Shadow the Hedgehog’s dad wants the ultimate life-form to be evil again (2024)

As we leave behind the party-girl pandemonium of Brat Summer, I’d like to propose a new, culture-defining season: Ultimate Life-form Autumn. It’s all about roundhouse kicks, motorcycle slides, disaffected one-liners, and unironically calling people “fakers.” It is the Year of Shadow the Hedgehog, after all. Keanu Reeves will voice the internet’s favorite edgy antagonist in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 later this year, and before that we’ll get Sonic X Shadow Generations, a remaster of 2011’s Sonic Generations with an entire Shadow-starring side game grafted on.

The Shadow Generations partition features remade levels from Sonic Adventure 2, 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog , and Sonic Forces, among others, recounting highlights from the character’s history with a range of visual and mechanical embellishments. My first hands-on experience was decidedly on-brand, the level beginning with Shadow riding a ferrite manta ray as nu metal blasted in the background. The scenario was a reimagined boss battle against Metal Overlord from 2003’s Sonic Heroes, and it played pretty much exactly as you would expect. I had to carve through the waves and spin periodically to direct projectiles back at the clanking beast, graduating through its sinister stages toward the finish line.

Even in a platforming-focused level like Kingdom Valley, it’s clear that Shadow Generations isn’t trying to usher in a new paradigm of hedgehog gameplay. You bounce off of enemies and go very fast, connecting the kinetic dots toward a frenetic flow state of high-speed interactions.

Owing to my own childhood gaming habits, I particularly enjoyed revisiting the meticulously recreated Space Colony Ark level from Sonic Adventure 2. To my surprise, it featured an unexpected, kaleidoscopic transformation halfway through — shifting the environment to resemble Radical Highway, also from Sonic Adventure 2, complete with a thumping dubstep remix of the stage’s original soundtrack. All told, it’s a nostalgic occasion, Shadow Generations, like eating an old version of a beloved candy bar prior to the sugar tax.

The instigator of the aforementioned mid-level mixup was Black Doom, a returning antagonist from 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog (you know, the one where he had a gun). “Canonically, when we talk about that game, Shadow did defeat Black Doom and did destroy the Black Comet, and that’s all gone from the world,” said Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team, and, for all intents and purposes, Shadow the Hedgehog’s dad. “However, we’re in the Generations storyline here, where the Time Eater has erased all of time and space, and so all of these things are blended together and have been brought back into the space-time continuum.”

While on the topic of returning characters, I broached the subject of Maria Robotnik appearing in Shadow Generations. Maria was Dr. Eggman’s terminally ill cousin, a close friend of Shadow the Hedgehog, arguably his only friend, before she was gunned down by, uh… GUN. “We haven’t started talking about the story inside of the Shadow Generations portion, so all we can say is sit tight and enjoy what will be presented as the story for Shadow Generations,” Iizuka said, cryptically. Given Maria’s upcoming appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, it’s reasonable to assume she’ll at least get a mention in Shadow Generations, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

To differentiate Shadow’s gameplay from that of his squeaky-clean cerulean antipode, Sonic Team has developed a suite of Doom Powers for Shadow to provide alternate options. There’s Doom Blast, Doom Wing, and Doom Surf, to begin with, and they all tend to involve some kind of creepy symbiotic polymorphism that slots in well between Shadow’s basic attacks and speed. Doom Morph straight-up turns Shadow into a squid, which is handy for dealing with tricky terrain. It was particularly crucial for Sonic Team to match these abilities to Shadow’s persona, said Shun Nakamura, producer on Sonic X Shadow Generations. “They needed to be dark abilities that are threatening and menacing, something that Sonic would never have,” he said. “We wanted to make Shadow feel almost like an outlaw — everything else be damned, he will go and get it done because of the powers and abilities he has.”

I dabbled with Shadow’s new powers while revisiting Sonic Adventure 2’s Biolizard boss battle, which involved launching Chaos Spears at globs of purple life force. I also found a moment to activate Chaos Control, a fan-favorite Shadow ability that allows the black blur to stop time and lay the smackdown on enemies. Rounding out the extra features, game director Katsuyuki Shigihara said that the Chao Rescue missions from the 2011 original are “something for Sonic to do in Sonic Generations,” but there are Shadow-specific collectibles for players to find in Shadow Generations.

One of the surprising things that stuck out to me about Shadow Generations was the game’s user interface. The medal screen is a striking, character-appropriate blend of spikes and shapes, and the 2D stage intros slide in with a burning blaze, then divide like curtains to reveal the immediate action. Iizuka joined Sega around the time of 1994’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and said he has always had a soft spot for the now-iconic 2D design elements from the side-scrolling era. Take, for example, the simple, tricolor intro splash that framed a player’s entrance to the Chemical Plant Zone. Iizuka said he’s always felt that it’s important to keep that spirited art direction alive, even as the games have graduated into 3D. “It was very Sonic-like; nothing else looked like it,” he said. “Ever since then I wanted to make sure all of the user interface and presentation of future 3D Sonic games had that same coolness — so that it still looked pop, but also cool.”

In this year of celebration for the ultimate life-form, I quizzed Sonic Team about the enduring appeal of Shadow the Hedgehog, and where the character may be headed next. Shadow was created to contrast with the far more chipper Sonic, and in the ideation phase, Iizuka mentioned that the team took inspiration from the makeup of kabuki theater performers, which is where the red painted lines on Shadow’s fur come from. “Sonic is the hero of the story — he’s fighting for justice, so he’s gonna jump into whatever crazy situation is happening because he has to,” Iizuka said. “That’s great, but what makes Shadow interesting is Shadow will do whatever Shadow believes is best for him and what his heart tells him he needs to do. Shadow has this dark side to him, he has a very tragic past, and his tragic past has shaped him, and that’s what makes him really appealing.”

One offshoot of Shadow’s self-seriousness is internet fame, negotiated by a perceived comedic edginess that is bait for irony-poisoned netizens. And if you were wondering, Sonic Team is very much aware of the memes. ”We do see people posting lots of interesting stuff, and talking about Shadow online, and for us, seeing people make all these memes is a positive thing because it shows that people like the brand and the character,” Iizuka said. “I don’t know how many years ago… there were a lot of Knuckles memes going on, out of nowhere… and there were a lot of Amy memes as well. Objectively, we’re just kind of watching what’s happening, and we like that people are having fun and engaging with our characters.”

As we wrapped up our interview, I asked Shadow the Hedgehog’s dad about areas of the character he’d like to explore in the future. “In Sonic Adventure 2, if you go through all the different stories, you have probably run into Shadow getting revenge on the entire world and being… pretty much evil,” Iizuka said. “And ever since Sonic Adventure 2, we haven’t really explored that ‘Evil Shadow’ presentation of the character. He’s always been on a different kind of spectrum. But maybe in the future it’ll be interesting to come back and revisit Shadow being not so nice, maybe even as far as evil, as far as the other characters may see him.”