The official site opens
Sonic Channel records the opening alongside the game's E3 exhibition. This is the earliest firm first-party anchor for the Japanese microsite.
The Lost
Japanese Site
The original Japanese Shadow the Hedgehog site is fragmentary now, but SEGA left behind something unusually useful: a dated Sonic Channel change log. From it, Shadorux can reconstruct what sections appeared, when the campaign changed, and exactly which missing files are worth hunting.
18MAY
2005
2005
Official site opens
Reconstruction, not imitation
This page reconstructs the site's documented content history. It does not invent an approximation of the lost visual design. A section is included only where a surviving first-party record or separately identified source supports it.
How the site grew
Characters, stage and event material
Black Doom, Doom's Eye and Sonic character pages were added, together with Westopolis and a post-Westopolis event. This proves dedicated character, stage and event content existed by late August.
December 15 release date
The Japanese release date was fixed for December 15.
Promotional movie
A promotional movie was added under the site's screenshot area, evidence that this section handled more than still images.
SEGA Direct preorder
The site announced a SEGA Direct preorder with a bonus. The exact bonus remains an acquisition/research target.
ARTIMAGE NIGHT
Support and invitation material for ARTIMAGE NIGHT 2005 was added, tying the microsite directly into the Japanese event campaign.
Another promotional movie
A second documented movie update expanded the site's pre-release video material.
TRIPOD BABY arrives
The TRIPOD BABY (SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG MIX) promotional movie and television commercial were published through the site.
Major renewal
The largest documented update added ten characters, three stages, six weapons, four vehicles and three wallpapers. By this point the microsite had become a substantial game reference and promotional destination rather than a simple announcement page.
10characters3stages6weapons4vehicles3wallpapers
Flash game and interview, part one
A Shadow Flash minigame and the first part of Takashi Iizuka's developer interview were added.
Interview, part two
The second half of Iizuka's developer interview followed one day later.
Weekly Sega Voice and soundtrack
Sonic Channel records a Weekly Sega Voice Iizuka interview and a soundtrack sales notice.
Post-release update
Maria's character page and a Vehicle entry were added after launch, showing that the site continued to change into 2006.
Inside the recovered Flash
Decompressing the recovered SWFs exposed original path and URL literals embedded in the site itself. These are stronger recovery leads than guessed filenames because they came directly from SEGA's archived Flash files.
The December site was modular
shadow_base.swf names nine child modules: shadow_top.swf, shadow_story.swf, shadow_system.swf, shadow_chara.swf, shadow_stage.swf, shadow_wpn.swf, shadow_vcl.swf, shadow_mv.swf, and shadow_dl.swf.
Seventeen screenshot filenames
The earlier images/shadow.swf contains literal references to images/ss01.jpg through images/ss17.jpg, plus smaller screenshot/movie thumbnail paths. This gives the screenshot recovery project exact original targets.
Original campaign stream URLs
The early SWF points to Shadow_E3.asx, and that archived playlist has now been recovered: it names the underlying Shadow_E3.wmv on two POD.TV delivery hosts. The archived broadband m-flo playlist was also recovered and names shadow_mflo_bb.wmv on SEGA's movie server. The December shell additionally exposes narrowband m-flo and television-commercial playlist paths; those playlist requests timed out in this recovery pass.
What Wayback has not yielded yet
Direct archive checks did not return most child SWFs. Checks for the stage and download modules timed out, so those remain unresolved rather than confirmed absent. The filenames are preserved for future recovery attempts.
Documented site sections
The update language lets us infer a partial information architecture without inventing undocumented pages.
Characters
Named additions include Black Doom, Doom's Eye, Sonic and later Maria; ten characters were added in the December renewal.
Stages & events
Westopolis and its associated event were present by August. Three stages were added in December.
Screenshots & movies
Promotional movies were added in October and November, including the m-flo campaign material.
Weapons & vehicles
Six weapons and four vehicles were added during the December 6 renewal.
Download
Three wallpapers are explicitly documented. Their original files remain missing.
Interviews & extras
The December campaign added a Flash minigame and a two-part Iizuka interview.
Recovered from the original site
A direct Wayback recovery pass found an intact December 13, 2005 capture of the actual Japanese microsite shell at sonic.sega.jp/shadow/. This moves part of the reconstruction from inferred chronology to recovered primary web material.
December 13 HTML shell
The archived page embeds the site at 800 × 600 through shadow_base.swf. The surrounding HTML also preserves PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox platform graphics plus SEGA, Sonic Team and Sonic Channel footer assets.
shadow_base.swf
Recovered from the February 7, 2006 Wayback capture. Local preservation copy: 221,756 bytes. SHA-256: E3E055BB9451F85CA5C1142B1B1B2F1274EFACE1A7DA875ED0C5822FD398CF75.
images/shadow.swf
An earlier Flash asset is independently archived from May 23, 2005. Local preservation copy: 476,097 bytes. SHA-256: 2479F64153C216CBCF13D79A601D428AC1FD0886CB263A0461E4DE446D1146ED.
SEGA Direct link recovered
The December HTML contains a live-era banner link to segadirect.jp/Catalog/CustomPages/CustomDetail2.aspx?File=shadow.htm. That gives us a concrete URL to pursue for the unresolved preorder bonus.
The recovered SWFs are preserved for research; Shadorux is not publishing SEGA's files as downloadable site assets here. The next recovery pass is to enumerate the Flash dependencies and archived image/movie paths.
What we still need
- Additional archived captures around May 18, August 26 and December 6; a December 13 capture has now been recovered.
- The three December wallpapers in original resolution with original filenames.
- The December 12 Flash minigame SWF and any external dependencies.
- Original site-hosted promotional movie files and filenames.
- The two original Iizuka interview pages.
- SEGA Direct preorder-bonus page and imagery.
- Enough captured pages to reconstruct the actual navigation and visual design without guessing.