No matter the media, if there is a chance to do a kind of spinoff game featuring a person or group that seemed to “test well” with audiences, people will attempt to make money off of it. While Sonic The Hedgehog is an iconic gaming figure, his rival in Shadow is just as popular within certain circles. When he made his debut in a key Sega Dreamcast title, people really liked the “Ultimate Lifeform” and wanted to learn more about him. That’s where the 2005 Shadow The Hedgehog title came from, and Sega wanted to go MUCH darker and more mature with it than you realize.
The game’s overall goal was to appeal to a more “mature audience” since Shadow is more of an edge lord than a hero like Sonic. That’s why the game had a darker storyline, guns that Shadow would use, and so on. However, in an interview with Gameluster, the voice of Shadow for the title, Jason Griffith, revealed that Sega had two versions of the game recorded. One of those versions was a hard M-rated version where Griffith was told to swear all the time:
“Right, they were going for an M-rating with this game and they hadn’t heard back from the agency if they were going to get it yet. So they had me record two takes for every line, and I swear, the version that was for the M-rating, they had me say f*** in every single line. It was just every sentence, I would be yelling ‘Sonic, give me that f***ing Chaos Emerald!’ or something like that. I had no idea what was going on but I just went with it, and I had fun. There’s a hard drive somewhere with hours of recordings of Shadow yelling f*** at Tails and Sonic and stuff.”
That’s insane in all the ways that matter, and apparently, some clips of that recording have come out in the past. While it’s nice to know that Griffith had fun voicing that version of the title, one has to wonder why Sega would attempt to do that much of a jump for the franchise. Granted, they obviously didn’t go through with it, as the Shadow The Hedgehog game was only rated E10+, but that’s still a curious direction to go.
Since that title, despite it selling over two million units, Shadow hasn’t had a solo title, but has been in other games with Sonic and crew.
