Thanks to Hamada for helping with edits.
I’m a fan of Game Freak’s 2015 side scroller Tembo the Badass Elephant. Gameplay-wise, it’s “just” fine. But Tembo’s still valuable: it gave a studio that primarily churns out Pokémon sequels a venue with which they could make something else, something fresh. That’s important and healthy—companies should keep pushing themselves to create new hits, not just continuations of older ones. And that’s a sentiment we’ll touch upon again through today’s subject:
Billy Hatcher and his malformed friends, seen in the intro to 2003’s Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (Image: SEGA)
Once upon a time, Sonic Team’s reputation was sterling. Sonic the Hedgehog, their namesake, is iconic, and its SEGA Genesis platformers are among the most successful games SEGA’s ever published (so much so that SEGA often, and often unsuccessfully, draws from their iconography). Sadly, Sonic Team’s other titles never reached Sonic’s commercial highs, but most are still engaging. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is the first Sonic Team game I played that isn’t a part of their flagship franchise (though Sonic does score a cameo), and it… isn’t their best work. It’s actually kinda rough. Still, I respect it and its star…
Billy Hatcher’s History
According to former Sonic Team head Yuji Naka, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg began life as a multiplayer game built around rolling eggs. Eggs were chosen because they gave it a hook: players would nurture them and wonder what sort of animal would hatch. The Nintendo GameCube became the project’s home because Sonic Team believed Nintendo’s audience and theirs were a seamless match.
Poultry deity Menie-Funie teleports Billy to Morning Land. Although Dark Raven, the game’s villain and final boss, strips Billy of his suit during their fight, the boy’s bravery never wavers—giving him the power-up necessary to win. (Image: SEGA)
Ultimately, Billy Hatcher evolved into a mission-based, single-player platformer. After helping a wayward bird escape the wrathful pursuit of two nightmare crows, Billy and his friends are teleported to the ordinarily sunny, chipper Morning Land. However, it’s been cursed by the sinister Dark Raven and is trapped under the veil of an endless night. Only Billy, now armed with a magical chicken suit, can save the day. Which he does by traveling to Morning Land’s seven regions, rescuing their respective elders, beating Dark Raven and his generals, and performing miscellaneous errands to purge the realm of any lingering crow influence (Billy’s buddies also get their own chicken suits and star in one bonus mission each per world).
Billy’s adventures continue through SEGA’s crossovers. He hosts a minigame in SEGA Superstars and competes in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity and Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing (strangely, he’s entirely absent from the latter’s sequel, Transformed, while his friends cameo). Archie Comics’ 2015 Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man “Worlds Collide” crossover brought in other SEGA and Capcom characters, including Billy, his sidekicks, and Menie-Funie. Also, Shadow the Hedgehog and the first Sonic Riders flaunt Giant Egg iconography, even if Billy himself is absent from both; you get the sense Sonic Team was proud of them.
A demo of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg was among the five included in 2003’s Nintendo GameCube Preview Disc. Behind the Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut trial, it was the one I booted up the most. (Image: SEGA)
So, what’re my thoughts on Billy?
That GameCube demo disc was one of the most important gaming-related purchases I ever made. At the time, I was a creature of habit, a kid who just entered middle school and solely gravitated towards a handful of franchises. Anything outside that narrow orbit came across as uninviting, even scary. Now, I admittedly bought the disc primarily for the Sonic Adventure DX demo, but it (alongside Yu-Gi-Oh!, which a few friends introduced me to) taught me to spread my wings; trying new things is important! And one character I can thank for teaching me that lesson is Billy Hatcher, whose demo felt comfortingly familiar yet fresh.
One franchise I had long cherished was, of course, Sonic the Hedgehog. Billy Hatcher isn’t a Sonic character, but the connective tissue is immediately discernible—and not just because SEGA plastered “from the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog” on Giant Egg’s cover (a claim that dates it; no game’s boasting about Naka’s involvement today). They share superficial commonalities: giant rings populate Giant Egg’s stages (same for NiGHTS; rings are an enduring Sonic Team motif) that give you a boost, missions of dubious quality pad out the game, and stages close by ranking your performance. In fact, Billy Hatcher openly celebrates the studio’s history through minigames and cameos (the former even let me sample NiGHTS into Dreams, which later became one of my all-time favorites).
Speaking with Nintendo Power, Naka lamented the fact that so many companies were only releasing sequels. He also noted that some of the staff behind Samba de Amigo and Christmas NiGHTS were working on Giant Egg. (Image: SEGA)
And Billy wears his hedgehogian influence on his chicken suit’s sleeves; Yuji Uekawa’s illustration style is unmistakable. Both heroes’ standard designs prominently utilize blue, yellow, red, and white, while Billy’s casual getup—a blue hoodie with red-and-white sneakers—is an even more overt Sonic homage. He shares the Sonic Team mascot’s affinity for toothy grins. Even Billy’s pose on Giant Egg’s cover resembles Sonic’s famous Sonic Adventure 2: Battle one, which was undoubtedly intentional; the GameCube release of that game was huge and marked Sonic’s debut on Nintendo consoles. Heck, Sonic’s pals even inspired Billy’s: Chick Poacher, Bantam Scrambled, and Rolly Roll take notes from Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, respectively.
Billy isn’t a Sonic wannabe, however; his design is memorable and achieves different things despite inheriting Sonic’s color scheme. Using blue for Billy’s gloves, pants, shoes, two splotches on his helmet, and irises anchors his design. His white shirt and helmet channel the white feathers of a chicken while making the rest of his pallet pop—his yellows and reds are striking, drawing attention to his head while evoking a chicken’s bright beak, comb, and wattles. Plus, Billy’s blonde hair nicely complements his shoes’ buckles and subtly brings Super Sonic to mind. Aesthetically, Billy’s another solid member of Sonic Team’s stable, even if the hedgehog’s proportions look a little weird on a “normal” kid.
Considering its cheery visuals and music, Billy Hatcher feels geared towards a young audience even more so than Sonic (whose big 2005 and 2006 titles attempted darker, more serious tones and mangled them so badly that they border on parody). (Image: SEGA)
Chickens harbor a wealth of connotations: cowardice, timidity, and a need of protection or guidance. Morning Land’s denizens channel these qualities, but not brave Billy. Though chickens aren’t gifted flyers, any air mobility they have does not carry over into young Hatcher. Without an egg on hand, his movement is stiff—recalling NiGHTS’ Elliot and Claris, Billy is vulnerable, capable only of a simple jump. But if he has an egg? He can use it as a makeshift boomerang (be careful not to accidentally shoot it off a ledge!), bounce atop baddies or switches, perform violent dashes on the ground or midair, and roll down steep inclines à la Sonic. These abilities are also straightforward and, barring the first one, focus on maintaining momentum, preserving Sonic Team’s speedy ethos.
Still, he’s slower and more methodical than their typical heroes. Per Billy’s surname, he can hatch an egg once it’s rolled over enough fruit. Most of Giant Egg’s charmingly dopey “egg animals” aren’t particularly strong: usually you free a blob whose elemental attack can kill a few enemies or interact with part of the environment (that blue penguin, Clippen, can douse fires with its bubbles, for example). But protecting, nurturing, and hatching an egg is rewarding, and your first time through the game, it is fun wondering what strange, new beast you’ll befriend next. Some eggs contain items that temporarily enhance Billy’s stats, restore health, or give him an extra life, furthering the platformer’s “what will I hatch next?” appeal.
Sonic’s effectively invincible so long as he retains at least one Ring, but Billy employs a traditional health system. And where the hedgehog has a negative connotation with eggs, since they’re his archenemy’s motif, Billy depends on them. (Image: SEGA)
Bravery and kindness are Billy’s primary—and, frankly, only—personality traits. It’s a stark contrast from the more story-driven Sonic, whose star is a chatty, cocky globetrotter who can back his cockiness up: he regularly blasts through robots and deities. Conversely, Billy’s just a quiet kid who was whisked off to a wonderland and stepped up to become its savior. That the boy is a shallow, silent protagonist isn’t a problem—it’s probably a boon considering the lackluster quality of Sonic Team’s writing at the time.
What Billy Hatcher represents most to me, however, is the end of an era. SEGA was struggling financially during the Aughts, inspiring a series of restructures and a merger with pachinko manufacturer Sammy. This turmoil, of course, eventually affected Sonic Team: they were assimilated into United Game Artists, another SEGA division, and became shackled to their flagship franchise. Sure, they still occasionally helm new properties (one of which, Fifth Phantom Saga, SEGA management lacked faith in and canceled), sequels to older ones, and reliably iterate on Puyo Puyo (a franchise they adopted after SEGA acquired it from Compile). But their output’s mostly an unrelenting stream of Sonic releases, many of which are of questionable quality. Naka even left so he could escape that and create original titles (none of which ever matched his SEGA successes, although his final collaborative project, Balan Wonderworld, became another career-defining title for him—albeit for vastly different reasons than Sonic).
When I think of Billy Hatcher, what first springs to mind isn’t the game or its title character, but a 2004 CD that’s a send-off to the Sonic Team that once was. (Image: Sonic Team)
One-off games carry value within a company’s canon, and Billy Hatcher is an interesting piece of Sonic Team’s. I enjoyed Giant Egg upon release, even if it lacks the polish of the studio’s best outings. Unfortunately, one obscure re-release notwithstanding, Giant Egg remains stuck on the GameCube, and it never got a sequel. But Billy is a likable staple in SEGA’s crossovers, and hey, several of their other neglected franchises—Super Monkey Ball, Alex Kidd, and Sonic Team’s Samba de Amigo, among others—have gotten resurgences recently. Cult classic Billy Hatcher has fans, I’m one of them, and should it ever get a follow-up or re-release, we’ll welcome its headliner back with open arms.
Congratulations, Billy! Good morning!
Sonic Team producer Shun Nakamura hopes to revisit Billy Hatcher someday. Honestly, his tweets actually inspired this piece! Seeing that his interest in the boy hasn’t wavered is validating. (Image: SEGA)
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