I always loved Shadow, ever since Sonic Adventures 2. When i first saw him, he was like the coolest character ever (i was young, so, the cliché of the anti-hero, edgy rival of the main character worked well). Then, i discovered Super Mario Bros Z and Shadow was the strongest character of the group, he was badass as hell. I also remember playing Shadow The Hedgehog, a friend had the game and we played it. It was crazy to play a dark hedgehog killing aliens with a gun, i felt like an adult playing this game.
Then, i started to lose interest in the character until... Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing. My friend who was a huge Sonic's fan had the game and we played it a lot. Shadow had his motorbike from his game, it looked so cool. We played so many hours on that game. Years later, they released Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing Transformed. I bought the game day one and i started playing it. The Shadow's motorbike was gone but hey, i still wanted to play him.
And i played this game A LOT. When i was playing online, i was only playing Shadow. And at some point, i was the 3rd best player online, I even played against the 1st (he won easily but hey, playing against the best player is still a huge thing haha). And all of this, i did it with Shadow. Since this day, i love this character, there's a connection, i can't explain it, it's like he's a close friend and we climbed the ladder together.
A part of me is 100% conviced that he's going to be in the game, but another part is telling me "nah, that's too good to be true". I can't wait, i need to know haha