Shadow the Hedgehog isn’t a particularly good game, but fans were robbed of its true potential: an M-rated swear-fest where Sonic’s rival drops F-Bombs on a regular basis. That’s right, the lead character’s voice actor reveals that an M-rated version of the game was planned and he recorded some of these F-Bombs.
Jason Griffith, Shadow’s voice actor in the game, spoke with GameLuster and revealed that he swore up a storm when reading the original script. Griffith claims that SEGA was going for an M rating when they came up with the game, though it seems that they had to settle for the game’s teen rating.
“It was just every sentence, I would be yelling ‘Sonic, give me that f***ing Chaos Emerald!’ or something like that,” Griffith said. “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.”
Fans felt that SEGA was trying too hard to make Shadow the Hedgehog an edgy game, letting the character use guns and fight Sonic. Based on Griffith’s experience, it seems that SEGA was going to try even harder to make the game feel “adult.” Most fans feel that the game is actually pretty immature, though they now enjoy this title ironically.
To be fair to SEGA, Shadow was simply a product of its time, as other platformers were also trying to be more “mature.” Jak 2, the sequel to Jak and Daxter, was one of the few games that was able to successfully do this. Ratchet & Clank also had some suggestive marketing, though fans of all ages could enjoy these games with no issue, violence aside.
Despite what critics said at the time, SEGA is celebrating Shadow the Hedgehog’s legacy with this Year of Shadow celebration. This includes Sonic X Shadow Generations, a re-release of Sonic Generations with a new campaign that features Shadow. It is expected to come out this year for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.