Last weekend at Anime Expo Sega hosted a panel focused on Shadow the Hedgehog – specifically the character’s past and his starring role in a new animation project. Sonic x Shadow Generations: Dark Beginnings will be looking at the hedgehog’s history and attendees were given a first look. This included the expected return of both Maria and Gerald Robotnik (key figures in Shadow’s backstory and the plot of Sonic Adventure 2) along with a deep cut from a seldom-referenced Game Boy Advance game.
Emerl, a robot known as a Gizoid, was the lead character in Sonic Battle, the series’ second attempt at a fighting game. Both the robo and his game of origin are rarely featured in Sonic games. Sonic Generations had a single music track representing the game, for example, and beyond some narrative continuation in Sonic Advance 3 Emerl was more or less a footnote in the video games’ larger lore.
Back to Dark Beginnings, the scene appears to be adapting a journal entry from Sonic Battle that discussed a Gizoid destroying large portions of the Space Colony ARK. It’s a brief (albeit eye-catching) look at what’s to come and shows that there are further corners of franchise history that could feed into Sonic x Shadow Generations. A Sonic Battle stage may not make much sense, but could this mean an Emerl boss fight?
Fans can look forward to the full debut of the three-part animation later this fall. If you’re curious how Shadow plays in the upcoming remaster/expansion of one of the best Sonic games, check out our Summer Game Fest hands-on of Sonic x Shadow Generations. The game will arrive on October 25th.
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