Former Sega designer Yuji Naka, one of the co-creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, director of noted flop Balan Wonderworld, and most recently convicted of insider trading at Square Enix, apparently tried to retitle the 2003 GameCube game Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg as Billy Hatcher and the Giant Cock back when he was still at Sega.
This comes from a delightful and lengthy interview with Mike Fischer, former VP and Sega of America product manager, conducted by Sega-16. Fischer has a ton of fascinating anecdotes from his time at Sega covering everything from the Pico to the Game Gear, Sonic to Streets of Rage. But by far his best story is about Naka, who he seems to loathe based on multiple jabs delivered throughout the presentation.
Fischer tees up the story by talking about his own recommendations that Sega consider creating more mature, M-rated games for the U.S. market, advice which he says Naka clearly hated. “Naka just went fucking ballistic on me, yelling at me, saying I wanted to make porno games. Literally, I’ve never seen someone foam at the mouth, but he had literally like foamy spit at the corners of his mouth. ‘How many games have you made? How many hits have you delivered? Who are you to come here and tell us?’”
Shortly after, Naka made Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg for GameCube with Sonic Team. Originally, Fischer says, Naka wanted to name the game just Giant Eggs. But he was advised that the notion of “laying a big egg” in the U.S. is a colloquialism (less used nowadays) that means to fail spectacularly. Instead, they suggested Billy Hatcher, and even compromised by calling it Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. But as Fischer explains, Naka still wasn’t appeased.
“We at one point – I promise you, I am not making up this story; I have two witnesses! At one point, [Naka] 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?’”
Fischer, unfortunately, did not agree to that, nor did anyone else, so Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg it was. Look, I’m not saying they should have named it that, but I am saying it probably would have sold better than it did. It also definitely would have had several Fox News segments dedicated to it.
There are a lot of other really fun anecdotes in here, like Fischer recalling getting to take Michael Jackson to a Sega arcade, or recounting the time when, during an effort to rebuild a relationship between Sega and Nintendo, a Sonic the Hedgehog mascot character walked up to the door of Nintendo of America and hugged a Mario mascot character. He also shit-talks Naka a bit more, particularly due to his distaste for Naka taking credit for creating Sonic, though Fischer ends the interview with a somewhat nicer story. Apparently, Naka heard about a team of Chinese pirates making bootleg versions of Dreamcast games, and instead of taking them down, Naka bought their company and hired them to do porting work.