Despite Sonic boss Takashi Iizuka stating that Sonic Adventure remakes won't be happening anytime soon, Sega has renewed a trademark, sparking speculation that a Shadow the Hedgehog remake could be in the works.
Shadow the Hedgehog has had one of the biggest career comebacks in recent memory. Sonic fans loved him when he first arrived on the scene in Sonic Adventure 2, but after his self-titled game, which saw him using guns and swearing (along with a banger nu-metal buttrock tune), he became the poster boy of edgelords. But in 2024, Sega – after a few years of people coming around on the character – declared it the Year of Shadow, which gave us his Keanu Reeves-voiced appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Shadow Generations, a semi-sequel to Sonic Generations, included with the remastered version.
However, Shadow Generations also followed up on plot points from 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog (the aforementioned swearing and gun game), despite being one of the most derided games in the series. And a new trademark filing from Sega may imply that it isn't quite done with it. As picked up by a trademark bot on Twitter (via machine translation), Sega has filed for a new trademark on "Shadow The Hedgehog" for "Programs for home video game consoles" among other things.
Of course, fans have taken this as meaning either a sequel or remake of the 2005 original could be in the works, with one user pointing out it's the game's 20th anniversary next month. However, given that Takashi Iizuka said less than a month ago that Sonic Adventure remakes weren't in the cards because Sega "could make a brand new game instead," a remake seems a little less likely.
However, if Sega were to remake Sonic games, I'd argue something like Shadow the Hedgehog would be a far better idea than Adventure. Why remake two beloved games that would inevitably cause people to be unhappy with any changes when you could remake something bad and bring out its full potential?
As someone who recently played Sonic 06, and without that game being a broken mess and some of the weird writing decisions I'm sure a good game could be brought out of that, so if Sega does decide to remake a Sonic game, I'm all in for it being one of the bad ones (although it should release the Adventure games on modern platforms).
