Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg

Good morning!

A playful little title from Sonic Team and published by Sega with the most cheerful mood ever. It's about four kids that go to "Morning Land," a magical land that's inhabited by the Chicken People. They need help. In order to help these little chicks, the four don the magical Legendary Chicken Suits and command eggs in order to take down the Big Bad with the help of cute little mon-like creatures by your side to whoop some booty.

Sounds cute, at least before you take into account the massive amount of possibly traumatic material. The Big Bad and his cronies? Crows who want to take over the world by causing endless night. As Nightmare Fuel goes, none of this sounds threatening, but boss fights bring a whole new level of creepy. Most of these bosses, and some notable levels, are also much harder than most people would have a right to expect.

The mission-style layout is sort of a Shout-Out to the Adventure games from the Sonic franchise with the gameplay focusing more on fighting than speed. It got mixed reviews (well, more like mixed-to-positive) from the gaming community, but the Sonic community liked the game (which is rare).

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This game provides examples of:

• Big Bad: Dark Raven.
• Bullfight Boss: Moles the walrus is a good example.
• The Cameo: An egg of Sonic can be seen in some parts of the game. While on the side of cameos, Billy had appeared in other sega games. While people question on why Sega hasnt made a sequel yet.
  • The egg in question hatches, depending on the level you find it in, into any number of Sega characters, such as Sonic, Ni GHTS, Amigo, etc.
• Caramelldansen Vid: Believe it
• Cats Are Mean: The small and large cat crow enemies.
• Cat and Mouse Boss: Era Gecka's boss battle is this, Era Gecka starts off big and chases after you, but eventually he will walk to the centre, shrink himself and starting running around in the grass while you search for him in the grass, it's not actually explained in any way why he shrinks.
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase
• Circus of Fear: The Circus Park during the night.
• Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: The Elders are responsible to make the sun rise this way.
• Color-Coded Elements
  • Fire
  • Water
  • Wind
  • Ice
  • Steel
  • Lightning
  • Light
  • Dark
• Cue the Sun
• Creepy Circus Music: The Circus Park music at night.
• Crap Saccharine World: Morning Land could be interpreted as this, seeing as how you can usually find some sort of Nightmare Fuel Mook hiding right around the corner. And honestly, how bright and cheerful would you be if you were faced with the chance that you may never see the light of day again?
• Dark Is Evil / Light Is Good
• Dem Bones: Topo rides on the back of skeletal Tyrannosaurus.
  • Also the Bone Dino mini-bosses you fight before him.
• Darkness Equals Death: during the second phase of the final boss fight.
• Doppelganger Spin: Saltim does this with mirrors.
• The Dragon: Dark Corvo to Dark Raven.
• Dungeon Bypass: Possible in one mission in Blizzard Castle. There's a huge, nasty slide, full of spikes, jumps, narrow whip turns, and one "threading the needle" segment where you are pretty much guaranteed to lose your egg (and thus a life) the first time through. Looks vicious... Unless you snoop around the nearby area, and find an egg containing a Jet Pack that lets you hover indefinitely. Hatch the egg, accquire the item, and you can lazily float past the entire slide, and on to the next area of the level.
• Egg McGuffin
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: The "light ball" ability you gain in the final boss fight.
• Escort Mission: Once per world (except for the last) you must hatch a golden egg, but it must be protected and be carted through most of the level you do it in.
• Everythings Better with EVERYTHING
  • A Worldwide Punomenon
  • Everything's Better with Chickens: This is basically what the game is all about.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning
  • Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Hence Dino Mountain.
  • Everything's Better with Llamas: Its a half Ostrich Llama by the way.
  • Everything's Better with Monkeys: Saltim, who is a funny clown monkey boss, who is a relief from the difficulty of the game, and is considered to be a fun boss.
    • Dont forget Recky, an egg animal that resembles a monkey with bat wings!
  • Lava Adds Awesome: Dino Mountain.
  • Everythings Slimier With Frogs: The Frog crows.
  • Everything's Better with Penguins: Clippen.
  • Everything's Better with Rainbows: Rainbow Gate.
  • Everything's Even Worse with Sharks
  • Instant Plunder, Just Add Pirates
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Chick only wears them because they look pretty on him.
  • Gold Makes Everything Shiny
  • Kangaroos Represent Australia: Rickol
  • Pretty Butterflies
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Specially if you have a Cypher around.
• Evil Is Not Well Lit
• Evil Sorcerer: Dark Corvo and Dark Raven.
• Exposition Fairy: Menie-Funie speaks to the current character at the beginning of most levels, to give you hints about the actual mission.
• Fat Bastard: Captain Glur.
• Final Exam Boss: Dark Corvo conjures "shadows" of the previous bosses and uses their attacks patterns.
• Fingerless Gloves: Billy, Rolly and Bantam wear a pair of those.
• Flunky Boss: All but one of Dark Corvo's abilities is to summon a shadow clone and sit back and wait for the shadow clone to finish attacking, the only attack he has is when he summons clones of himself and attacks with them.
• Funny Animal: All the chicken people.
• Gang Plank Galleon: Pirate Land
• Gentle Giant: Bantam.
• Goddamn Bats: There are actual bat-like enemies, but some other crow monsters attacks will actually push you. woe to those who were near a cliff if this happens.
• Gratuitous English: "GOOD MORNING!"
  • "LET'S GO!!"
• Green Hill Zone: Forest Village—unsurprising, as this is a Sonic Team game, after all.
• Guide Dang It: Some of the Chick Coins, and rarer eggs.
• Hall of Mirrors: The circus tent on the second level has a lot of mirrors, and most of Saltims abilties involves mirrors.
• Heroic Mime: Billy and his friends never talk in the whole game, although they make a lot of various sounds besides talking.
• Horse of a Different Color: The "mount" creatures. At least one of them lets you avert your Super Drowning Skills.
• Iconic Item: All of the Mons wear a red bandanna somewhere. Some of them have it as a bow—and in one case, a saddle.
• Improbable Weapon User : Billy and his friends use eggs as lethal weapons against enemies.
• Ironic Name: A bantam is a small chicken. Bantam is the biggest of the four kids.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: The chicken elders keep saying this to Billy 'n friends each time they give you an emblem. You actualy never realize what are they used for until the very end.
• Kid Hero
• Kiai: "TAAAAAAAH!!", "HYAAAAH!!" "OK!!"
• Lethal Lava Land: Dino Mountain.
• Lizard Folk: Era Gecka, at least he's taken the form of one.
• Locked Door: Its most likely that you will find these in every single mission. They're either opened by pressing an switch button (moat likely to be hidden), or defeating all crows on screen.
• Mini Boss: The Snake Crow, and the Bone Dinosaurs that you fight before Topo.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Most of the hatchable animals.
• Mini Game: Five different unlockable mini-games, several of which are also Shout Outs—there are games based on Puyo Puyo, NiGHTS Into Dreams, and Chu Chu Rocket.
• Mirror Monster: Saltim is one, he hides in the mirror and even tries to suck you in.
• Mirror World: Saltim runs around in his mirror world and jumps in and out while he fights you.
• Mons: The hatchable monsters could count as this, since you need to hatch all of the eggs for One Hundred Percent Completion.
• Monster Clown: Saltim is a much lighter example, but still counts, the chick you meet before entering the circus tent tells you he's scared from hearing Saltim's laughter from inside, and Saltim is trying to kill you as well, and when you accidently walk into one of the wrong mirrors inside the circus tent, you can hear him laughing at you.
• Mood Whiplash: While most of the game is fairly lighthearted throughout, the final boss is when the Nightmare Fuel really kicks in.
• Musical Nod / Mythology Gag: The Circus Park night music ("Odd March") is a song from Knuckles Chaotix. Mariko Nanba composed music for both games.
• Necromancer: Topo is this; he summons undead dinosaurs to aid him.
• Never Found the Body: Unlike the other bosses, it's not clear whether Dark Corvo dies, the other bosses fade away, but a portal of darkness appears below Dark Corvo and he falls into it without him seen fading away
• Nice Hat: All the main characters.
• Nintendo Hard
• Ominous Floating Castle: Giant Palace
• One-Winged Angel: After you beat his first form as a Funny Animal crow wizard, Dark Raven hatches the Giant Egg, merges with it, and transforms into an enormous crow-shaped living shadow.
• Patchwork Map: Morning Land in general.
• Perpetual Molt: In a game with a lot of cartoon birds this was inevitible.
• Platform Hell: Specially when you play the first mission of Circus Park. Either your golden egg gets broken after reaching the zone with a ridiculous amount of big cat crows; or you end losing your egg by using the red rails.
• Prehistoria: Dino Mountain fits the bill here too.
• Prophet Eyes: The crows.
• Punny Name
• Rainbow Speak:

"My name's Menie Funie, Im the god who watches over Morning Land."

• Ravens and Crows
• Quicksand Sucks: There is a lot of quicksand in the Sandy Ruin.
• Sand Is Water: In the Sandy Ruin.
• Shifting Sand Land: Sand Ruin, with Inca-like pyramids instead
• Shout-Out: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, a Chao, a Rappy, NiGHTS, a Kapu Kapu & Amigo make appearances as tamable monsters
• Slasher Smile: The crows seem to have this, as most enemies have a massive teeth showing smile almost all the time, it's most noticeable on the bosses, if only for the harder ones as they would kill you while smiling constantly.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Blizzard Castle.
• The Smurfette Principle: Out of the four kids, Rolly is the only girl, and out of the seven Elders, Ponee is the only hen (Then why does she crow?).
• Snap Back: By the end of the game, the kids are supposed to go back ot the human world, however during the post-story missions, Billy and his friends are back in morning land wearing their respective suits and its like nothing happened.
• Spell My Name with an "S": The manual misspells Bantam's name as "Bamtam".
• Spelling Song: The song G.I.A.N.T.E.G.G. in which on the song, that's all they do. Humorously enough, due to the lack of enunciation between the "I" and "A" they sound like they're spelling it wrong — "G-I-N-T-E-G-G"—which is kind of a liability for a Spelling Song.
  • "1,2,3,4! Ooooooooooh AAAHH!! La la la-la la la la, la-la-la, la la la-la la..."
• Sphere Factor: the gameplay consists mainly of rolling eggs around. However, Billy is on the ground and is pushing the egg around. He derives strength to battle from them, running noticeably faster when he's pushing an egg along and uses eggs as weapons.
• Summon Magic: Dark Corvos magic seems to be all summon magic.
• Super Drowning Skills
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Almost all of the bosses do this, with most of the bosses all you have to do is dodge everything until they mess up and become vulnerable, sometimes the bosses do the dumbest things to allow them to be harmed and still repeat their actions over and over again, which makes them seem stupid even though they may be owning you.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Ponee, the female Elder, appears to be wearing lipstick.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Billy at the final battle. Despiste having unlocked the other 3 characters, no one even lifts a finger to help him.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Giant Palace
• Underground Monkey: All of the small enemies have the same basic attacks, either inflicting collision damage, or bouncing around.
• Victory Pose: Whenever one of the characters grab an emblem they strike a victory pose.
  • Billy's and Rolly's look more like a Happy Dance.
• Video Game Settings
  • Green Hill Zone: Forest Village.
  • Gang Plank Galleon: Pirate Island.
  • Lethal Lava Land / Prehistoria: Dino Mountain.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Blizzard Castle.
  • Circus of Fear: Circus Park.
  • Shifting Sand Land: Sand Ruin.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: Giant Palace.
• Waddling Head: Most of the minion crows.
• Warmup Boss: Era Gecka is pathetically easy to defeat, although everything is pathetically easy at the start, but it will get harder.
• Weapons That Suck: Saltims mirrors are these, they can be used to suck in Billy, and trap him, which then Saltim will then give a big punch to the mirror, damaging Billy, sending him out of the mirror.
• Whale Egg: All over the place, and even lampshaded by one of the chicks wondering who or what laid them in the first place.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Mostly in the opening cutscene, you'll notice Billy's huge eyes are abnormally well detailed.
• Widget Series
• Word Salad Title: Not the game itself, but the boss theme, named in the OST as "Bang! Bang! Big Hornes Explosion!"
• X Meets Y: Sonic the Hedgehog meets Katamari Damacy.