SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS is the ultimate celebration of the iconic anti-hero
There really is no other character in the Sonic the Hedgehog series quite like Shadow the Hedgehog. Ever since his introduction in 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2, the dark counterpart to the cobalt blue speedster has absolutely exploded in popularity with the fans to the point that he regularly stands toe-to-toe with—and occasionally eclipses—Sonic himself.
Little wonder, then, that Sega and Sonic Team keep giving fans more of what they want. Shadow has featured regularly in a wide variety of games, comics, and TV shows over the last 23 years. In 2005, he even starred in his own solo game—a feat that very few Sonic characters can lay claim to.
This year, lovingly dubbed “The Year of Shadow,” the spotlight is shining brighter on Shadow than ever before. And initially, excitement centered on the upcoming December release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the latest Sonic film, which features Shadow as a prominent character.
But much like a classic Sonic level, Takashi Iizuka, the head of Sonic Team, is all about building on momentum. He and his team were well aware that they had a golden opportunity on their hands to capitalize on all of the Shadow hype, to craft something new on their end that could act as a complement to the film and expand Shadow’s fanbase even further.
“We knew that Paramount was really going to focus on Shadow in the third movie,” Iizuka explains. “From a Sega perspective, we wanted a game where we could also focus on Shadow with new gameplay, and that's where the whole idea began to start working with [producer Shun] Nakamura’s team. We have Shadow in the movie, so we need something from a game perspective that’s also going to focus on Shadow to build on that worldwide appeal.”
Over the past few years, Sonic Team has seen great success remastering older titles. Looking through their extensive back catalog again, they took note of one game that fans loved: Sonic Generations, the beloved 2011 hit that brought both the classic and modern versions of Sonic together, revisiting and celebrating some of the most iconic levels and moments from the first 20 years of the series.
Pieces were falling into place. Sega and Sonic Team wanted to build on the tidal wave of Shadow hype. Fans adored Sonic Generations. Was there a way that they could satisfy both in one fell swoop? The answer was SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS, a remaster of Generations with a brand-new Shadow-centric campaign that runs parallel to the original game’s story. Just as Sonic Generations celebrated Sonic’s history, SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS does the same for Shadow.
And what a rich history the character has.
Terios
During his conceptual phase in the late '90s, Shadow was known as Terios (meaning “reflection of”), a black hedgehog who rocked a nasty eye scar and nifty scarf. As his name implied, Terios was meant to act as a dark counterpart to Sonic, inspired by gritty American superheroes like Spawn.
In time, he morphed into the Shadow the Hedgehog that the fans know and love today. But in a fun callback to his original appearance, those who preorder the SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS Digital Deluxe Edition will receive a Terios skin for Shadow, designed exclusively for the game. “This is probably the only time ever that you will be able to play a game as Terios, the concept character,” says Iizuka.
In-universe, Shadow was created by Professor Gerald Robotnik to be the world’s ultimate life form—specifically, as an experiment to determine how to cure his granddaughter, Maria, of a serious life-threatening illness. However, Project Shadow was deemed too threatening by the government, which sent in a squad of troops to shut it down. In the process, Shadow was evacuated in an escape pod by Maria (who he had formed a close bond with) before watching her get killed.
Overcome with grief, Shadow swore revenge on humanity before being apprehended by the military and sealed away. For 50 years, Shadow remained trapped in a state of suspended animation until Gerald’s descendant, Dr. Eggman, discovered him at the beginning of Sonic Adventure 2.
It’s a pretty heavy backstory for a Sonic the Hedgehog character, but Iizuka credits it with Shadow’s immediate popularity among the fans.
“For Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow was really there to be a rival character for Sonic,” he says. “But up until then, in the Sonic series, there were never characters with a background story. This was really the first character that the team got into, who the character was, why they were there, and what their motivations were. I think that's really what enabled people to have a strong relationship with Shadow, to understand and really like the character.”
Throughout Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow acted as an antagonist to Sonic and crew, helping Eggman gather up the Chaos Emeralds in his plot for world domination. However, it wasn’t until the game’s climax that Shadow’s true intentions were revealed: destroy the planet that had turned against him and taken away the only family that he’d ever had.
Shadow would soon see the error of his ways, coming to understand that Maria’s last wish was for him to protect humanity, and in the game’s final battle, he seemingly sacrificed his life to save the planet that his only true friend loved. Thus, the story of Shadow the Hedgehog came to an end.
…Or at least, it would have had the character not skyrocketed up the Sonic popularity charts.
“Back in the day, there wasn't social media, so when you released a game, you couldn't see what people thought instantly,” Iizuka recounts, “but the team was getting a lot of letters from fans. We heard a lot of the external world talking about what a cool character Shadow was, and they wanted to see more. Even internally inside of Sega, a lot of people were like, ‘Wow, Shadow’s so cool. We would love to see Shadow in the next game.’ These kinds of conversations were bubbling up. When we were making Sonic Heroes, the team wanted to find a way to bring Shadow back into the universe and tell more stories with the character.”
And so Shadow returned in 2004’s Sonic Heroes, just one game later—although whether it was the same Shadow that seemingly died at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 or an android created by Dr. Eggman was a subject of intense debate among the fandom at the time.
That mystery wouldn’t be answered until Shadow's eponymous 2005 game, where it was revealed that Eggman found him and nursed him back to health—though not before actually crafting an army of Shadow androids for his own use. More details regarding Shadow's birth were also brought to light, including the fact that his creator, Professor Gerald, had turned to an evil alien warlord named Black Doom for a sampling of DNA in order to complete Shadow’s creation.
The character’s story was brought full circle in 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, when Shadow joined the military as a special agent, finally putting his past behind him and focusing all of his attention on protecting the planet—as Maria wanted.
The return of Black Doom
Since the late 2000s, Shadow has taken a bit of a backseat among the Sonic roster as the lion’s share of focus went to the blue hedgehog himself, though he still made regular appearances on television and in comics. With SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS, Shadow and his rich history return to the spotlight for the first time in almost 20 years.
In the original Sonic Generations, a monster known as the Time Eater tears apart time and space, capturing Sonic’s friends and forcing the blue blur to revisit locations and enemies from his past. While the majority of the game’s characters are frozen in time until Sonic saves them, Shadow remains conspicuously absent for most of the adventure, only playing a role in a minor boss fight toward the end of the game.
Shun Nakamura, the producer of SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS, seeks to use this new Shadow-centric campaign to fill in some blanks.
“The team said, 'Okay, we know Shadow appeared in Sonic Generations. Wouldn't it be interesting to tell the story of what Shadow was doing while Sonic Generations was going on?'” says Nakamura. “That was the idea we started at—Shadow’s story is happening in parallel to Sonic’s.”
With the space-time continuum in disarray thanks to the Time Eater, Shadow, too, will find himself revisiting places and people from his past. Some, such as his creator, Professor Gerald, and dearest friend Maria, will be sights for sore eyes.
Others won’t be quite so friendly—like Shadow's old foes, Mephiles the Dark, the Biolizard, and Black Doom. The latter acts as the Shadow campaign’s overarching antagonist. Iizuka shares why Black Doom makes for such a fitting foil for Shadow in ways that other villains like Dr. Eggman would not.
“Sonic and Eggman have this relationship where they’re always constantly going at each other,” says Iizuka. “Sonic and Eggman are a great mix. They go well together. They’re really good rivals. And the team was like, you know, Shadow versus Eggman, that doesn't really match. Shadow’s a dark character, a really strong character. We need a character that is darker than Shadow, stronger than Shadow."
"That's kind of how the whole idea for Black Doom started. As you know from Shadow the Hedgehog, at the end, Shadow does defeat Black Doom—but because this is Generations, we can bring him back.”
Iizuka remains tight-lipped about specific story details regarding how Shadow and Black Doom’s rivalry will be portrayed or how Shadow’s story potentially ties in with Sonic’s, but the game’s narrative promises to be both engaging and surprising.
Rail Canyon
Of course, it wouldn’t be a celebration of Shadow without classic stages from his past (or, in some cases, future) to run around in. A brand-new batch of fan-favorite levels from the series' history will feature in SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS, including Radical Highway from Sonic Adventure 2, Kingdom Valley from 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog, and even more recent pulls like Sunset Heights from Sonic Forces and Chaos Island from Sonic Frontiers.
An online fan poll partially determined which levels from Sonic’s history would be represented in the original Sonic Generations. While there was no such poll this time around, the team worked hard to determine which levels from the series would best represent Shadow that were not seen in the original game.
“I spoke with Iizuka-san a lot about what levels to select, what areas to present to people in the game,” says Nakamura. “We wanted to make sure that lots of checkboxes were marked. We needed a variety of different areas for people to enjoy, but they also had to be places that were really familiar to players—that, if you love Shadow, you'd want to see in the game. We also had to make sure we could wrap in the new abilities that Shadow could use in these levels."
"All these kinds of conversations were swirling around, and ultimately what was selected for the game is what Iizuka-san, the team and I thought would hit as many of those checkboxes as possible,” Nakamura continues.
One returning level in particular is very near and dear to Iizuka’s heart.
“I really enjoyed a lot of the stages that were brought back, but the one that I think really meant the most to me was Rail Canyon from Sonic Heroes,” Iizuka explains. “That was a stage that I designed myself, back in the day. Usually, you're constantly running on the ground. I challenged myself to make a stage where there was no ground. We're only going to make a stage with rails, but it's got to be fun and it's got to be good. How can we add in elements to keep the rail gameplay fun from start to finish?"
"Now that it's been brought back, it was really a pleasure for me to see the amazing graphics and the great work that the art and design team did to modernize this classic stage that I originally created," Iizuka continues. "I thought it really looked great and was really well-arranged. It's not just remaking an old thing. We really arranged it for the Sonic Generations format. I was really pleased to see that come back.”
Controlling the Chaos
It's been 13 years since Sonic Generations first released, and while the core Sonic gameplay hasn't changed much in the ensuing years, Sonic Team has made tweaks to the formula here and there in subsequent games. Returning to that classic Sonic style while still crafting something new for Shadow proved an interesting challenge for the team.
“We had to look at Sonic Generations as a finished product and understand, 'Okay, this is how the game design is for Sonic Generations, but how can we improve upon that now that it’s 2024?'” says Nakamura.
“What would make Shadow cool?" Nakamura continues. "How can we create this new Shadow Generations gameplay that still feels very much like a Generations-style game (because it's made with that design philosophy) but will also feel fresh and different because we’re focused on Shadow, using techniques that we didn't have in 2011 with hardware that didn't exist? That was the thought process the team went through when they set about creating the Shadow Generations portion.”
As with Sonic, Shadow’s gameplay style has been tweaked numerous times over the years. Not only is he capable of doing almost anything that Sonic can, but Shadow has historically fought with weapons, fisticuffs, and of course, his Chaos-based powers. Shadow's most iconic move is his Chaos Control technique, where he uses the power of the Chaos Emeralds to warp time, typically to increase his movement speed while battling enemies. In SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS, Nakamura and crew crafted exciting new ways to utilize that classic ability.
“Chaos Control used to be the finishing move to defeat someone,” says Nakamura. “But in this game, it's not just a finishing move. You can use it pretty much anywhere in the game. It's such an iconic move for Shadow, we wanted to integrate using Chaos Control into the level design of the stages—so as you're going through the stage, you can stop time and maybe see, oh, there's a place over there that I can get up to because I've stopped time."
"I really hope people have a fun time using Chaos Control in those moments and find a lot of the cool level design secrets that we put into the game. I think it’s a really cool, unique ability,” Nakamura continues.
Shadow will also sport a brand-new set of abilities: Doom Powers, which enable Shadow to enhance his combat capabilities or allow him to traverse harsh terrain. For example, Doom Blast sends enemies flying with a crescent wave of dark energy, while Doom Morph transforms Shadow into a strange squid-like creature capable of racing across deadly pools of purple energy and swinging from grapple points. All of these new powers were designed to further differentiate Shadow mechanically from Sonic.
“Shadow is a character that will do whatever it takes to accomplish his goal,” says Nakamura. “He will use whatever is at his disposal. We knew Black Doom was also in the mix, and because of that, we thought this was a good opportunity to give Shadow some new powers. Sonic is a very high-speed platform action game where you're running, jumping and grinding, but what could Shadow do that would make for different gameplay?"
"We wanted to give Shadow a lot of cool abilities and actions that would make Shadow Generations feel very different from the Sonic Generations portion," Nakamura continues. "The Doom Powers were not only very cool, but enabled us to create different ways of getting through levels and make unique gameplay that felt true to what Shadow could and would do.”
The Doom Powers also serve as a natural means of helping Shadow progress through the game’s hub world. The original Sonic Generations featured a straightforward 2D hub called White Space that connected the game’s various levels to one another.
This concept has been greatly expanded in Shadow’s campaign. Foregoing the smaller 2D sections, the version of White Space that Shadow finds himself in is a huge 3D playground, similar to the open zones featured in the most recent Sonic title, 2022’s Sonic Frontiers.
“With Frontiers, we really wanted to use the open-zone game design philosophy to create this really wide, open space for people to experience however they wanted to,” says Nakamura. “When we were making the White Space hub world area for the Shadow Generations portion, we wanted to give people a similar experience."
"A lot of the [lessons] from Frontiers, we applied to Shadow Generations—taking this huge island, condensing it, still having the essence of an open zone but making it smaller and more playable," Nakamura continues. "One of the ways we were able to execute on that is the Doom Powers. We gate and control where you are able to run around. As you get new Doom Powers, you're able to find new places that you can get to inside of this White Space hub world.”
Modernizing a classic
For many players, the new Shadow-centric campaign is going to be the undisputed star of the show, but that isn’t to say that the original Sonic Generations won’t see some improvements as well. After all, game design has changed a lot over the past 13 years, both for Sonic Team and the industry as a whole.
Sonic Team is taking great care to strike a balance, adding useful additional features to the remaster without removing anything from the core experience that made it so beloved by the fans in the first place. For instance, fans adore the Drop Dash, a newer move in classic Sonic’s arsenal that debuted in 2017's Sonic Mania. That was a natural addition to SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS that Nakamura and crew knew the fans would appreciate.
By contrast, the team removed the classic Lives system and the concept of Game Overs, relics of a bygone era that have become more and more phased out of modern platforming games.
“Sonic Generations is one of those classic games that people love, so we don't want to change that,” says Nakamura. “But we do realize there are a lot of elements of Sonic Generations that are kind of stuck in the past, and we wanted to make sure it's modernized. We made some changes to the core game experience, but we didn't want to change the levels or make it something different. We wanted to provide that Sonic Generations experience.”
Admittedly, Sonic Generations was never a particularly long game—especially for those who played through the levels only once and then never again. These players may have missed out on various nuances of the game’s level design, so Sonic Team has integrated a new feature designed to enrich the game.
“We want people to explore the stages more and get more into running around and finding new places within the Acts,” says Nakamura, “so we included this new system called Chao Rescue. We've hidden Chao all over the different stages, and by going to different areas and finding places that you've never been to before—even in the original Sonic Generations—you might be able to find a Chao. It really encourages people to explore the level more and not just speed run it once and be done with it.”
Even without taking this new feature into consideration, Nakamura states that the Shadow portion of the game is comparable in length to Sonic’s campaign.
For those who pick up the SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS Digital Deluxe Edition, there’s even more fun to be had—though not all of it will be available immediately on release. An additional skin for Shadow will transform him into the movie version of his character, complete with Keanu Reeves's voice and an additional level based on a location from the film. Other extras include a digital art book and soundtrack, as well as the aforementioned Terios skin. “If you buy the Digital Deluxe Edition, it's going to come included,” explains Iizuka. “We highly recommend for anyone who's pre-ordering or purchasing to buy the Digital Deluxe Edition, because there's a lot of great content in there.”
The original Sonic Generations was created to celebrate 20 years of Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s interesting to note that the time between Shadow’s debut in Sonic Adventure 2 and the release of SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS will be even longer. It’s a testament to Shadow’s continued popularity, and Sonic Team wants to continue to give the fans what they want, whether that's Shadow or other characters that haven’t had time in the limelight for a while.
“There's been all these games and all these characters,” says Nakamura. “There's been so much built up in this Sonic world. I’m really happy that people have been supporting it and that we're able to keep building and adding to it. We know fans are always saying, ‘I want to see this character back again,’ and the team really appreciates all the love that our fans have for the things that we've done. We get a lot of requests for all these characters that we want to try to bring back, but we only have so much manpower, so much time in the day, to bring them to people."
"We will continue making games and bringing great experiences to the fans. Both teams are working hard and are really focused on making sure everyone's happy with all the stuff that we're doing.”