In 2003, the world met Billy Hatcher, a boy in a rooster costume who loved to roll a big egg around. After that, nothing was ever the same again.
Well, actually, everything was exactly the same. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, the sole game the cockscombed lad ever starred in, wasn’t even the most notable Sonic Team release of the year, overshadowed by December’s Sonic Heroes. It sold poorly — despite the involvement of Sonic creator Yuji Naka — so it isn’t surprising that 22 years later, we’ve never seen a sequel. But recently, I’ve seen evidence that there may be reason to hope for Billy Hatcher to hatch once more.
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Long-Dormant Series Are Waking Up
Billy Hatcher was a really cool, off-the-wall game that took 3D platformers in a still largely unexplored direction. It dared to ask: what if the character rolled a big egg around and used it as a weapon? What if different eggs had different powers? What if an egg could dash?! These were all good questions. Two decades later, Sega has reason to answer them again.
The game industry is in a state of turmoil. Mass layoffs seem to hit every day. Expensive games like Concord and XDefiant are shut down if they don’t hit unreasonable sales targets in increasingly short windows. And it’s harder than ever for good indie games to break out from the pack. Games media has been hit similarly hard which means that there are fewer and fewer outlets to highlight new, interesting games.
In that environment, IP is increasingly important. That may look like a long-awaited port. Final Fantasy Tactics is set to return from a lengthy hiatus in September with The Ivalice Chronicles, bringing the best version of the game to players. A certain pop culture-literate gecko just tail-whipped his way onto modern platforms with Limited Run’s GEX Trilogy collection — despite the last game in the series having been released all the way back in 1999. And a raft of Mortal Kombat games are getting the red carpet treatment later this year courtesy of Digital Eclipse’s Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection.
Sequels Are Never Truly Off The (Breakfast) Table
Ports and remasters are relatively inexpensive, though, which is what makes it even more notable that sequels to cult hits are getting greenlit, too. Last year, Creative Assembly announced that a sequel to Alien: Isolation, its beloved but not especially successful stealth horror game that adapted the iconic sci-fi series, is in development.
Earlier this year, Nintendo announced that Kirby Air Ride, the 2003 kart racer starring everyone’s favorite inflatable pink mascot, would be getting a sequel from Super Smash Bros. auteur Masahiro Sakurai. Though Sakurai rose to Internet prominence as the weary face of Smash Ultimate, in his early career he created Kirby and directed several of the characters early games.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how Kirby Air Ride desperately needed a sequel. I was a big fan of the original GameCube game (it was a Friend’s House Exclusive), so I was stoked to see it return.
In the past few years, it’s become increasingly clear that nothing is off the table. Back in 2021, Nintendo revived its long-dormant pocket monster photography brand with New Pokemon Snap. For 22 years, Pokemon Snap was a one-off, an interesting oddity that, despite strong sales and a positive reception, was treated like a cult object by Nintendo. Until it wasn’t.
This is part of a broader trend in gaming right now. As the games industry increasingly consolidates, publishers are looking for surer and surer bets. The water is choppy but IP, rightly or wrongly, is viewed as a safe harbor. Billy Hatcher might be risky, and Sega likely doesn’t want to put all its eggs in one basket. But what about one egg? One giant egg?
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Sega, It’s Time To Bring Back The Chao Garden
Please, I’m literally on me hands and knees begging.
