Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg was originally just going to be called Giant Egg

SEGA-16 has published a very informative interview with former SEGA executive Mike Fischer, who worked with the Japanese company for years. During the interview he also touched on the cult GameCube game Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. Fischer reveals that it was originally just going to be titled Giant Egg before the team were sensibly told to rename it to Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. Fischer also spoke about Blinx: The Time Sweeper which was developed for the original Xbox system.

On Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg:

Sega-16: Oh yeah, I remember that game, on GameCube.

Mike Fischer: Yeah, I remember looking at the game. He wanted to call it Giant Eggs, and we’re like, “Well, to lay a big egg in the U.S. just means a failure.”

Sega-16: True!

Mike Fischer: If you look back, like eggs played an odd part in a lot of Naka-san’s content. It’s like, “What’s the obsession with eggs?” Anyway, one of the guys on my team said, “Well, let’s call it Billy Hatcher” because it’s a hatching game with a cute character. The main character is the the boy, not the egg. Of course, Naka-san hated it. We called it Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, which he still hated. We at one point – I promise you, I am not making up this story; I have two witnesses! At one point, he he visited the U.S. Sometimes, I translated, and sometimes other people translated. He goes, “Well, I know another name for the boy wearing a rooster suit. Another name for rooster is cock. Can we call the game Giant Cock in English?”

On Blinx the Time Sweeper:

Mike Fischer:  Well, he [Yuji Naka] just was so malignant in trying to rewrite history. You know that Ōshima-san worked on Blinx the Cat. When we had the Xbox One debut, he was there, and Naka-san was invited and refused to sit in the same row as Ōshima-san because he accused Ōshima-san of trying to steal his credit.

The thing about Sega is, you know, again, they gave these talented women like Emiko and Kodama-san these chances to be creative leaders. They gave some goofy foreigner like me a chance to to really move up in the organization. They’re very un-Japanese, nontraditional in a lot of ways, which I don’t think they get enough credit for.

I did not realize Kodama-san had a role in Sonic. I always associate her with Phantasy Star, which is an incredible legacy on its own. What did she do on Sonic?