When Shadow the Hedgehog launched in 2005 as an edgier take on the Sonic series, it was lambasted for including firearms, vehicles, and swearing in what was typically seen as a family-friendly franchise. Sure, it never quite went the route of the M-rated Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but he’d let out a “damn” upon getting hit or exclaim “damn, not here!” when he fell to his death. But from the sound of it, at one point Sega was considering making Shadow the Hedgehog an M-rated game, and that means there’s audio somewhere at Sega of Shadow voice actor Jason Griffith saying “fuck” in character.
Griffith, who voiced both Sonic and Shadow from 2005 to 2009, recently gave an interview with GameLuster at Momocon in Atlanta in which he revealed that Sega was initially at least considering aiming for a much stricter rating with Shadow the Hedgehog than the E10+ it ultimately got. During recording sessions, Griffith was told to do multiple takes for lines, one that would go into the game that was eventually released, and another that could go into a hypothetical M-rated Shadow the Hedgehog. As a result, Griffith recorded “hours” of Shadow lines that dropped f-bombs left and 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,” Griffith told GameLuster. “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.”
As an adult, this alternate-universe version of the game is a hilarious hypothetical, but I would have been devastated in 2005 if I wasn’t allowed to play Shadow the Hedgehog as a kid because the guy was dropping f-bombs with reckless abandon. My parents already weren’t thrilled by Shadow using lower-tier swear words. I still remember when I was having a tough time with a boss fight and my dad was visibly annoyed at how many times Shadow said “damn.”
While Shadow the Hedgehog is widely regarded as one of the worst games in the series, I still have a lot of fondness for it as a Shadow stan. I’d like to revisit it this year, since it is the Year of Shadow, after all. I can’t help it. I’m just nostalgic leading up to Sonic the Hedgehog 3.