Learning why Shadow is so popular with Sonic X Shadow Generations and Takashi Iizuka

He may not be packing heat this time, but Shadow the Hedgehog is still ready for a hot year.

In fact, Sega has declared 2024 the Year of Shadow, which will include the character’s prominent role in the film Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which comes to theaters this December. Shadow is also making an impact in the gaming world this year, thanks to a new campaign that’s coming in Sonic X Shadow Generations (launching on Octboer 25, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC).

This package includes a remaster of 2011’s Sonic Generations, but the new Shadow content might become the highlight of the game. I had a chance to play a level during the recent Summer Game Fest, and I enjoyed how it recaptured the feel of the Sonic Adventure games. Sure, that boost mechanic from the modern Sonic levels in Generations is still there, but it felt much less prominent.

I also got a chance to talk with Takashi Iizuka, creative director for all of Sonic and the man who created Shadow the Hedgehog. I asked him about Shadow’s big year, why Generations was ready for a remaster, and I may have also bugged him about Big the Cat for some reason.

New generation

GamesBeat: Why was there a desire to bring back Sonic Generations?

Takashi Iizuka: When we released Sonic Colors Ultimate, there was a huge response from the fans. “This is great. We want Generations next. Give us more Sonic Generations.” The team and I took that to heart. One of these days we wanted to do a Sonic Generations remaster. It happened that that sentiment about Sonic Generations bubbling up from the fans, as well as this year being the year of Shadow – he’s going to be in the new movie – we wanted to bring those things together. That was really the idea behind the start of Sonic x Shadow Generations.

GamesBeat: What do you think it was about Sonic Generations that made it so popular the first time around?

Iizuka: In 2011, when Sonic Generations first came out, it was our 20th anniversary title. The concept was to go back and go through 20 years of Sonic history, picking up all the most popular zones, and having it be a piece of content that spoke to the fans. That helped kick off the popularity. But it also had really amazing graphics at the time. It incorporated modern Sonic gameplay alongside all of the story content and good-looking graphics to make it something that anyone who was a Sonic fan would want to pick up and play, but if you’d never known any Sonic games, you could also pick it up and get the full spectrum of everything people loved about Sonic.

Shadow’s big year

GamesBeat: What happened first – the decision to put Shadow in Sonic Generations, or did you want to do something with Shadow in general this year?

Iizuka: Back when the second movie came out, there was the big reveal of Shadow. When movie two was being developed and that idea was present, we really wanted to make sure, when movie three came out – if there was going to be a movie three – at that point we knew we needed to start thinking about what we could deliver, what we could make to release as the same time as movie three, whatever it would be. That was the idea behind making Shadow Generations content.

GamesBeat: In the original Sonic Generations, we had the classic Sonic and the modern boost Sonic. When I was playing the Shadow levels, there was still the boost feature, but it felt a bit more like the Sonic Adventure games, where Shadow originated. Was that intentional?

Iizuka: It may have been because the theme of that level you played was the Ark stage from Sonic Adventure 2. We did want to make sure we went through all those great Shadow moments and re-created them for this title, letting you go through that kind of thing. But the gameplay is based on the modern Sonic boosting gameplay.

We added the Chaos control, one of the unique things that Shadow can do and Sonic can’t, and we designed the level around Shadow being able to use Chaos control. It does have the essence that you’re talking about. But when we were designing not only the game, but all the stages for Shadow, we wanted to make sure there were things that Shadow could do differently from modern Sonic.

GamesBeat: Was there ever any thought of giving him guns again?

Iizuka: No guns in Shadow Generations, but we do have new abilities for Shadow, the doom powers. You may have seen some of those in the trailer, and you may have played them in the game. Those are going to be new actions that Shadow can do that are special to this game. They’ll be a lot of fun, something different and unique.

GamesBeat: There are a lot of Sonic characters that have been introduced over the years. What is it about Shadow that you think has stuck with people?

Iizuka: When you look at Sonic, he’s a hero. He’s going to defeat the bad guys. He’s going to stop whatever badness is out there. He’s very much what people imagine when they think of a hero. Shadow’s also a hero, but he’s a dark hero. He’s more complicated. He’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. It’s that kind of complicated heroic element that makes him cool. That’s probably what makes him so appealing to fans for such a long time.

GamesBeat: Are Sonic and Shadow friends? Are they just rivals? Workplace buddies? Exactly what is the relationship there?

Iizuka: They’re not friends. It’s weird, because they’re also not rivals in the true sense. From Sonic’s perspective, he looks at Shadow and says, this person is very fast, just like me. He has lots of abilities just like me. Sonic probably sees Shadow as a rival. But when you talk about how Shadow sees Sonic, it’s more like, who is this blue guy who gets in my way? Get out of my way. You’re bothering me. That’s really more of the relationship that Shadow feels toward Sonic. While Sonic is thinking, no, you’re my rival, I’m going to come get you. Shadow’s thinking, get out of my face.

GamesBeat: Is the Shadow campaign completely separate from the original Sonic Generations campaign? Is there any way that they connect?

Iizuka: Both Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations are two games that exist inside of one package, Sonic x Shadow Generations. But because they’re both Generations titles, they both have similarities. The biggest similarity is the story. We’ll have Sonic Generations where the Time Eater appears. He sucks everyone into the White Space. Time and space are nullified. What happens in the Shadow story, the same thing happening in the Sonic Generations storyline is happening in the Shadow storyline at the same time. That story is working in parallel. When the Time Eater comes out, he’s coming out in Shadow’s world and Sonic’s world at the same time. The story progresses through to the end in parallel.

GamesBeat: Is it fun to zone in on Shadow this year? Is this something that maybe you can do with other Sonic characters in the future?

Iizuka: Shadow is kind of on par with Sonic as far as popularity. He’s our number two character. And we have him in movie three. So it all happened to be this perfect combination of a popular character, a movie, and the game as well that really allowed us to execute on the years of Shadow. We don’t necessarily have plans for a different character every year. But if we can get people excited and all the conditions are met, there will probably be other years where we focus on characters directly.

GamesBeat: Is Tails okay knowing that Shadow is more popular than him?

Iizuka: Tails is probably okay. Movie two was a big spotlight for Tails. Everyone really got excited for him. He’s still an extremely popular character.

Other friends

GamesBeat: Is there ever an opportunity to add more characters to Sonic Generations? Do you think we’ll get Big the Cat Generations someday?

Iizuka: On the Sonic Generations side, we do have a lot of characters in there. Not as playable characters, but as other characters you meet that got sucked into the White Space. We have Tails and Amy, all the core cast, and many more. On the Shadow side we have a similar situation. These characters got sucked into the White Space and exist there. As you’re playing Shadow Generations, you’ll run into more characters on the Shadow side as well. When you put both Sonic and Shadow Generations together, we have a pretty extended loop of characters participating in the story.

GamesBeat: These days it seems like games take longer to make. Sometimes we don’t see a character for three, four, five years. But Sonic we see at least once a year, if not more. Is that an important goal, to make sure that there’s always something coming out with Sonic?

Iizuka: Thank you for appreciating and acknowledging that fact. I think a lot of people forget about that. Sonic Frontiers took five years of development time to get to market. But we want to make sure our fans are always getting more content and fresh content. My job is to start planting all these seeds as early as possible, to give games enough time to mature into something we can bring to market.

A lot of what I do is making sure all the different teams are working on something, and that’s all planned out so every year we have something fresh and new for our fans to play, enjoy, and get ready to see what’s coming next year. It takes up a lot of my time, so I appreciate you recognizing that it’s not just super easy to toss a game out.

GamesBeat: Remasters of new content like this, you can make something new, but familiar, and it might not take as many resources as Sonic Frontiers did. Are you thinking about other remasters like this? Do fans want other games to come back?

Iizuka: We don’t have a remaster plan. We always want to be bringing new games out as much as possible. But we also know our fans really like it when we remaster things. We’ll listen to what the fans have to say, and if a lot of people really want something, that will be an idea to put on the table and bring to the teams. Hey, a lot of people really want this. Can we get that done?

GamesBeat: We had Sonic Origins, which was a fun collection of some of the older 16-bit games. There were a couple of things missing there, though. Is there any chance a way to play Knuckles Chaotix might pop up on modern systems?

Iizuka: It’s hard. We have so many games in our library. Asking for one of them–people do ask for Knuckles Chaotix, but we don’t hear a lot of people asking for it. It’s hard to say right now that we could remaster that.

GamesBeat: Here’s one even fewer people have asked for, then. The Sonic arcade game with the trackball, SegaSonic the Hedgehog?

Iizuka: We understand the hardcore fans like yourself would love it. But those aren’t very easy games to play. We want to make sure we’re releasing games that new people can come into play too.