UPDATE: A Shadow the Hedgehog Beta Was Recovered, and It’s Only Slightly Embarrassing

A Holiday Fork in the Road

As if politics, writing my comics, overhauling virtually all assets of Sonic World, settling back into empty verisimilitude, and setting my sights on seeking employment in the New Year haven’t kept me busy the very next days after Christmas—my sister and her husband, who’ve brought tons of light into my otherwise lifeless home setting alongside their cat, are back home down south by now—or, God forbid, finding out the art design of the batshit Shrek tie-in game for the original Xbox (and, to that effect, the even weirder GameCube rerelease Shrek: Extra Large) was handled by TODD SPAWN-SPAWNING MCFARLANE OF IMAGE COMICS FAME, I also plan on updating my previous posts, as they’re well beyond dated at this point. I know, one person can change a lot in a few years’ time, huh? Regardless, one of the most common activities you’d see me partaking in is multimedia-tasking, that is listening to and sporadically watching a video (usually a half hour to several hours long) while working on a project that doesn’t require audio. At this point, I’m not sure what spurred my dive into this update’s subject matter, but it likely had to do with the video or the project I was working on at the time, and it’s an update that (a) ties into part two of my very first post and (b) has brought me to consider updating that post in particular.

It’s virtually impossible to say anything about 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog that hasn’t already been pointed out here, but one thing I’ve never quite emphasized is the initial response to its announcement, which I’ll be comparing to the dinner scene from Christmas Vacation. See, there was quite the buildup to a title that sought to explore the darker and more sordid aspects of its titular antihero’s backstory by going for a more grim and psychological angle. Fans were skeptical, considering many of them appreciated the brighter and simpler take that Sonic Heroes went for, but at least the more mature approach, pre-story, and thematic elements of Sonic Adventure 2 would make their return.

Right?

Cut to the wholesome times in Sonic‘s history being disrupted by bullet holes and Shadow literally shooting the audience in the face at the game’s announcement. It’s the Sonic equivalent of Clark Griswald cutting open the turkey only to be greeted by smoke and hideous white meat, as the fans were left gobsmacked in the worst and presumably most awkward way conceivable. It was literally believed to be an April Fools’ joke, so there’s at least ninety-seven RedLetterMedia clips I can use to sum up the reaction. Regardless, as discussed in my beta content post here, it’s more than likely what was shown at the time was even more vulgar and obnoxious than what ended up being released, given the visual evidence of more extreme violence and swearing.

How can you possibly top the final game’s immaturity?

Dying to See a Trainwreck

A couple days ago, I was drawn once more to Hidden Palace, which is less of a fanmade wiki and more so the ultimate video game prototype archive. Let’s ignore the wonderful “This site is hent… I mean, Rem Lezar-free” bumper at the bottom of every page and check out this trending article, which is longer than every post on this blog combined: “One Bad Ass Hedgehog”. That is not the title of that short story you wrote in high school. It’s a direct reference to one of the most now-infamous audio files from the article’s subject matter: three newly discovered and restored Shadow the Hedgehog prototype builds. For reference, I didn’t even know one had been found other than the trial version, as I’ve sorta-kinda kept up with the Lost Media Wiki page for… some release of the game prior to its E10+ rating (it was heavily censored to avoid a T rating, which created numerous inconsistencies in the final product as well as abandoning its obvious demographic.)

Anywho, the trial version doesn’t have much to offer in the way of differences from the final version, but I’ve personally analyzed the file structure of two full builds—one for the GameCube and another for the Xbox—and by golly, is there gold in these hills? What makes the very early former build, which matches the build revealed at E3, unique is that it comes damn near close to containing an unrecognizable soundtrack to the end result’s. The tracks for E3 stages like Westopolis, Sky Troops, and Death Ruins didn’t change at all; some tracks feature only the mildest of differences from what they became, hence why I decided not to discuss those for Cryptic Castle, Egg Breaker, or Final Haunt here (you can hear a comparison on the Cutting Room Floor page here, along with all the other tracks); others are used for the wrong stages, like Black Bull’s theme being an early composition for Egg Dealer’s. Of course, that’s not where my interest lies—that would be in the entirely unfamiliar songs, those with sampled lyrics, and the unused vocal tracks.

Some of the better examples are familiar while boasting sounds fresh enough to be interesting. Digital Circuit is softer and more ominous, Glyphic Canyon is both less and more rough and dusty at the same time, Black Comet is a low-quality composition with spacey whirring instrumental tracks, and G.U.N. Fortress consists of three separate files: one close to the final version and two more intense continuations. These continuations are not in the final game, but similar equivalents are mixed into the version from the official soundtrack. Some strange examples—namely Central City, The ARK, and Iron Jungle—share anywhere from a vague to clear resemblance to their final versions but sample lyrics from what I can only assume are lesser-known hip-hop songs. SEGA has a storied history of sampling pre-existing audio for their games’ soundtracks, the most famous being the “layin’ the wax and spinnin’ the sounds” quote from an episode of The A-Team that can be heard in the trippy Chao Lobby theme from Sonic Adventure 2. That would be fine, but aside from less explicit examples (just take the line “Look out, ’cause I’m settin’ it off” in Central City, in which the dark mission is to set off large bombs), the Iron Jungle theme is near-identical to its official composition other than such charming lyrics as “tight as jeans on a fat ass”. Or maybe “tight as jeans on that ass”, they’re mixed rather quiet. Regardless, the next big meme is born!

Lyrics aside, the best of these examples include the themes for Glyphic Canyon, Central City, and The ARK (the Lost Impact theme used for The Doom in this prototype is sad, but less so than in the final version, and it actually comes off as more eerie and tragic than anything), but others like Lethal Highway, Prison Island, and Air Fleet are even farther from what they became, which is of course to say they were entirely redone in every aspect (for some reason, the first two of those match the quality level of Black Comet.)

Granted, for the most exciting of them all, we have to switch over to the Xbox prototype, in which every vocal theme to be played in the end credits is replaced with “I Am… All of Me”… except for three. One is an instrumental version of “Waking Up” while another is an alternate recording of “All Hail Shadow” with some decent lyrical changes in relation to the game’s premise, but the last is… well, remember the part of my beta content post where I mentioned the three unused vocal themes from the game, those being “All of Me” and “Broken” by Sins of a Divine Mother along with “Who I Am” by Magni-Fi? Well, at the time, it was more or less a “he said, she said” situation where you had to take the rumor with a grain of salt, as that really was all it amounted to, but it would appear based on the inclusion of “Broken” as one of the vocal themes in this prototype that it was at least considered to make it in… although many of the unrecoverable files from the disc had to be either erased or replaced, so it’s hard to confirm even now. The one sign of its inclusion being genuine is how high-quality it is compared to other recordings released online.

Other than that, the third GameCube build from two months before release includes an alternate recording of “Never Turn Back”, piano solo included, but on the subject of voice files? Well… a few unused lines were recovered, but let’s face it: only two eye-rolling selections are worthy of being shared below.

Obviously, the sound is where most of my intrigue lies (I haven’t even brought up the use of Eggman’s theme from Sonic Adventure 2 in the place of the final game’s remix), but while visual details include object placements, placeholder models, darker textures for Shadow, a vertically inverted story map, a deeper purple vertex color scheme for the Black Comet stages, and the pinkish-red Black Arm blood from promotional material (Hidden Palace is incorrect about the submarines in G.U.N. Fortress, as they’re clearly visible at the end of the final level, if indeed at a farther distance), the unused test stage “stage9900” is not included in spite of its purpose, and neither is the uncensored “Maria’s death” scene filmed briefly and in poor quality at an unknown public event. One thing I found in the E3 build, though, which may not have been found by anyone prior, appears in the file “advertise_EN.fnt” within the “fonts” directory where the subtitles are stored. I’m almost hoping we don’t uncover an earlier beta than this.

“shit shit! shit!! shit!!! shit!!!! shit!!!!!”

– The guy who fetches Yuji Naka coffee, probably.