seeing Tails as a blacksmith makes me realize how much Sonic Adventure has ruined his character. i am sick an tired of him being some machine wiz / genius. whatever happened to just being Sonic's pal who follows him around and gives him a boost?
Well to be fair, the old games did a pretty poor job of portraying the characters too (mostly due to there being no dialog). In S3&K, Knux went around snickering and chuckling like a fool while setting traps for you (instead of, y'know, actually fighting you). He seemed more like some village idiot Eggman hired to pull pranks on you than a concerned protector of the master emerald (until hidden palace where he
actually fought you...which wasn't until the
end of the game).
Tails himself was always a "machine whiz" since the beginning (hence the "repaired" tornado at the end of Sonic 2, the spaceship from STF, the sub from one of the GG games, etc.). It is only since SA1 that they focused on the genius aspect more (probably due to that fact that they actually added dialog).
To me, it's just mostly due to Sonic Team's general poor writing skills and character portrayal.
And in all honesty, Tails is seen as annoying not only due to the fact that he's all "techy", but also because he was such a poor sidekick (gameplay-wise at least). I can't tell you how many people I knew hated him way before SA1 was even a thought.