The essentials of a good Sonic villain

[Tornado]

Black Arms. Black Doom. Black Assassins....

You may be on to something here.

[Stritix]

Why would Shadow want or need either of these things when he works at GUN now?

I'm not saying he does. It was an example. *Facepalm*

I take it someone didn't play Heroes, or even Generations.

One could say they ditched Shadow, Knuckles, Rogue, the Chaotix, and everyone else in Unleashed and Colors, but we knew better than that even before Generations came in. There's absolutely no reason to believe that they would make an exception and take out Metal Sonic.

Heroes is almost a decade old, and Generations is a rehash. They rarely use him any more. The others get used constantly for spin-off's and such.

First things first, let's get this straight: Shadow is an anti-hero. Meaning he may side with the bad guys or the good guys if it suits his given purpose.

Secondly, for someone who loves Shadow as much as the next fan, you forget that Shadow was only a villain in so much as he was out to get revenge for Maria. Turned out that Maria wanted peace and happiness, not revenge and destruction, and given that that was the only reason he was ever antagonistic in the first place it only goes to show that Shadow will do more heroism than he will villainy. While that doesn't mean he can't be antagonistic, that flat out eliminates him being a full blown villain.

Thirdly, you also forget that in SA2 it was completely the other way around in the sidekick relations, as Shadow was using Eggman more than Eggman was using Shadow.

Perhaps not a full-blown villain, but his personality & character design suite a villain perfectly. Perhaps he may become a villain out of confusion. Remember Sonic 06? Mephiles said something along the lines of "In the future Omega will seal you back in a capsule after you try take revenge on the humans." Implying Shadow will become a villain.

[Tornado]

So, they use him in a fairly major role for 2 games in the span of 6 months, plus make a huge deal out of his role in the game where he debuted when they rereleased it around the same time (publicity stunt or not), but they still rarely use him anymore?

Edited October 18, 2012 by Tornado

[Diogenes]

Heroes is almost a decade old, and Generations is a rehash. They rarely use him any more.

They rarely used him in the first place!

Perhaps not a full-blown villain, but his personality & character design suite a villain perfectly.

Okay, can you go into detail on this?

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

No. Shadow the Hedgehog was Eggman's sidekick in Sonic Adventure 2, and it worked out very well.

I thought that Eggman was Shadow's sidekick.

Shadow's just like "hey Eggman, do these things and uhh world domination is yours."

And then Eggman's just like "WORLD DOMINATION YOU SAY?!" and then they're BFFs.

SA2 wasn't Hamlet or anything, it was pretty clear that Eggman was being used.

Edited October 18, 2012 by The Fifth-Rate Flareon

[Multikaris]

Why would Shadow want or need either of these things when he works at GUN now?

No he doesn't. Sonic 06 was erased, so.Shadow does NOT work for GUN.

[Nepenthe]

Shadow's employment does not rely on anything in Sonic 06 existing because he was employed before the game took place.

[Multikaris]

Shadow's employment does not rely on anything in Sonic 06 existing because he was employed before the game took place.

Is there any game that states GUN employed him besides 2006?

[Nepenthe]

Not that I know of, but that question is completely irrelevant to the point.

[Tornado]

What happened in STH '06 was erased from canon by the ending of STH '06. That doesn't make everything related to STH '06 non-canon. That makes the events that happened during STH '06 non-canon. The things that were established in the backstory of STH '06 are still game.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Tornado

[Blacklightning]

Is there any game that states GUN employed him besides 2006?

ShTH did, if I'm not mistaken. Not that I can blame anyone for missing it, as it required unlocking expert mode, which in turn required A-ranking every mission of every level in the game. No small feat, you can imagine, for a game so painful to play.

[Kuzu]

So yeah, I think we can all agree Shadow being a villain doesn't suit his current character at all, and would be completely stupid and arbitrary. Since we're talking about it, is this topic limited to just villains, or general antagonists? If the latter, then we can at least talk about different ways for Shadow to antagonize the heroes.

[Multikaris]

How about some new nasties?

[Dr. Crusher]

Well yes, if they're good.

[Burnt Ash]

ShTH did, if I'm not mistaken. Not that I can blame anyone for missing it, as it required unlocking expert mode, which in turn required A-ranking every mission of every level in the game. No small feat, you can imagine, for a game so painful to play.

Wait, is that actually true? I've heard about it before, something about the GUN Commander offering Shadow a job, but I'm not sure if it was true.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

The others get used constantly .for spin-off's and such.

So does Metal Sonic dude, so if anything you just shot yourself in the foot with this.

Perhaps not a full-blown villain, but his personality & character design suite a villain perfectly. Perhaps he may become a villain out of confusion. Remember Sonic 06? Mephiles said something along the lines of "In the future Omega will seal you back in a capsule after you try take revenge on the humans." Implying Shadow will become a villain.

No, Mephiles said that when Iblis' power was unleashed, the people needed someone to blame for the tragedy. And because they feared Shadow's power, they used him as a scapegoat for the destruction caused by iblis. As a result, they programmed Omega to defeat and seal Shadow.

In other words, without Iblis being around to cause the damage in the first place, the world can't blame anything on Shadow about it, and therefore Omega wouldn't be used against him.

Edited October 18, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[batson]

Well, not being a recolor helps.

Indeed. Im still pissed of that when they finally decided to bring a new reccurring villain into the series... they didnt, and instead gave us "Eggman 2". What a load of fuck.

[Kuzu]

Indeed. Im still pissed of that when they finally decided to bring a new reccurring villain into the series... they didnt, and instead gave us "Eggman 2". What a load of fuck.

Oh come on, if some people can be tolerate of Shadow, I don't see why we can't tolerate Nega.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Ragna the Bloodedge

[Diogenes]

At least Shadow offers a bit more than being a second Sonic.

[Dr. Crusher]

Shadow and Nega aren't the same.

Shadow's one of the characters that have your own similar fighting style, and serve to have a contrasting personality. As much as I'm not a fan of him or the cynical rival trope in general, I can live with that.

Nega, on the other hand, only makes Robotnik himself look less unique in comparison, "personality differences" be damned. It's like if Mega Man suddenly had two Wilys but one - the newer one - was better in every single way.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Dr. Crusher

[Jack / Joker]

Shadow does not suit the role of villain, more so of an anti-hero. Sonic and his hyperactive go-get-'em attitude and his... overall charm seem to grate on Shadow. A lot. I doubt it would take much effort to write his royal grumpiness into a story and have him antagonize Sonic in a way better than Generations' truly Shakespearean excuse:

"I don't know where I am. SO I KILL YOU!"

Orbot and Cubot are Eggman's bitches now, I really hope they utilize them as proper villains some day, hell I think one of the Eggman mechs in Unleashed was piloted by Orbot!

[KHCast]

Shadow at least had to a extent split himself from being a 100% Sonic clone. He's his own person now.(kinda) Nega? From the games he's been in, he's done nothing but seem like he's trying to 1up Eggman. But he ends up just looking like a fancharacter and making Eggman just look better in the process.

[Vertekins]

Also, this;

Was a far more interesting and charming villain in his evilness than this;

One thing I'll always prize in Eggman over SatAM 'Botnik villain-wise was the fact that he has a motive. SatAM 'Botnik exudes a brand of villainy that is no more remarkable than other saturday morning cartoon villains and he falls flat because the reasons for his evil are never elaborated upon. I'll quote good old Tornado because he made a very good point about SatAM 'Botnik's "approach" to being evil/a villain;

AoStH Robotnik and game Eggman want to take over the world to satiate their ego. This is made blatantly obvious in pretty much every episode/game. Even the "dark" ones like Adventure 2 had game Eggman doing it to prove that he could when his grandfather could not (who even Eggman admired until he learned of Gerald's more sinister plan).

SatAM Robotnik took over the world and wanted to stamp out what was left because...

Um...

Well, let's examine this.

1. Robotocize everyone.

2. ????

3. Um...profit?

"He's the villain of the show because he's the villain" isn't really an argument.

There is a difference between a deep character evaluation essay and pointing out a character never being given any justification for doing what he was doing.

Or, put in terms of Adventure 2's ending: AoStH Robotnik would team up with Sonic because the ARK crashing into Earth Mobius would make it so no one would be able to admire all the statues and elaborate evil lairs he built for himself. Game Eggman teamed up with Sonic because the ARK crashing into Earth and Gerald being a complete sociopath whose plans he basically put into motion outright horrified him when he learned of it.

SatAM Robotnik would actively try to get ARK to crash into Mobius to kill everything, because that would save him the trouble of getting rid of that stuff himself. Because that would be more evil.

[Dr. Crusher]

Yeah, SatAM Robotnik really was the worst kind of For the Evulz. Though I don't care for much else of Archie, it's version of Eggman (not Robotnik) is one of my favourites, since he's a complete bastard, but a complete Eggman bastard. My favourite villains (not that I don't love variety of course) are the ones who are completely irredeemable monsters, and yet still have a legitimate motive and/or reason for how they became that way and aren't just doing it because "they were born that way". Ones like Porky Minch and Lotso.

Also, Julian's design. I still don't understand how this is any less silly than Game Robotnik's design. If anything it's far more silly. It looks like a rejected Village People costume, and the red eyes are trying too hard. I much prefer the pragmatic coat and glasses look.

And then there's Julian always sitting around and raging like a generic Dr. Claw villain, doubly annoying since one of the things that make Robotnik stand out is that he's usually on the move, only staying away when his plan(s) call for it.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Dr. Crusher

[Multikaris]

I would like to see the Babylon Rogues as more frequent antagonists.

I would like to see the Babylon Rogues as more frequent antagonists.