantage.
However, this isn’t the highest the Freelance Police can reach. We still have the Cthonic Destroyer we need to talk about. This is by far their strongest weapon, as it is able to threaten the likes of the Elder Gods. Considering the way their power is hyped up throughout the game, we can reasonably put them above the random Moleman spaceship that could pull 161 stars to form a message. This would put the toy at 9.16573e+43 Joules, well above the Eclipse Canon piercing through stars.
Impressive, but the Chaotix can still scale higher. The Eggmobile was able to survive getting sucked into a black hole at the end of Colors (18.08 FOE) and the Final Egg Blaster was able to destroy a star system in Battle (465 ExaFOE). Now these feats get that high depending on your interpretation (assuming the former was a real black hole and the latter assuming it actually destroyed an entire star system), but if we need something more solid, we can look at base Sonic being able to defeat Erazor Djinn. Erazor’s power was amplified by the words of the Arabian Nights, which ranges to 23.27 PetaFOE - 22.24 YottaFOE depending on how you view the size of its world. This would put them way above even the Cthonic Destroyer and just outright make the gap in strength even bigger
Now there are some things that could put the Cthonic Destroyer even higher. Charlie Hotep was gonna use the Devil’s Toybox to destroy the borders between the Dark Dimension and the main one. The Toybox itself is said to be strong enough to destroy existence, which would back up the “omniverse destroying power” stated for Junior. Now this line of scaling requires a lot of assumptions, based on just 2 statements and a feat that we never even saw happen. But let’s assume Charlie’s plan was instant, and hell let’s even assume the Dark Dimension is also universe sized and that the Toybox was just gonna fuse the two together through sheer power. This would put the Cthonic Destroyer’s power to baseline universal or even 2x uni, well above Erazor Djinn’s own power.
But if we did that, we can get just as generous with the Chaotix. Sonic surviving the Paradox Prism blowing up in his face can get up to 5x universal, which would be acceptable with equal leeway to the Toybox’s power. This would make the gap between the Chaotix and the psychic toy much smaller, but still not enough to one shot them.
Why don’t we get even more generous for Sam and Max though? Let’s assume the Cthonic Destroyer is just universal and that the Chaotix don’t get even higher than 32 Quettatons. Well that would still not help them when we look at the topic of speed.
Sam and Max’s best would be being able to drive the DeSoto to the moon and back in seconds, which gets up to 0.4274c. While the trip itself wasn’t crazy enough to have them reacting to anything, the DeSoto wasn’t using any kind of enhancement for its speed. They always drive around with it, so it would scale normally to their reaction speed just fine.
Pretty good, but the Sonic series has been light speed ever since the classics. Just the lower end feats are enough for them, whether it’s Sonic and Knuckles dodging lasers (5.64 - 7.79c) or Shadow maneuvering through the light speed circuits in Digital Circus Circuit (7.87c). But the reasonable best we can put the Chaotix at would be 2.1 million c from Sonic zooming past stars in Runners.
So not only do lower end feats already get them over 10x faster than Sam and Max’s best, but their own best would create a ludicrous speed gap between them.
This means even if the Cthonic Destroyer scaled above them, Sam and Max would never get a chance to land it anyways. And keep in mind, Sam and Max don’t scale to the toy, so the detective agency still has them beat in physicals.
Thus, Team Chaotix takes stats with ease.
Arsenal
The topic of who has the overall better gear is honestly pretty interesting. The Chaotix’s standard gear would be Espio’s ninja equipment like shurikens, kunai and smokebombs, Vector’s bubble gum which he can use to float and the team’s helicopter (or car) as their mode of transportation. But being video game characters, they also get access to various items that can make them faster, change their size, create shields, mess with controls, make them invincible, grant them homing projectiles, get rid of items and just all the different applications the wisps give them. And of course, they wouldn’t be Sonic characters if they didn’t carry around rings, which can protect them from most forms of damage as long as they have at least one on them.
Thanks to being in racing games, they also get access to various vehicles, all with their different modes and being freely customisable. The gadgets themselves just add a lot of different options, be it providing rings in various ways, recovering from damage faster or even protecting them from damage.
Whether they should have the emeralds is a weird topic, but Espio needs only one to turn into Hype Mode, which they have obtained on occasion. This really only gives him access to a few special moves and a speed boost, but since they’re already that much faster, they’re not really needed here.
Sam and Max on the other hand, always carry around their pistols and drive around in their iconic DeSoto. This car can survive getting blown up all the way to the moon, can fly in space and is equipped with missiles. But they generally can pull out a lot of different weapons. Revolvers, knives, axes, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, various explosives, hammers and more. But all of this is honestly pretty mundane in comparison to what the Chaotix bring on the table.
Some of their more wild stuff is not much better either. The tear gas is just onions, which means it’s only used as a means of temporarily blinding someone before knocking them out. The voice modulator, listening device and the C.O.P.s. offer basically no offensive means, the soul mater can only be useful in any way if they, well, kill their opponent, and the talismans are essentially useless aside from being mildly annoying and the telekinesis they offer is situational and pretty weak. This applies to a lot more, but there are a few very useful options. Their elevator and watch offer ways to travel through time, the Christmas spirits can turn others into jell-o, they have access to a handful of robots or even their own mech, can trap you in the penal zone and we can’t forget the Devil’s Toybox of course.
But some of these are just not as useful as they might seem. Their mech isn’t anything crazy, as the Chaotix have fought giant opponents in the past (Metal Sonic Kai, Metal Overlord and Master Overlord for example). In order to trap any of them in the Penal Zone they’d have to put the badge on one member of the trio without looking and would have to find a way to have all three of them next to each other if they want to trap all of them, especially since it can only be used once. The dimensional rift generator can also do that, but could only be used in their street.
The Toybox can do some pretty crazy stuff, as it could mind control all of them or use them as a sacrifice for Yog-Soggoth. But even if we were to give it to them, it’s not as helpful as it seems. The former is something Max has never done, unless we wanna assume he’d know just from seeing Sammun-Mak do it once. As for the latter, that’d also be very hard to set up, as Max would have to say the incantations and get all 3 close to the Toybox in order to sacrifice them. This only worked with Papierwaite because he was a huge Yog-Soggoth fanboy, so it was easier to trick him.
The ghosts turning them into jell-o is something Vector could debatably counter, but even if he couldn’t, the demon they used it on was kinda just standing still, so the trio could just move out of the way.
The time travelling elevator being, well, an elevator makes it pretty visible so it’s unlikely they'd be able to freely use it, but the watch is useful so there’s that.
Overall the Chaotix just have better stuff they can bring to the table. Their arsenal being more straightforward than Sam and Max’s crazier stuff is actually not a bad thing, as it’s just a lot more suited for a head on fight. The sheer versatility the gadgets offer just makes their vehicles a lot better than the DeSoto.
Trapping the Chaotix in the Penal Zone or sacrificing to the Yog-Soggoth are win conditions that would be very hard to set up, and the Christmas Spirits are easily avoidable.
They Chaotix have various ways to protect themselves, homing projectiles to throw at them, mess up with their visions with Illusion, Bubble Hazard and Confusion Mines or just outright get rid of their items with Weights, Slime, Storm Cloud or lock them out of using them with Audio Assault and Beat Boost. While Max funnily enough would be immune to this, Sam isn’t. This is important, as he is the one who usually carries all their items from the games, which would include the bottle continuing the Christmas spirits or the prison badge.
While time travel isn’t something they have a counter to, the watch can be easily removed with any of the aforementioned items, as Max is only resistant to having his stuff stolen when he has them stored to wherever that is, while the watch is something he visibly wears on his wrist.
The Chaotix ultimately have the better arsenal.
Abilities
The Chaotix don’t have a whole lot of abilities, but what they do have is pretty decent. Vector’s Fireball and Vector Breath allow for useful ranged attacks. Charmy can do the same with Thundershoot, can spin fast enough to create whirlwinds and I don’t think I need to explain how much it hurts to get stung by a kid sized bee. The real MVP however would be Espio. Propelling winds at enemies to send them flying, crawling on walls, switching places with an object in an instant and of course, his old reliable camouflage. Aside from being able to turn invisible, he can keep this state up for an entire day, avoid any homing projectiles and, depending on if you wanna count it, just straight up become intangible.
Of course all three of them can do the basic homing attack and spindash, but together they can perform Chaotix Recital, a move where they sing sum bullshit and can turn enemies into rings upon destruction.
Sam and Max do have a few abilities they share. They both can have their bodies stretched, smashed and squeezed through impossibly tight areas, manifest gag scenarios into existence and very often break the 4th wall, whether it be initiating the intro sequence or literally cutting into the next scene. Although they are certainly not pulling off Looney Tunes levels stuff, being incredibly more tame in comparison.
Telekinesis is super limited and not anything they have much experience with. Their luck is kinda absurd, I mean a dude just spontaneously combusted out of nowhere. But aside from the 2 instances that were mentioned, this has never happened again in any other kind of tough spot they’ve been, making it wildly inconsistent on its usefulness. Being able to freely time travel is equally absurd, making the elevator and watch completely unneeded in the first place.
The real meat is on Max’s side of things though. Thanks to The Gift he’s got various psychic powers he can perform, especially when he can do them without even needing the Toys of Power after unlocking his potential. Now some are not that useful in a head on fight. Astral projection is incredibly situational, Telephone-tor is only helpful if they just wanna dip from the fight and the Nutri-Specs are genuinely useless.
The rest are honestly really useful though. Seeing the future, reading minds, tricking others with perfect voice mimicry and shapeshifting into any objects. These are things the Chaotix don’t really have an answer to. Especially when Max can turn into more wild stuff by pulling mental images out of people's minds, even being able to turn into the Chthonic Destroyer itself.
Now granted, Max has never shown a lot of his crazier transformations, and the ones he has can easily be countered. Turning everything dark would throw off the Chaotix, but Charlie was able to counter with just the light of a candle. The Chaotix have flashlights, Vector can shoot fire from his mouth and I’d say the Laser wisp is pretty bright. The mind plague…didn’t actually do anything, and fire can easily be put out with Whirlwind or Leaf Swirl.
Do keep in mind, shapeshifting is Max's only offensive option with the gift, so if the Chaotix can counter it, he’s gonna have to rely on tricking them through other means, which is gonna be a lot harder.
Now there is one big thing that is very important to mention. The fact Sam and Max can return back to life. While it’s possible, there is some context in the way they did.
Them returning as zombies was something only possible because they had their souls extracted from their bodies, plus it’s not like they can’t still be killed as zombies.
Getting kicked out of heaven would mean that their souls can keep returning back into their bodies, but that would rely on having a body to return. The reason they could was because in that scenario Max died by suffocation and Sam by electrocution, which left their bodies intact.
And well, the Chaotix have already shown they can attack ghosts, but even without that, Chaotix Recital would be a perfect counter to it. With it they’d be able to turn Sam and Max’s bodies into rings, leaving nothing their souls could return back to.
There is however one more thing to talk about, something that’s arguably Sam and Max’s best win condition. That would be Max transferring his consciousness into the hand of one of the Chaotix (or just any body part theoretically). The Chaotix, frankly, have no counter to this. Max does this specifically with his consciousness, not his soul, so the Chaotix wouldn't be able to interact with it. Espio would probably be able to sense this, but this doesn’t mean much. Even Espio’s possible resistance to mind control wouldn’t help, as this isn’t possession in the traditional “taking control over your body” way, it’s just Max going inside a limb.
Not only would Max be able to return to life without any issue, but he’d still be able to perform his psychic powers. Remember, Max doesn’t need his body in order to use all his powers. So not only can he return to life with no problem and use The Gift as much as he likes, but he’d essentially be untouchable while in a body part of the Chaotix.
It should be noted that while he’d be able to perform almost all his powers just fine, there’s honestly no telling what would happen if he used Rhinoplasty. Even when he was just a brain, he still had a physical form that could be changed. He’s never shapeshifted while in the body of someone else, so there’s genuinely no telling of what could happen. This is a big deal because, as already mentioned, shapeshifting is Max’s only offensive option. Otherwise he’d just be chilling in Vector’s hand and like, annoy him to death or something.
But there’s probably a pretty good way to counter this, funnily enough. It’s more likely that Max just wouldn't come back to life. Now why would he do that you may ask? Well that’s simple, it’s because Sam wouldn’t be able to. They love each other and have been together through thick and thin. I mean Max spent an entire episode trying to fix a mess up through time that made it so they weren’t friends, at the end of Devil’s Playhouse he used the elevator to find a different Sam after his own died, was completely devastated when Sam up and left one day and both hope they live next to each other in hell. If Sam dies, Max would go with him, as he cares too much about him to just return by himself.
So essentially, Sam and Max have some very useful abilities that the trio wouldn’t have and answer to. The Chaotix are a lot more straightforward in their capabilities, but these are useful in a direct confrontation and can counter some of Max’s. They can ensure but at least Sam stays dead, but they don’t have any way around Max’s consciousness transference. While it seems like an unlikely move, it’s still their best win condition that the Chaotix can’t deal with
This section can be considered a tie.
Teamwork
Obviously since this is a 3v2, we’re gonna have to look into how well each side can work with each other in order to come out on top. And well…it’s kind of a wash I’m not gonna lie.
Sam & Max aren’t completely incompetent. They have dealt with a lot of different enemies and always manage to come out on top. But the thing is, they lack a lot in terms of directly fighting others. A lot of their confrontations rely on outsmarting their opponent via very elaborate ways. If any fighting occurs, it’s usually just gonna be a simple shout out. Not even mentioning the fact that Max is the one with all the useful psychic powers, meaning he’d have to do most of the work.
Now they do have some good showing, like the time they were fighting a horde of Molemen or even Max beating Charlie in a 1v1 psychic fight. Plus, Sam has some pretty crazy aim. But all of that kinda pales in comparison to what the Chaotix have to deal with.
The detective agency has to deal with badniks on a daily basis and generally engage a lot more in direct fights. They’ve contended with the likes of Team Rose and Team Dark, helped defeat Metal Sonic Kai, Metal Overlord and Master Overlord, contributed in the war against Eggman in Forces and even helped stop Infinite when he made his grand return.
Espio in particular is capable of fighting with other Sonic characters in the Sonic the Fighters tournament or Sonic Rivals 2, even beating the Ifrit in his story mode. He has extremely sharp senses, capable of sensing Enigma with his eyes closed. And as for Sam’s good aim? Well Espio has him beat even in that category, being able to throw his kunai 30ft away so he can press 2 buttons at the same time, all while during some very strong winds.
Vector has shown some exceptional leadership, capable of commanding his own team and others on the fly. And despite everything, he still was the one that figured Megani was Enigma and that Infinite was the one stealing the Astroscopic Lenses.
Charmy…well he might not be as skilled as his teammates but he still contributes in taking down badniks when needed, even being capable of smashing through them himself.
Team Chaotix generally has a better track record of working together.
Conclusion
Team Chaotix
Advantages:
Stronger in physicals, even with their low ends
Can scale higher than Sam & Max’s best weapon and can match any generous high ends
Faster even with low ends
Better equipment that’s suited for a head on fight
Useful enough abilities to keep up
Can permanently keep at least Sam dead
Way more experience in direct fights
Overall superior teamwork
Have been getting a lot of motion lately #noticing
Disadvantages:
Don’t have an answer to a few abilities Sam & Max have
No permanent way to kill Max
Weren’t a team for like a decade what the hell SEGA
Freelance Police
Advantages:
Decent amount of abilities the Chaotix don’t have an answer to
Max can transfer his consciousness on one of the Chaotix…
Spiritually gay
Disadvantages:
Get decimated in stats
The Cthonic Destroyer would still be weaker, even with generous ends
Overall have an inferior arsenal
Their good items can be removed and would be hard to set up
Certain abilities can be countered and some would just not be that useful to begin with
Chaotix Recital would leave no body to return to
…but he cares too much for Sam to not die with him
Very little experience in head on fights
Some of their puzzles are insane like wtf
Winner
Team Chaotix
|
Advantages:
Stronger in physicals, even with their low ends
Can scale higher than Sam & Max’s best weapon and can match any generous high ends
Faster even with low ends
Better equipment that’s suited for a head on fight
Useful enough abilities to keep up
Can permanently keep at least Sam dead
Way more experience in direct fights
Overall superior teamwork
Have been getting a lot of motion lately #noticing
Disadvantages:
Don’t have an answer to a few abilities Sam & Max have
No permanent way to kill Max
Weren’t a team for like a decade what the hell SEGA
Freelance Police
|
Advantages:
Decent amount of abilities the Chaotix don’t have an answer to
Max can transfer his consciousness on one of the Chaotix…
Spiritually gay
Disadvantages:
Get decimated in stats
The Cthonic Destroyer would still be weaker, even with generous ends
Overall have an inferior arsenal
Their good items can be removed and would be hard to set up
Certain abilities can be countered and some would just not be that useful to begin with
Chaotix Recital would leave no body to return to
…but he cares too much for Sam to not die with him
Very little experience in head on fights
Some of their puzzles are insane like wtf
Winner
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