It's a real shame the KH: Dark Road app's content couldn't be included in the game, its additions name the KH3 story so much more fulfilling.

@6:30 that's my favorite song too. I replay the level just so I can hear it lol. It's nice

Just for not having rubber banding I think this game is infinitely better than Mario Kart 64.

I loved playing the Wii version with the motion controls. I would actually really like a modern game, maybe with the Switch joycons, that would play like this again

Just Finished Donkey Kong Country Returns HD with all Puzzle Pieces, most people want Donkey Kong Country Returns & Tropical Freeze to run on the same engine, progress continues on after you finished Returns then straight to Tropical Freeze.

The Tiki Taks have nice designs as henchmen but not as villains.

There’s just so much going on in stages but it’s never quite overloading. It really does make things feel so much alive. One moment you’re sliding down vines, the next you’re blasting out a cannon barrel and hitting a Snowmad boat on the beach. Then you’re scaling a giant tree

I want to see Donkey Kong Country 4 in the old pre-rendered style.

I like Shadow the Hedgehog i think its cool and fun :D

If anyone is watching this video after I’m writing this you should definitely try the game. I played a level 4304 times in the last 3 days to improve my best time by 0.024 seconds. It was worth it.

All I ask is that they keep star wars and marvel away from all future games

Love this vid. Goin ham on Returns HD tonight

I am surprised you didn't talk more about the Gloomy Galleon pufferfish fight and the Hideout Helm theme's intensity as you try to deactivate the machine in time.

I was not expecting to crazy hard disagree with this take Sonic Team has been deathly afraid of Shadow's backstory, to the point where it seemed like it had been soft retconned after generations And Shadow Gens' story sets a wonderful foundation for the character going into the future, where for the past 15 years he's just been namek saga Vegeta

just saw a video bout alchemy connections to Kingdom Hearts and the connections on that level is pretty compelling proof that Sora will fall to darkness as well. Great video!

They used like 15 seconds of life and learn in sonic movie 3 and I was so pissed in the theatre because Happy got 4 gyatt dayum minutes in sonic movie 2

(7:20 "In A Snow Bound Land" is afaik the only music in a game from David Wise which he didn't compose himself but was composed by one of his stated inspirations: Vangelis - Theme from Antarctica)

I think you might be a little too cynical about some of the details of the story here. I think it's a good approach to Shadow's past to show respect to what used to be (plus don't be so ashamed for defending Shadow '05, it's okay to love the games before the 2010s). SEGA did their best to try shunning all of it as soon as they failed in '05 and '06, but they only got worse with time until they embraced the shaky past. Nowadays we WANT to see a Sonic '06 remake and see Shadow featured in more games, just without that humiliating caricature like the one we saw in Sonic Boom. No more self-deprecating humor, only pure proud love.

Maybe I’m just stupid, but I didn’t feel like the mysteries were too easy to solve. The only one I got right away was chapter two since I felt it was super obvious the way the girls talked to each other eg yuma in disguise were all in on it, but even then I still had fun figuring out how they did it. I felt they were more complex than the Danganronpa mysteries but also I could be biased since I’ve been in that fandom so long. On the other hand, I felt my theories were more interesting than the actual solution; in case 1, I thought it was the nun and she was faking the arm injury to draw suspicion away from herself or the injury was sustained escaping the clock tower, so I was underwhelmed when it turned out to just be the priest. Either way I love this game so much and I thought your analysis was great, good video!

This video is mostly an expanded redundant articulation of the age old grievance that saga remakes Green Hill too much and we’d all prefer new original zones like press garden. Like sure, but this is Sega we're dealing with, an effortful highly polished game that reintroduces shadow’s dealed to a new generation…coinciding with the movie… that's a massive W that the 30-somethings in the crowd need to keep in perspective. The thing to keep in mind is that the medium of shadow generations is a video game. If it's got great gameplay, awesome characters, enchanting environments and music, then it's a W. Having a plot that’s preoccupied with rehashing the past is a first world problem that's a good problem to have. On top of that it's a good thing that Sega diverted its budget to everything else instead of diverting effort to make a worthwhile new story. When I want a high-quality original story there's plenty of other media forms designed to offer that specifically. So yeah I disagreed with the priorities of this video, making the headline in the title a glaring negative on account of the narrative contents of the game. I saw a review on KZbin of sonic mania where the person’s overall take on the game was negative or lesser than the others, on account of its contrived scatterbrain premise of warping to lots of previous existing sonic locations. And it's like, if you look at a pie chart of what makes a video game a video game, the narrative is such a small piece of the pie that using that as the central strike against the game is misguided. Sure I personally would absolutely prefer new original stories that look forward. But I'm also realistic about my expectations from a company that delivered us the stories of sonic lost world, forces and frontiers. A series of afterthoughts duct taped together. One reason I am somewhat willing to accept an overload of nostalgia and rehashing is because it's a very practical business choice that will undoubtedly drive higher sales and player engagement. When sonic succeeds as a series in the public consciousness, all sonic fans win. I don't know how long you've been a sonic fan but for a stretch there in the 2010s Sonic was running on fumes and it seemed like he would just be kept on life-support with occasional releases if anything. Cut to the middle of the 2020s and you know that sonic is enjoying huge success these days. Although shadow generations does rehash all that old stuff, an important purpose it's serving is introducing shadows whole deal with a fully modern polished presentation, to a new generation of young gamers who are not familiar with shadow 05 and what not. You said you wanted to the shadow/sonic race/battle to have a new playable manifestation, but it’s just a mini-bowser’s-fury expanasion so that’s an unrealistic demand. Introducing a whole new storyline for shadow in 2025, when his basic story arc is being reimagined in the new movie, would've been far too much disjointed overload. So if generations’ nostalgia is disappointing to you from a narrative angle, well the medium is a video game and it offers exceptionally good gameplay, graphics, creativity, personality, music, so many massive W's that are much more of a priority when assessing the value of a work in this medium. Finally there’s the presentation style of this video, which prompts me to suspect that some of the contents are non-substantive. Indulging in a Liam-Triforce-style synonym smoothie, dressing up simple basic thoughts with undergraduate level vocabulary, knowing that the sugar in that smoothie will dazzle and impress some viewers. But in some cases it's a matter of taking a simple fact like “the generations remaster comes with shadows campaign” and dressing it up as “we're seeing another throwback installment, but this time our favorite ultimate life form is sharing the billing.” Like maybe your next video is gonna say that “super Mario 3-D world is the Wii-U outing for the portly plumber.” Not like it’s some big crime, but it is insulting to my intelligence and I wouldn't want gaming audiences to continue being duped by shallow non-substantive vocabulary flexing.

I just want to know how they messed up the color palette

When I was a kid, we got a promotional VHS advertisement for this game in the mail. My brother and I must have watched that tape over a hundred times between the day it arrived and Christmas. We'd watch it at least once every day after school, getting hyped as fuck for the day we could finally play it. It was a rare case of being _way_ too over-excited for a game, but still feeling perfectly justified, because Diddy Kong Racing _totally_ delivered. We played the _shit_ out of it. Unlocked _everything._

22:09 ""I don't mean to assert myself and play armchair developer..." and yet it didn't stop you from doing just that, huh? If it was a boss fight... 1. How do you work in Chaos Control and Chaos Spear (and, potentially, Doom Wing, on replay) in a way that doesn't trivialize the fight in gameplay, without also compromising the fight from Sonic's perspective? 1-a. What power is racing Sonic meant to highlight? Biolizard tests Chaos Spear and Chaos Control, Metal Overlord tests the Doom Surf, Mephiles tests the Doom Morph, and Devil Doom tests the Doom Wings. What power of Shadow's would Sonic highlight? The boost? 2. How do you make the fight not feel redundant? If you're playing Shadow Generations, you also have Sonic Generations and have played the same thing 3. How do you not trivialize the player's victory if they're not meant to win? 4. How do you tie Sonic in thematically with the other bosses representing negative aspects of who Shadow could have become/has overcome, given that he represents positivity in Shadow's life? And whatever answer you come up with has to work within the constraints of the game we were going to get, not a perfect dream scenario. Odds are, if you're thinking it, so too did the devs, and their conclusion was that a cutscene preserving Shadow's rep (i.e. He lost, but was holding back in order to do so) was better than trying to answer those questions I posed. It really helps to ask "If the devs didn't do what I wanted/hoped, why not?" and then ask yourself why, if you were in their shoes, why you would have made the choice they made, not "What I would have done with unlimited time, money, resources, and the benefit of hindsight, and no accountability if my choice goes wrong." 24:31 Sonic Team picked Shadow because its an easy way to experiment with Sonic's gameplay without having it tied to Sonic himself. Give Sonic an alternate form? People don't like it (the Werehog). Give him temporary powers? People sour on it eventually (the Wisps). Give powers to a (from a gameplay standpoint) identical clone known for having extra powers (Chaos Control/Spear) and an origin that allows for experimentation (the Black Arms)? Easy money. It doesn't hurt that Shadow is either the first, second, or third most popular character (depending on how you feel about Sonic or Knuckles), so people will eat it up no matter what (which they did, looking at Sonic movie 3 and Shadow Gens' sales data). This was also done in the context of an anniversary game; "looking back" is basically the whole deal. Sure, they could've made a whole new game for Shadow (re: White Space, and updating Gerald, Maria, Black Doom and the Black Arms), But: 1. easy nostalgia from fans 2. reusable assets 3. reused levels rather than having to create new material wholesale (#2 and #3 are why I suspect we got Radical Highway (to the extent we did, not just the singular level), Sunset Heights and Chaos Island and not Westopolis or the Black Comet) You're also ignoring/forgetting that, from Shadow's perspective, Sonic Forces and Sonic Frontier haven't happened yet, and Sonic 06 never did. So, in-universe, it IS forward thinking (Gerald speculates as much) even if, by its very nature, out of universe, it can't be.

24:58 obviously his past is part of the identify and why the character is so interesting

12:15 by who exactly? I never had that problem

Growing up my favorite sonic games were adventure 1&2, heroes, and shadow the hedgehog. After those nothing grabbed my attention so I haven't played a sonic game since Shadow 05. If this game hadn't focused on shadow I probably wouldn't have played it, but I'm thankful that it did, and got me to play a sonic game almost 20 years later. I hope the next sonic game I play will be adventure 3.

I like Shadow Generations, but everyone I’ve heard voicing their problems with the game sound completely reasonable. They, and myself, all want to move away from the past and to look towards something new, to see and experience the characters, new and old and exactly as their original selves, going on brand new adventures. Personally, I want the offical writing to be done by professional Japanese writers again rather than English fans, but that’s more of the same. I want people unbiased towards the series who can guide it towards uncharted territory. We’re at the last stretch before we cross into new lands, we just need to cut the last tie.

I'm sorry. But while I understand why you think Sonic 3 & Knuckles is better, I can't see why you think Adventure 2 is better than Gens when clearly it's not. Your one of those fanboys that loves it cause of how it impact, despite overlooking it's problems. Like the Mech and shooting fameplay and the level designs being worst than Adventure 1.

Game that released 2 months ago needs to say goodbye. Right. Awesome title 😒

The thing you’re missing is that after a while they stopped doing anything good with Shadows character since 06. By pushing aside what made him so compelling, they relegated him to an “edgy cameo”. This game is not only a reintroduction to a new generation, but a renewal of what made Shadow who he is. To ignore otherwise is to diminish that and Maria. Story wise, they can certainly look forward to telling new stories like with 06. You don’t have to bring up Maria all the time, but it should be done every once in a while. Like Batman and his parents. She’s not a footnote, she’s the star the guides him. The light shines even though the star is gone.

How is he an anti-hero? Can someone please explain this to me?

The time stop ability helps differentiate the gameplay style from Sonic

I was never a fan of Shadow either. I always thought he's a very overhyped character that gets too much credit and not looking at his flaws. In Adventure 2, he wanted to destroy humanity because of the death of his close friend & all these years he thought that her wish was to kill all people from that planet that harmed her and the citizens of the Ark. Only by endgame he realized she meant that he must helped people and now he's helping Sonic & co. stopping the Ark to destroy the planet. That all seems clunky to me. And than after destroying The Final Hazard, Shadow dies and fulfilling Maria's wish, even though he could've lived. I mean, if Shadow dies, why wouldn't Sonic die too? But than we get to Heroes & into Shadow 05 and things have been retcon through everything that we've been through in Adventure 2. With aliens, androids & other shenanigans thrown in for no purpose. Like if Gerald built the Ark to destroy the aliens from invading Earth, than why would he also use it to destroy the planet? Why didn't he tell G.U.N. or anyone about a alien invasion? Why was the little boy who was with Maria at the Ark long ago working with G.U.N. when he knows that G.U.N. were responsible for ahutting down the Ark & killed Maria? The whole Shadow having amnesia & going through his past & character development were very poorly executed. Also Metal Sonic is more of a rivaled to Sonic than Shadow. Shadow barely had any rivalry in there quest aside from sports & party games. While I am happy Shadow Generations did the whole story from Shadow's past justice, it still wasn't enough to make me love his character with everything that he has going through and who knows what they'll do to him in the future if they rebooted Adventure 2 with better implementation to his character or story or continued where he left off after Shadow Generations. Also the whole Never Turn Back thing from Shadow 05 didn't work out. Didn't it? I haven't watch the Sonic Movie 3. But I'm hoping they treat Shadow & the Maria accident better than the games has.

And good riddance, because as much as I like Shadow as a character, I was never a huge fan of his backstory and his human connections to begin with.

I think... or at least I hope... that Shadow's success here and on the silver screen will finally let SEGA know it's time to move on, especially combined with Superstars apparent failure. It's absolutely the right time to *start* to finish the story that adventure started, that X adapted, and that Shadow 05 and Sonic 06 killed.

Time will tell on this one. I'd like to think that Sonic Team is ready to move on and actually develop the series moving forward, or maybe it's just wishful thinking. The movie after all is introducing Shadow into its setting, so of course they're going to spotlight his past there, and Shadow Gens was essentially reestablishing Shadow for a modern audience, after a decade or so of mostly spotlighting Sonic and Sonic alone. If they can move on from this point and evolve the characters and setting going forward then there's no fault to be found in my eyes, but assuming that they keep Shadow stuck in the past from here on out, then yes I'd agree it's hypocritical.

27:50: If I had a nickel for every Sonic-adjacent KZbinr I follow who has defended _Shadow the Hedgehog_ (2005), I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but I don't follow that many Sonic-adjacent KZbinrs in the first place.

Sonic fans arent happy with anything

With the year of Shadow officially in the rearview mirror, I can say i agree. This was a great year, and set a good example for Sega to get people acquainted with more characters as the movies introduce more of them. Im not saying we need a remake of a game or a brand new one every time it's a release year for the next movie, but the formula itself is effective marketing.

Basically, the story is just rehashing the majority of what we already know of shadow. But the only thing they've added was that Black Doom is back because of a larvae. Smfh, this renassance for Sonic is nothing but a scam. EVERYONE has been factory reset and have forgotten their own stories from prior decades. Frontiers and Shadow gens both need to go.

Black doom didn't come back from time eater he appears BEFORE time eater. He actually rebuilt himself from the larva from dark beginnings. Just wanted to clarify that. Good video otherwise

sooo...the whole video is about moving forward and not sticking to the past because you are sick and tired of relying on the nostagia specially with shadow generations why the story of shadow generations doesn't work for you in a way understandable.

Sonic, as a series, carries nostalgia with it like a nicotine patch. It has to keep reminding players of the things they liked in the past as a dangling carrot to make them want to approach new things; after all, Frontiers didn't just remake old levels, but kept peppering in Sonic saying "oh, this is just like X!" or "I bet Y would love this!" all the while. But for me, the real sign that it won't be slowing down soon comes from reading the list of songs on the soundtrack to the recently-released Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where at least half of it is taken wholesale from Sonic Adventure 2. Sure, it's a bit easier to permit it when the film is essentially a retelling of that game complete with Eclipse Cannon and the Live and Learn instrumentation, but at this point I am well and truly tired of the "I found you, faker!" scene and just want something else for Sonic and Shadow to do.

To me, shadow generations meant that sonic team are capable at acomplishing what they did in the 2010's But now, they need to move on and go beyond their past. Here's hoping they nail Sonic Frontiers 2 !

I'll say the last bit of this I absolutely agree on & it's part of wut makes this story suck so bad. ST/Sega could do nothin than appeal to the past so strongly no matter how much it neuters it's characters to do so. It's similar to frontiers & how all it did was redo things from past games like themes & character arcs but 10x worse than before. It sucks it's all gettin so much praise cus they know nostalgia is the only thing that works even if it almost equally gets criticized. Ppl will still lap it up. Whether characters or gameplay & especially shadow, they need to move the fuck on. Shadgens & jus the entire remaster is the most conflictin sonic release I have ever dealt wit in my life. They couldn't even handle the nostalgia properly & there're too many issues I have wit it. This direction doesn't work to me & it's tirin & frustratin both for the characters(shadow in particular) & the games themselves

Don’t get me wrong as much as I would love to see shadow actually not be stuck in the past and I think him hating Sonic is honestly old, considering sega’s Sonic mandates I highly doubt shadow will ever change which is disappointing but who knows 🤷‍♂️

Great video! I really liked your observation in the last ten minutes. You're definitely right. I hope the next game(s) will be less reliant on the past. I vaguely recall Kishimoto saying that they had noticed some Sonic fans' fatigue with throwbacks and the like, so let's hope for the best.

Insanely well articulated video. This is such a good take on this game and Shadows history as a whole. Keep it up my dude

I think the biggest mistake was trying to have him brood on his past, the fun idea SA2 did was that his memories were not supposed to be even real. All throughout his first game multiple times it shows you cant take Shadow for his word. There is no record of him at all on the ark in SA2 and you know gerald wasnt on the ark the night of the raid as he wrote in his journal he wished his staff and maria were all safe up there. Then later you find out while in custody of gun he made the gun robots and then later Shadow based on "original data" he had. The game even goes so far as to leave the identity of the ultimate life form ambiguous. Confirmed by the game's director on his twitter account. The fun of the character was that everything he knows isnt true but he still chooses to do the right thing even if his memories arent real. What needed to happen after SA2 is shadow becoming his own character no longer motivated by memories or a past. But they decided to retcon all of this great writing they had in SA2 to make him more depressed and brooding. Compared to his SA2 counterpart who was cocky, smug, but also you could empathize with because hes not fully confident in what he knows to be true or not and it does bother him.

Yeah, let's not delete entire Sonic characters and give them farewells from the franchise and risk alienating those fans, let people enjoy things.