Top 10 Sonic Robots

This title is a twofer, depending on how you read the title.  On one hand there are the Robots that appear in Sonic, while the other refers to the robots based on Sonic.

10)  Burnbot - Sonic Boom.  Everyone remembers this robot from the trailer and its name being a misnomer.  It doesn't do anything related to fire.  However, by the end of the first episode, Eggman actually installs a laser in it.

9)  Egg-Robo - games, comics.  A robot made in Eggman's likeness.  Perhaps the one most people remember is the one that rides in the Eggmobile in Sonic 3 & Knuckles.  His story begins when Sonic's ends.  He somehow survived the crash of the Death Egg, following a program given by Eggman after the events of the Hidden Palace Zone: eliminate Knuckles.  Then he flies to Knuckles' location, bombs him, and prompts the echidna to give chase.  He met his end by accident when Mecha Sonic attempted to kill Knuckles.

8)  E-100 α "ZERO" - Games, Sonic X, Archie.  The Chasemaster himself and the alpha prototype of the E-Series.  ZERO's most prominant role is during Amy's story in Sonic Adventure.  His mission:  Capture Lily.  This even follows after Eggman reveals Lily's secret: she has a Chaos Emerald.  This stubborness turns a heartwarming moment bittersweet, when he attacks Lily.  Amy gets pissed and trashes him.  In some fanfics, ZERO attacks Gamma after he defeats Beta, giving Amy all the more reason to fight back.

7)  E-101 β "Beta" - Games, Sonic X, Archie.  The true prototype of the E-Series.  Beta's main purpose in Sonic Adventure is to show just what Eggman does to robots he considers failures:  scrap metal.  In his upgraded form, Beta Mk. II is Gamma's final boss and upon destruction, Gamma follows suit with his own self-destruction.

6)  The SSSSS Squad - AoStH, Archie, Mean Bean Machine.  Three of Robotnik's loyal badniks from the first cartoon.  Coconuts was made first and claims to be Robotnik's favorite, despite being on the same level as Draco Centaurus, being demoted time and again to janitorial position.  Scrath and Grounder were made as an attempt to make the ultimate Sonic killers.  These three set the standards of Eggman having robotic companions.  In the Archie comic, Mammoth Mogul hired them to work at the Casino Night Zone, a position they kept after the Super Genesis Wave, only under servitude from Breezie, after she quit Eggman's services.

5)  Commander Brutus - StC.  Commander Brutus was one of the earliest examples of Sonic and Robotnik teaming up to fight a common foe, one of Robotnik's own designs.  Robotnik made Brutus out of Megatal, the same stuff as the Cybernik armor.  As an added measure of genius, Robotnik copied his mindset into Brutus, making Brutus into the ultimate Badnik.  This proved to work too good as Brutus began to concoct his own plots, eventually leading to him making an army of his own super Badniks, along with making Badniks out of Amy and Johnny (and Cedric).  Super Sonic was the only formidable foe for Brutus, tearing his arm off while he was using Amy as a meatshield.  Robotnik was ultimately the one who destroyed Brutus by dousing him in liquid nitrogen.

4)  E-123 Ω "Omega" - Games.  Eggman's final E-series robot.  Eggman made him to guard Shadow while studying him to create the Shadow Androids.  However, due to Neo Metal Sonic, he was deactivated in left in Shadow's chamber.  Rage began to boil in him, turning Omega into HK-47 in all but name.  Omega is one of the few characters from Sonic Heroes not to separate from his team.

3)  Gizoids - Games, Archie, Sonic X, StC.  In various appearances, the Gizoids were made as the ultimate fighting machines.  In StC Online, a prototype is activated by the Knuckles Clan to fight against Chaos, and is sealed away twice within the 8000 years between the initial war against the Drakon Empire and modern day Mobius.  Knuckles and Porker Lewis fought against it in recent issues of the comic.  The most well known Gizoid is Emerl.  Emerl was created by the Nocturnus clan and was good friends with the scribe Nestor.  It happened that Emerl was in possesion of the Chaos Emeralds and went on a rampage, triggering the Argus incident, pulling Nocturne into the Twilight Cage and leaving Emerl behind.

4000 years later, Gerald Robotnik finds Emerl on Angel Island and begins studying him along with the mural he found him by.  The studies on Emerl and the mural help kickstart the Ultimate Lifeform project.  However an accident occurred on board the ARK, and Emerl was sealed away.  While biding his time on Prison Island, Gerald encoded what he thought were Maria's final words in Emerl:  "Bring Hope to Humanity."

50 years later, Eggman finds Emerl and attempts to use him as the original weapon that Ix intended him to use.  Sonic found Emerl washed up on the beach and decided to present him to Tails to check him out because of a garbled message about showing power.  Shadow appears and warns Sonic not to let Eggman get the robot.  Thus Sonic Battle begins.  And it ends with Sonic mercifully trashing Emerl to save all life on earth in a matter of seconds.

The Gizoids returned in Sonic Chronicles led by the Nocturne Marauders.  Most memorable are the Prefects Scylla and Charibdis, both of whom carry a Chaos Emerald and are the second and third to last bosses in the game.

2)  E-102 γ "Gamma" - Games, Archie, Sonic X.  The first Eggman robot to turn against his master.  Gamma's programming changed when he witnessed his brothers Delta, Zeta, and Episolon teleported away by Eggman to be used as scrap metal, soon followed by seeing Beta's husk being mangled.  And then he frees Amy.  After the fall of the Egg Carrier, Gamma then decides to free the animals within the other E-Series robots ending with him fighting Beta in a mutual kill.

1)  Top 10 Robots based on Sonic.

And here is where the second meaning of this title comes in.  I decided to rank what I think are the top 10 robots based on Sonic.

10)  Silver Sonic - Sonic 2, Sonic Pocket Adventure.  For the first one seen in the games, he is very shoddily built, but still serving as the second to last boss in the game.  In the 8-bit version, Silver Sonic holds one of the Chaos Emeralds, but the other emeralds must be obtained before he is fought.  The model was finally retired in Sonic Pocket Adventure in the Aerobase Zone, as a carbon copy of the Genesis version.

9)  Pseudo Sonic - AoStH, Archie.  The first animated Sonic copy.  In his debut appearance, Robotnik makes a Badnik version of Sonic to sulley the hero's reputation, including bank robberies, vandalism, and endangerment of the Mobian Population.  Pseudo Sonic is nothing more than a mech piloted by a blackmailed rait named Lawrence.  When both he and Sonic are incapacitated by poison ivy, Tails pilots Pseudo Sonic.  Scrath and Grounder destroy Pseudo Sonic by accident.  In the Archie comics, Pseudo Sonic is instead the first of many Sonic Robots made by Robotnik, made to reveal the location of Knothole.  Sonic is incapacitated at the time by poison flowers, so Tails and Rotor take care of the robot.  He later appears on the Island of Misfit Badniks, in an equally matched fight against Sonic himself.

8)  Emperor Metallix - StC.  When I said that the Brotherhood of Metallix was based on the Dalek Empire, I wasn't kidding.  The Metallix Emperor is partially based on Davros while he was the Emperor, again a coincidence by Nigel Kitching.  His overall plot is to go back in time and take over Mobius by altering history to the point where Robotnik did not exist in the present.  This started by making a pirate copy of the Omni-viewer, distracting the Freedom Fighters by attacking the Miracle Planet, torturing Porker Lewis in the time that it took for the planet to vanish and reapper next.  And then once Sonic and the Chaotix return after saving Porker, Mobius is transformed.  The events that followed reveal that it was Sonic who was ultimately the one who turned Kintobor into Robotnik via time-travel.  With this deed done, Sonic and Robotnik defeat the renegades.

7)  Cyborg Sonic - Archie.  A one-shot character from issue 19.  Cyborg Sonic comes from an alternate timeline where Robotnik transformed the Freedom Fighters into cyborgs, ala the Terminator.  This turned out to be his undoing. Robotnik then roboticized himself and attacked.  Cyborg Sonic sought out Sonic on Mobius Prime, enlisting the aid of other alternate Sonics to help fight against Robo-Robotnik and his army of Shadow SWATbots.

6) Mecha Sonic Model No.29 - Sonic the Fighters.  Mecha Sonic Model No.29 is a bit of an oddity since while he looks like Metal Sonic, he is actually a copy made by Tails to survey the Death Egg II.  He is one of the few unplayable characters in the game along with Eggman and Metal Sonic proper.  Hacking into the game shows an alternate name "Rocket Metal" due to his ability to turn into a rocket, seen in the into.

5)  Zonik - Penguin Books.  Zonik, like Pseudo Sonic, was made to sulley Sonic's name.  Judging by the description of events in the book, Zonik may actually be a stand-in for Silver Sonic, albeit more "Sonic-shaped"

4)  Shard - Archie Comics pre-SGW.  Shard falls under the same category as Gamma and Omega, being an Eggman Robot that turned against him.  When he first appeared in issue 25 as Mecha Sonic, he played the same role as the original Metal Sonic, returning in the Chaotix special.  Eventually Shard was renamed as Metal Sonic and was outfitted with a blaster, and was sent out to fight Sonic again, sinking into the Mount Mobius magma.  But he was thankfully saved by Geoffrey St. John and nicknamed "Jack" before giving himself his own name, Shard.

3)  Mecha-Sonic - Archie.  Mecha-Sonic is our favorite hedgehog forcefully roboticized.  His most notable appearance was in the Mecha Madness storyline, which made the same decision as StC: making an ongoing story, other than a loose string of one-shots.  Robotnik used Mecha-Sonic to attack Knothole and the Freedom Fighters.  When he was about to reveal Knothole's location, Mecha Knuckles appeared and fought.  Unlike the hedgehog, the echidna had a Neuro-Overrider to keep his mind intact.  Sonic returned to normal by the end of the special.  But nearly 70 issues later, Mecha Sonic returned, this time roboticized by the Bem as part of an experiment, against a de-roboticized Eggman and Snively.  His last appearance was during Worlds Collide in an imagine spot by Eggman, once he and Wily perfect the Genesis Wave and rewrite history

2)  Mecha Sonic - Sonic 3 & Knuckles, StC, Sonic Adventure.  This is the one robot that Alvin Earthworm made famous in the original SMBZ series.  Mecha Sonic was made to replace Silver Sonic, and as such is more advanced being more powerful and much faster than his tin-plated counterpart.  Mecha Sonic's most well-known role in Sonic 3 & Knuckles is serving as Knuckles' final boss where he powers up with the Master Emerald, turning into Super Mecha Sonic.  In Sonic Adventure he mainly serves as an easter egg in the Final Egg area of the Mystic Ruins.

1)  Metal Sonic - Nearly everything bar Sonic X, AoStH, SatAM, and Underground.  The robot to top all robots.  Metal Sonic was the first and most successful robot made by Eggman based on his eternal rival.  In the classic games and Sonic 4, Metal Sonic served as Eggman's second in command, until he was thrashed at the end of Chaotix.  Then came the OVA where he was made using Sonic's DNA to help bring about the destruction of the Land of the Sky.  As they share the same DNA, anything Metal senses or hears, Sonic does too and viceversa.  Metal Sonic finally returned after a long hiatus in Sonic Heroes as the main antagonist.  Afterwards, he was reinstated as Eggman's Number 2.

In the Archie Comics, other than Shard, Metal Sonic was made a separate character from the original Genesis-era Metal (who became Shard).  His most notable role occured in the Worlds Collide storyline working alongside Bass from the Mega Man series.

StC's Metal Sonic was renamed Metallix the Metal Sonic.  The Sonic CD one was the first in a long line of Metallixes, along with Mecha Sonic from Sonic 3.  Mecha Sonic's appearance heralded the appearance of the Brotherhood of Metallix.

In Sonic Boom, Metal only appeared in one episode, stealing various object around Lost Island as well as Eggman's particle accelerator.  He also appeared in Rise of Lyric as a boss.