Metal Madness


 * For the seventh round in Sonic the Hedgehog CD, see Metallic Madness.

Metal Madness (メタルマッドネス) is the transformed version of Neo Metal Sonic and the penultimate boss of Sonic Heroes. By combining the collective data from Team Sonic, Team Rose, Team Dark, Team Chaotix and Chaos, Neo Metal Sonic can rebuild himself into Metal Madness with debris from the Final Fortress.

Metal Madness serves as the middle state of Metal Sonic's transformation into Metal Overlord, meaning Metal Madness is an incomplete form. He is briefly confronted by Team Rose, Team Dark and Team Chaotix before he finishes transforming into Metal Overlord.

Appearance
In this form, Neo Metal Sonic's appearance is that of a large, blue, heavily-armed mechanical dragon, with two eyes lined up vertically on his head. He has several long spikes on his upper body and many smaller ones running down his back and his long, curved tail. He has a flamethrower as his right hand, and his left hand has four fingers with claws that can be launched. He has no legs in this form. Instead his lower body is attached to the Final Fortress with several thick cables.

History
In order to beat his arch-rival Sonic the Hedgehog and eventually claim world domination himself, Metal Sonic sought to become strong enough to achieve his ambitions. To this end, he staged Team Sonic's, and later Team Rose's, Team Dark's and Team Chaotix's adventures in Sonic Heroes so he could collect both theirs and Chaos' data in order to become Metal Overlord, his most powerful form to date. In order to reach this form, Metal Madness proved to be a necessary step during this transformation.

At the beginning of the Sonic Heroes ' Last Story storyline, Neo Metal Sonic reveals himself to Team Sonic, Team Rose, Team Dark and later Team Chaotix, and announces himself as their new ruler, before shooting a lightning bolt into the sky. The lightning bolt soon comes back down and blows up the command tower upon which Neo Metal Sonic stands on. By then manipulating the debris from the tower, Neo Metal Sonic constructs Metal Overlord's main body and then merges himself with it, becoming Metal Madness and roars in triumph.

As strong as Metal Madness proved himself to be however, his transformation into Metal Overlord was still not complete, and he needed time to finish his transformation. In the process however, he found himself attacked by Team Rose, Team Chaotix and Team Dark, who were trying to buy Team Sonic enough time to perform a super transformation with the seven Chaos Emeralds. Though the teams managed to put up a good fight, Metal Madness remained unconcerned, and dismissed their attempts to stop him as useless.

In the end, Metal Madness proved himself too tough for the three teams to defeat, and he managed to complete his transformation, thus becoming Metal Overlord. He then took off from the Final Fortress, but was shortly after pursued by Team Super Sonic and was defeated.

Powers and abilities
Despite being an incomplete transformation and having his movements hindered due to being attached to Dr. Eggman's fleet, Metal Madness is a very powerful figure in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. His might proved great enough to take on Team Rose, Team Chaotix and Team Dark at the same time, and while all the teams worked together, they could only slow him down. Dr. Eggman even stated at before the fight that even with the seven Chaos Emeralds, they only had a slim chance of victory.

Metal Madness is able to launch the spines on his back as missiles that can track the opponent, and when they hit the ground, they will sprout into indestructible sharp spike formations which will shatter automatically after some time. He can use his right hand to produce a powerful and large column of fire, and his left hand can shoot his claws as missiles which can trap his enemies in crystal cages (His claws will automatically regenerate). Possessing a tail, he can use it to land wide swipes over a large area. While he is also nearly invulnerable to harm, his weak spots in this form are the glowing markers on the left, right and front side of his lower body, which is only vulnerable to the right formation types.

Boss guide
The boss battle with Metal Madness is fought in three stages. One for Team Rose, one for Team Chaotix and one for Team Dark. The battle will take place on a platform for each team with a little distance to Metal Madness. During the battle, Metal Madness can only be damaged with the right formation type indicated by the color of Metal Madness's weak spot, which changes after a couple of hits (When blue, Speed formation is useless, when red, Power formation is useless and when yellow, Fly formation is useless). On each side, Metal Madness has 100 HP, which must reduced to zero in order to proceed.

Team Rose
The first team up is Team Rose, to the right side of Metal Madness. Their platform has two craters, each with a Item box, containing a Team Blast item and has 16 Rings spread around. In this round, Metal Madness can attack in three ways; He will use his flamethrower across the platform, which can be jumped over. The second one is a wide sweep with his tail which can also be jumped over. The final attack is where he launches his spines towards the team, wherever it might be. If they hit the ground they’ll sprout into spike formations which causes damage upon contact. Here, the player must get as far away from Metal Madness as possible and let the spikes sprout where they cannot get in the way, while avoiding them. During their battle, Metal Madness’ marker will remain blue, so it is best to attack him with Big for maximum damage. One of the first things to do is to pick up one of the two Team Blast Rings, which gives an instant Team Blast, and use it as close to Metal Madness as possible and then either take the second one and repeat the process, or save it for the next team. After this, keep attacking him with Big and the round with Team Rose will be complete. Amy is sadly completely useless in this phase as he is immune to speed type moves through out this phase.

Team Chaotix
The next team is Team Chaotix, to the left side of Metal Madness. Their platform contains 16 rings, two empty, balloons where each contains a Power Core, and a cannon. Here, Metal Madness will repeat his spine attack and tail sweep which can be countered in the same way as before. He has a new third attack where he launches his finger missiles which can trap team members in crystal cages if they hit, rendering that member unusable, but they can be broken if attacked repeatedly. If all team members are caught however, the player will lose a life. The best way to counter it is either to switch to Flight formation and remain airborne, or hide inside the cannon, until he is done. The first priority for the player should be picking up the Power Cores in the balloons so there can be dealt acceptable damage. In this round, Metal Madness’ marker will change between red and yellow, so, under these conditions, it would be best to attack with a combination of Flight and Power formations; use Flight formation when Power can’t be used until Metal Madness makes a move and when possible, use Power formation to deal massive damage. Repeat this and the round with Team Chaotix will be complete.

A longer, but safer method is to use Espio's Leaf Swirl to become invisible and then throw shurikens at Metal madness as he does not change his weak spot to blue, nor he can aim directly at Espio.

Team Dark
The final team up is Team Dark, in the front of Metal Madness. Their platform has only 4 Rings, Power Cores in the crates to the left and the right side of the platform and in the balloons above them. In this round, Metal Madness will attack with his flamethrower, finger missiles and spine attack, which still can be countered in the same manner as before but now Shadow can destroy the spine pillars using Black Tornado. First priority for the player is to pick up the Power Cores for maximum damage. Metal Madness' marker now changes with all three formation colors (blue, yellow, red, blue etc.). Then proceed with a combination of Power and Flight formation attacks in order to deal maximum damage in short time. If this pattern is kept, Team Dark’s round with Metal Madness will be over quickly.

Quotes

 * "I'll tear you to pieces!" - Metal Madness during his battle with Team Rose.
 * "Burn to death!" - Metal Madness when attacking Team Rose or Team Dark with his flamethrower
 * "It's too late..." - Metal Madness after his battle with Team Rose.
 * "You're all useless now that I've copied all your data!" - Metal Madness in the Team Chaotix fight.
 * "Get away!" - Metal Madness when preparing to use crystal cage spines.
 * "This victory shall soon turn into despair!" - Metal Madness after his battle with Team Chaotix.
 * "Even the Ultimate Lifeform can't stop me!" - Metal Madness in the Team Dark fight when unleashing a powerful flame-based attack.
 * "How appropriate to have a robot overlord rule a robot kingdom!" - Metal Madness after his battle with Team Dark.

Trivia

 * Metal Madness' name could have been based off of Metallic Madness, which is the final level of Metal Sonic's first game appearance, Sonic the Hedgehog CD.
 * Despite that the spine pillars are stated as indestructible in the Hints by various characters, they can be destroyed by charging at them.
 * In the PC version of Sonic Heroes, Metal Madness's main color (as well Metal Overlord's) is a grey/silver-blue instead of all blue. However this only happens during the battle.
 * When the player switches teams, the pipes connecting Metal Madness to the Final Fortress decrease until only four are left when playing as Team Dark.
 * On any other version of Sonic Heroes than the PC version, there is an error that occurs when the player uses Shadow to finish Metal Madness. Once Metal Madness is defeated, Shadow will unavoidably gets hit and then be transported to do his final pose, forcing the player to re-do the fight.
 * The colors of Metal Madness' weak spot are the three colors of the team formation (Blue: Speed, Yellow: Fly and Red: Power).