Shadow the Hedgehog was originally planned to be rated M with lots of f-bombs

Shadow the Hedgehog was a more serious and mature take on the Sonic series, but it turns out that SEGA originally had plans to take things even further with an M-rated classification.

That news comes from Jason Griffith, who voiced the character in the GameCube game. Griffith was looking back on the role in an interview with GameLuster.

The site was told that he actually recorded two takes for every line. Had SEGA gone with its original plan, it sounds like Shadow would be dropping f-bombs right and left.

Griffith said the following regarding Shadow the Hedgehog’s initial M-rated plan and cursing:

“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. 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.”

Ultimately SEGA cut back on Shadow the Hedgehog, and rather than its M rating, it instead settled for E10+. However, that was still noteworthy. Shadow the Hedgehog was the first game in the Sonic series to go that high. 

Shadow will soon be making comeback in a big way with Shadow x Sonic the Hedgehog, which comes to Switch this year. Read more about it here.