Sonic Fans Are Only Just Realising Maria Is Playable In Shadow The Hedgehog

Summary

Sonic the Hedgehogfans are only just realising that Maria is a playable companion in 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog, albeit only for a few missions before… you know what happens.

Shadow the Hedgehog has always been one of the most popular characters in the Sonic franchise,but that’s come back in full force this year thanks to the third Sonic movie and Sonic x Shadow: Generations. Whilemost fans are just excited to jump into the next Shadow adventure, the excitement around the character has also dug up some interesting discoveries from the past.

We’ve already reported on a few of these,such as Sonic x Shadow: Generations featuring a skin that harkens back to his roots as Teriosand howSega wants you to forget that he was inspired by Dragon Ball Z’s Vegeta. It turns out that’s just scratching the surface, though, as one particularly interesting detail goes all the way back to 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog game, which involved Maria in a surprising way.

Maria Robotnik Is Actually Playable In Shadow The Hedgehog

If you’ve played Shadow the Hedgehog then first of all, my condolences. Now that I’ve apologised, you might remember that Shadow is often joined by partner characters throughout the game’s levels such as Rouge and Sonic. What you might not know, however, is that these characters are actually controllable if a second controller is plugged in.

As shown off by Twitter user PersonthePerso2, that means that a second player can join in play as another character. This shockingly includes Maria Robotnik, who appears as a partner for Shadow in a few of the game’s levels and usually just runs alongside him. If another player takes control of her, though, she actually has a few unique moves including a glowing punch.

Not every partner character is controllable, however. As pointed out by several Twitter users, flying characters like Charmy and Black Doom are true NPCs that can’t be used by a second player.

I thought I knew Shadow the Hedgehog pretty well, but I had no idea that its partner characters could be controlled by a second player on the PS2 version of the game. I especially didn’t know that Maria was one of those characters, marking the only time that she’s been playable in a Sonic game.

It seems that a lot of Sonic fans are also only just finding out that this was a thing in Shadow the Hedgehog as the replies to PersonthePerso2 are full of surprised reactions. Some are even praising 2005’s Shadow for being more in-depth and feature-packed than they initially realised.