Here's Your First Look At Sonic X Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings

Emerl's a surprising one to pop up. Really wish they'd port Battle or put it on NSO or something.

I've been waiting for so long to play as Shadow again. I haven't played generations but heard good things, so hopefully I'll enjoy it, specially with the new content.

Very glad to see Emerl hasn't been forgotten.

Kinda looks like a moving comic book. Wish that SEGA would make a cartoon this way like that style! 😄

They didn't put Sonic 06 in the timeline picture lol

@Itachi2099 the funniest part is they forgot 06 and remembered boom

@epicgamner Well, technically 06 didn't happen... so, I guess they didn't forget?? Haha

Emerl! Yessss! Twitter seems to be exploding with the speculation that Emerl is now the “extra playable character” - which honestly would fit the bill nicely considering their move-set can be tailored to anything.

But I’m Glad to see they are going hard with the animation and story. This is the sort of thing I’d have really appreciated back in the day after SA2 so it captures my hype. Just hope this revisit does the whole thing more justice than the actual Shadow the Hedgehog game.

@Maubari But neither did Boom or Sonic Prime

That dub is awful.....

Where's the japanese preview?!?!?

@Lizuka I hope that Emerl has a role in the game itself.

@epicgamner : They didn't really forgot though. As noted in the article they couldn't find the space to squeeze in the game.
Either way I do understand why one would find the absence of Sonic '06 funny.^^

@Maubari Hernandez literally says that the story hasn’t been forgotten and that they couldn’t fit it in.

@Samalik Please get your ears checked if you think Kirk Thornton voicing Shadow with no limitations and Stephanie Sheh voicing Maria is “awful.”

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil I can already tell the voices here isn't synced to the images on screen. Nor are they conveying the extremeness of the emotions shown.

I don't need my ears checked. I can already tell this is a dub. Maybe you need to play a Sonic game in japanese for once. The real language of the series

@Samalik I want to. But purists like you aren’t making it easy~

A HUGE W with casting Stephanie Sheh as Maria Robotnik, she is a fantastic voice actress and I think she will do great!
As for Shadow the Hedgehog... Kirk Thornton has gotten a lot better at voicing him so I think he'll do very well, maybe even better than what we expect.

@Chibi_Manny Fun fact: one of Stephanie's other roles was Darkstalkers character Lilith Aensland in a tactical RPG.

@Samalik @Ruler-Of-All-Evil Reminds me years ago when someone I knew stated they hated English dub with a passion.

Thing is the guy couldn't speak or understand Japanese. So I asked him how would he even know the difference between a bad performance and a good one.

It's been 12 years since we last spoke.

@Maubari no yeah I know lol, also isn’t 06 just non-canon?

@Yousef- Nope, you're not wrong.

@DripDropCop146 Yeah, those arguments are kind of like that situation.

Studio Giggex, I thought it was Powerhouse for a second, since they made some short 2D trailers for recent games too. Oh so many animation studios out there, they deserve to work on more long-form series!
We haven't seen Sonic this "anime" since Sonic X. It makes me wish for a longer animated series in this style, but maybe more based on the Sonic comics, that would be awesome to see tbh

@epicgamner It never was.

It's cool to see what seems to be a serious story and not the trash lines from Forces or the constant reminders of random trivia in Frontiers.

But I will say this: the voice choices are still terrible, Stephanie Sheh sounds like a moe moe girl, it's a 180 from Maria's traditional sound — it really shouldn't be hard to find someone that sounds like Rebecca Honig.

It's quite funny, my biggest complaint with the voice cast has always been that they sound too normal, when the 4Kids cast was the complete opposite, but now that Maria sounds like a Funimation dub it's the other way around, she needs a gentle, normal sounding voice.

I'm personally quite a fan of most of the current voice cast of the series. Smith is my favourite Sonic, which is a fact that never ceases to surprise me considering how perfect I think that Drummond and several fans with similar styles are for the role. Amy is great, Tails is great, Eggman has been great since X, Knuckles was actually really solid solid in Frontiers too... Thornton isn't my favourite Shadow however, but I'd be lying if I didn't now just much he had improved 2010

Stephanie Sheh as Maria just isn't sitting right with me from this first impression though. She's sounding very, very, generic sweet and sickly anime girl. It's such a change from her previous choices and I feel it makes her character come across as much more one note. Not that she's ever had enough time to even develop much character, but I can't see that they're going to do much with her here, unfortunately.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil What's with the mellow drama?! It's just a button in the settings to change the voices!!!!

I'm criticizing a voice direction that's clearly out place. Going this over the top for someone saying the originally intended voice direction, in its original language, should be heard first is absolutely unnecessary.

@DripDropCop146 Considering I have heard a bad japanese performance in Tokyo Mirage Sessions, a game that never got a english dub, back before I could understand some japanese, I'm not really buying into that.

@epicgamner Yeah, most likely.. but mostly because SEGA themselves made the ending for 06 ''not canon'' because the Princess of Soleanna removes the threat from existense and makes everyone forget about the entire thing.. thus making the entire adventure irrelevant haha

@Samalik Look, I kinda have a history of getting into dub vs. sub arguments on the internet. Whenever I have the belief that the dub is better (like in this case), some people try to resort to toxic behavior to convince me otherwise, which kinda gives me a bad impression of them.

I’m sorry if I reacted the way I did, and I want to clarify I don’t dislike Japanese dubs — I’ve seen a couple Japan exclusive Transformers shows. But the pure negativity I’ve seen behind some of the sub over dub arguments really makes me not want to try the Japanese version. That was especially the case for me with the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, and the only reason I watched the Japanese version of GX was for Season 4.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil You're seriously not gonna try listening to the original audio because of some @s$hats? Really? C'mon man.... Fairness to the original creators... And telling me I need to get my ears checked isn't helping....

Besides that, it's because of the dubbing in Sonic games that they ended up becoming memes, and not the flattering kind. I'd rather listen to the original audio, because that's closer to what was intended, with a higher chance that the scenario writer or director was in the same room to give better voice direction.
And because of that, it's why I don't hear it here. It's like the dub was recorded through a game of professional telephone. And that's usually the case, assuming they even have a creative on board to begin with.

There are cases where dubs do become a series personality, such as Devil May Cry getting an american tokusatsu actor to mo-cap and voice Dante and has since become a staple, or Bayonetta being as british as possible because that made Kamiya's dream woman come true. But Sonic is not one of those series that gets that leeway. It's as shounen (or I guess now seinen) as they come out of japan. So it's obviously gonna be as japanese as it can be. With as much pop culture elements in it's characterizations (especially when things get moe' moe' kyun with certain characters). Best try to get the better experience. That's all.

@Samalik Hey, like I said, I have wanted to try the Japanese versions of Sonic games. Heck, I own a Japanese Kirby & The Amazing Mirror cartridge.

But most people who defend the Japanese dub are kind of comparable to people who love the original Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, y’know? They’re practically rabid. I know my reasoning for staying away from the subbed Sonic games isn’t the best, but it’s a whole lot better than saying “I don’t want to learn Japanese.” Looking at you, “when’s EarthBound 3” people.

@Ruler-Of-All-Evil About that, you already own a "japanese copy". Every 3D Sonic game always ships with dual audio, probably because Sonic is a very arcady series to begin with and as such, dialogue and story files are small enough and sparse.

this trend dates all the way back to, at least, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. So do give it a whirl. You got experience to gain and nothing to lose

Emerl! Now that's a deep cut I'm happy to see.

Love to see the Emerl inclusion. The story in Battle does talk about how Gerald was researching him on the ARK. I wonder if that means he'll be a playable character...

The inability to just give us a remaster of SA2 in the year when the 3rd movie will draw significant inspiration from it is a missed opportunity by Sega. Always here for Sonic Battle getting references in 2024 though. It's about time we got a sequel, right?

@Baker1000
The fact that we can't play SA2:B on Switch/PS5/XboxX is truly the Achilles Heel of this console cycle.
Definitely agree on the necessity of a Battle sequel. I think we're long overdue for a modern take on a Sonic fighting game.

@Samalik Huh, interesting to know. I’ll give that a shot.

@TrueFace While not a remaster or anything, you can actually play the 360 version of SA2 (with Battle DLC) on a current Xbox

@Baker1000 Think of the normie kids here. Would they wanna see a movie if they already know what happens in it? It's easier to market SA2 AFTER they saw the movie.

@Jade37 Really? I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

I guess my position now is that SA2 should be more accessible than it is currently.

@Samalik I had to be 'that guy' and point out all the 3D games where JP dub was taken out for space. At least the ones I know of.

Sonic Heroes (GC)
Shadow the Hedgehog (GC)
Sonic Riders (GC)
Sonic Unleashed (Wii)
All-Stars Racing (didn't release in JPN)
Sonic Lost World 3DS (I actually don't remember)
-Technically- Brawl.
Sonic 2006 and Smash for 3DS requires changing the entire system language to use the JP dub.

Then the 2D ones would be:
Sonic Battle
Sonic Advance 3
Sonic Rush
Sonic Rush Adventure
Sonic Colors DS
Sonic Generations 3DS
Sonic CD in Sonic Gems Collection

Most of these support multi-lang so it's a pretty seamless transition. A few of them have dual-audio mods too.

@JohnnyMind I think it can depend. Not knowing Japanese can cover up some pretty mid-performances while knowing Japanese can help you determine which performance was actually better (picking up on subtleties, certain inflections, if an actor is hitting their timings). I think it does matter to a point in these discussions to an extent.

Dub vs. Sub is a pretty pointless argument though because it really doesn't matter all that much as most English and Japanese dubs are pretty top-notch now-a-days you can't really go wrong picking either or. Yeah there will be some differences in performances, but that can be a cultural thing. For example kawaii voices just don't work in English. However, for English performances can feel more immersive when characters are canonically supposed to be speaking English like in Black Lagoon, or Baccano! (no one can convince me Bryan Massey is not fantastic as Ladd Russo). It just depends as English can hit HARD in some anime, but Japanese performances tend to be consistently good.

It honestly doesn't matter at ALL.

Speaking of the English v. Japanese comparisons, the Japanese Sonic YouTube channel just uploaded the Japanese language version of the trailer.

https://youtu.be/7dP0PWvbb5s?si=weMPLPfy28WQn3CW

@JohnnyMind I was referring to more generally Dub vs. Subs not all that mattering. I do think knowing Japanese helps determine which the better performance is. But, not knowing it will not make someone automatically not know a good performance from a bad one in Japanese... though I do think the generally dub vs. sub argument is heavily tinged in bias to begin with.

As for this one, it's a Sonic game, the characters will sound like the characters people are used to (more or less similar voices and performances to the ones established in the Adventures duology). That plays a major part in most of these arguments as which dub you heard first will dictate how you hear the characters. People who like Sonic dubs will like this dub, those who don't will prefer the sub. At the end of the day arguing over this is pretty pointless as I doubt they will change over 20 years of English VAs doing a David Humphrey's impersonation (more airy, reserved and subdued interpretation) for an English version of Koji Yuse (more arrogant, emotive and firm interpretation) for Shadow.

As for foreign dubs that are not English, apparently the German dub for Jin-Roh is quite excellent. Thematically I can see why the German dub could work for Jin-Roh due to the Brothers Grimm source material.

Looking good, looking goooood!