Shadow The Hedgehog was released in 2005 for PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox and marked
a drastically different approach to the franchise.
Instead of starring Sonic, anti-hero Shadow took center stage in a game where the use
of guns took priority over the regular spinning and dashing.
Shadow The Hedgehog also featured a morality system where players could choose to be good
or bad, these choices also influencing the story and leading to over 300 different paths
to complete the game.
The Japanese director explained how his mission was to capture older audiences, feeling that
capturing the younger audience had already been done successfully.
This new approach led the game to be the first ever title to receive a 10+ rating from the
ESRB.
However, originally the game was going to be rated even higher.
During development, the game was listed as being rated Teen and the game had to undergo
many changes to get the rating down to 10+.
However, the Sonic Team actually developed Shadow The Hedgehog with a Teen rating in
mind.
It was only because the ESRB suddenly introduced the 10+ rating months before the game was
scheduled to be released that they decided to tone content down and aim for the new rating.
These changes were also made worldwide - including in Europe and Japan.
So with that in mind, here are some of the ways that Shadow The Hedgehog was toned down
to get a 10+ rating.
To begin with the game's intro, which had a small change to a shot showing soldiers
firing up into the sky.
In the original build, shown on the left, one of these soldiers would be shot by a laser
and get thrown to the ground.
The retail release on the right cuts this section out.
Next up is instances of mild swearing.
Now, even in the retail release, you will be able to hear quite a lot of mild swear
words such as "damn".
However, originally the game would curse much more.
Take this scene, for example, which has Shadow say the sentence "what the hell is going on
with me".
In the retail release, the dialogue was changed to remove the word "hell".
This CG cutscene, as well as the intro, were developed by an American animation company
called Blur Studio.
A Blur Studio employee uploaded some of the company's work to Vimeo in 2009, with these
videos being the original unaltered versions, but with placeholder music from popular movies.
However, with these changes being made so late into the game's development, you can
also find differences by looking at things like old trailers and preview demos.
Here's another example of the word "hell" being removed, with the retail release having
Shadow say "just what was that all about", whilst in the original he said "just what
the hell was that all about".
Also, if you pay attention, you'll notice that they didn't change the lip synching to
go along.
Moving on, next we have changing all of the Black Arms aliens' blood colour from red to
green.
These are the game's main enemies and so you will not only be fighting them a lot but also
seeing a lot of green splatter shooting out of their bodies.
In the original version, however, all of these enemies shot out red blood instead, as shown
here in this E3 demo gameplay.
Lastly we have a change that was made to the death of Maria Robotnik, an event that has
been depicted many times in the Sonic franchise, including in the Sonic X anime, the comics,
as well as some of the other games.
Her death occurs by getting shot by GUN soldiers whilst trying to escape with Shadow from the
Space Colony ARK.
This event heavily traumatizes Shadow, who witnesses her death, and this is something
that gets brought up many times in the game - including in this cutscene from game's opening
moments.
Footage exists, however, of how this opening cinematic was originally supposed to look.
In the teen version of the game, the scene didn't cut to white, but instead actually
showed Maria getting shot.
In fact, in an early trailer for the game, you can see a reflection of Maria getting
killed in Shadow's eyes...
The only remaining trace of this that exists in the retail release is this monochrome still
image that's displayed before a much later boss fight.
Interestingly, this same still image was used in her card in the PSP game Sonic Rivals,
but displayed in colour.
It's worth pointing out that, at this stage, no pre-release versions of Shadow The Hedgehog
are known to exist in the wild.
All discoveries so far have come from things like early footage.
However, it is possible that one day a copy of the game in an earlier form may be discovered
and be dumped, which could lead to even more discoveries.
If this happens, it's very possible that Censored Gaming may return to the title one day and
uncover even more ways that Shadow The Hedgehog was toned down to meet its E10+ rating.
If this is an area of gaming that interests you then please make sure to hit that subscribe
button to stay up-to-date with all of Censored Gaming's new content and, until next time,
thank you for watching.
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