Summary
I cannot believe I am writing these words, but here it goes. Friends,Shadow the Hedgehoghas said f***.
According to Jason Griffith, Shadow’s voice actor in the noughties, there are “hours of recordings” of his character dropping the F-bomb. This is because, according to Griffith,Segatoyed with the idea of making the 2005 Shadow the Hedgehog spin-off an M-rated game, letting him swear atSonicand friends as much as his hateful little heart desired.
This revelation comes to us courtesy ofGameluster, who sat down with Griffith at Momocon last weekend.
Sega Almost Let Shadow Say F***
“Back when I was recording for that game, for Shadow the Hedgehog, I don’t remember what year it was, but they sat me down in the studio and they weren’t sure what rating the game was going to get,” says Griffith.
“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,” he continues. “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.”
Oh, it doesn’t end there. The experience must have stuck with Griffith because he was able to give us an example.
“It was just every sentence, I would be yelling ‘Sonic, give me that fing Chaos Emerald!’ or something like that,” he recalls. “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.”
The version that was for the M-rating, they had me say f*** in every single line.
Where do we even begin with this? Sure, Shadow the Hedgehog is a wild enough game with its E10+ rating, as ourangsty anti-heromows down his enemies with a gun. Throw in a few “damns”, and you have a game that’s going out of its way to try and separate itself from Sonic’s kid-friendly image. But to hear Shadow say f***? That would have altered the course of history.
However, it’s not totally surprising to hear that Sega originally wanted to shoot for a higher age rating. If you’ve had the misfortune of playing the game, you’d notice that the human enemies you fill with bullets never actually die, they just fall to the ground and move around enough to make it clear they’re still breathing. This always felt thrown in there to appease a ratings board, since killing human soldiers would probably go down worse than murdering cartoon aliens.
But to get back to the point, Sega, please drop the F-bomb cut of Shadow the Hedgehog immediately. Or just those voice lines that Griffith is on about, that’ll do.
