Proto:Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (GameCube)

This page details one or more prototype versions of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (GameCube).

On the Nintendo GameCube Preview Disc from May 2003 is a playable demo of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg containing two playable levels (one hidden), both taking place on Pirate's Island. The demo's build date is September 5, 2002, over a year before the game's release, and contains a large number of differences from the final game.

Sub-Pages

Night Mission The standard mission found in the demo.

Day Mission A hidden daytime mission found in the demo.

Title Screen

Proto	Final

The demo's title screen uses a static image, while the final's takes place in a dynamic scene. The "Press Start" text is slightly different, and the demo has text indicating it's a demo version.

The demo's logo has a few differences:

• The logo is overall slightly larger.
• The egg and crescent-shaped egg trail are larger, closer to the text, have thicker outlines, and curve more.
• The trademark symbol is slightly higher up and more to the right.

Technologies Screen

Proto	Final

The ADX logo's colors were inverted, and the logo itself was moved up to make room for crediting Dolby. The demo is missing the note about the game being compatible with the Game Boy Advance Cable since it doesn't use it.

HUD Differences

Proto	Final

• The health and lives icons have a different art style.
• The lives icon and counter is on the left underneath the health.
• The lives counter text is in white.
• There is no timer.
• The egg meter looks crude, has a shadow, and is missing the chicken emblem.
• There is no empty egg icon for the egg meter. If Billy isn't holding an egg, the egg meter moves off-screen.

Pause Menu

Proto	Final

• The red and white in the "Pause" text are inverted.
• The outline around the "Pause" text is less distinct.
• The "Pause" text is closer to the top of the box.
• The menu items are slightly lower.
• The border for the pause menu is a simple yellow rounded rectangle, which is shorter than the final's orange box.
• The lives and Chick Coin icons are missing, and the health and egg meter are underneath the black overlay.
• The "Select" option is missing

Coming This Fall Screen

Regardless of whether you lose all your lives or complete the level, a screen indicating the relative release date (at the time) shows up.

Other Visual Differences

Proto	Final

Egg Rings look simpler and don't have spheres or connectors around them.

Proto	Final

Textboxes are simpler in the prototype. The indicator to move onto the next box is a double arrow instead of a B button icon.

Proto	Final

The B button prompt for talking to characters is simpler and less stylized in the prototype.

Proto	Final

In the prototype, performing an Egg Driver on some eggs has a squish effect that is not present in the final.

Proto	Final

The mission cleared phrase is "Mission is cleared" in the prototype. The final removed the "is" and made "mission" larger.

• The icon for targeting enemies looks different.
• There are simpler visual effects when throwing and dunking the egg.
• There are different visual effects when hatching an egg animal. Additionally, there is no text when they come out; instead, the camera rotates around them slightly and smoothly pans back to the player when regaining control.
• The visual egg meter on the HUD doesn't indicate the egg's health.
• The green plants present throughout the level are smaller and a duller shade of green in the prototype.

Music Differences

All music in the demo is different than the corresponding songs in the final.

select.adx

Proto	Final

Quite a few differences here. The "la la" vocals are in a different tone.

pirates1.adx

Proto	Final

This song doesn't play at all in the demo. It sounds like an incomplete version of the night theme for Pirate's Island, which is likely why the demo opted for one of the day variants.

pirates2.adx

Proto	Final

Some of the instruments are different, and some instruments in the demo are less prominent.

pirates3.adx

Proto	Final

A similar situation with this one as well.

If looping on the music playback is disabled, some normally unheard outros for these songs can be heard. For the level themes it's just instrument release, but in the main theme there is a proper outro left unused!

Other Audio Differences

• Billy's voice is completely different. The audio for his voice is very low, making it hard to hear over the music. He also says fewer phrases overall, such as no sound when dashing or dying, or variants for Egg Drive.

Comparison to final:

Voice Clip Description:	Proto Voice Clip:	Final Voice Clip:
Rooster Call
Rooster Call B		Doesn't Exist (see below)
Short Hop
Hop
Charging Call
Short Hop B
Falling
Summoning Animal
Yahoo!
Yay!
Breaking To Halt
Getting Hit

• It seems the devs intended for charging the rooster call to affect hatching, based on how long the button was held. However even in the 2002 proto this feature seems scrapped, as charging time doesn't affect how the eggs hatch.

Interestingly, voice clips for Rolly also exist in the proto, unused and different to final.

Comparison to final:

Voice Clip Description:	Proto Voice Clip:	Final Voice Clip:
Rooster Call
Rooster Call B		N/A (see above)
Short Hop
Hop
Charging Call
Short Hop B
Falling
Summoning Animal
Yahoo!	(Same as "Yay!")
Yay!
Breaking To Halt
Getting Hit

• Billy uses "Yay!" when starting an Egg Drive or when preparing for an Egg Toss instead of "Yahoo!" like the final. Similarly, situations were "Yay!" would be used in the final are "Yahoo!" in the proto.
• A lot of sound effects are missing. The crows don't make sounds after coming out of defeated enemies for instance.
• The sound for eggs growing to full size is slightly different.

Proto Egg Maxed Clip:	Final Egg Maxed Clip:

• There is no sound when Menie-Funie talks to Billy at the start of the level.
• The sound played when the Emblem of Courage appears is different, being deeper for pitch in the proto.

Proto Emblem Sound:	Final Emblem Sound:

• Bridges are extremely glitchy when it comes to audio. They will play a sound many times in succession when you step on them, and rolling an egg over them sounds as if you broke a rock or other piece of scenery. However, you can't normally get to any bridges in the demo level.

General Differences

• There is no animation for Billy starting out the level; he's just there.
• Billy's idle animation is slightly different. His hands start open, and he closes them into fists over time.
• When hanging from a ledge, the only action Billy can do is jump from it. In the final, this is the only action Billy can do when grabbing hand bars, but for ledges he can choose to drop or pull himself up; however, he can't actually jump from a ledge.
• Billy's animation for commanding an animal friend is different. He simply raises his arm up, similar to his animation when befriending animals.
• Egg movement is buggy. Sometimes, you'll accelerate very slowly upon grabbing an egg, and other times it won't reset certain action states, such as performing a dash.
• Billy's position while grabbing the egg is extremely buggy. If Billy hits collision that the egg can go through, he'll be visibly separated from the egg but still be rolling it. This is easily noticeable if you slowly stop your egg while it's falling off a ledge.
• Billy can freely walk on steep slopes as if they weren't steep. This includes the slope at the start.
• The draw distance is shorter in the prototype.
• Level geometry, such as trees, disappears when the camera is far away from it instead of smoothly fading out of view like in the final.
• You can sometimes clip through objects if you perform a Bounce Jump and hold towards the object.
• You can't roll with R after doing a Bounce Jump.
• You can't throw your egg with B after doing a Bounce Jump.
• The visual egg meter on the HUD fills up extremely slowly.
• The entire phrase "Let's Go!" is displayed when starting a level instead of them being separate.
• Chicken Elder Uri-Uri is called Patriarch Chicken Uli-Uli in the night mission's briefing, but Uri-uri everywhere else.
• The Rooster Call is called the Egg Echo.
• Animal friends make a high-pitched "squeaky" sound whenever they walk and make no sound when you run them over with an egg.
• There is no cutscene for the Chicken Elder's egg breaking if it gets destroyed. Instead, it just plays Billy's generic failure animation.
• On boot, the Sega logo shows up, followed then the technologies screen, followed by the Sonic Team logo. In the final, the Sonic Team logo shows up right after the Sega logo.
• Some egg spawns are mistakenly slightly above their nests.

Development Text

There's a file called GCAX.conf, which looks to be a config file for the AX sound library. This file is not present in the final version.

Japanese

Translation

;---------------------------------------------------------- ; GCAX(AX SNDLIB)の設定 ;---------------------------------------------------------- ; 書式 ; ; セミコロン以降はコメントになります ; 改行コードは、LF(Unix)、CR(Macintosh)、CR+LF(MS-DOS)いずれも可です ; コメント以外に日本語を入れることはできません ; ; 数値 ; 0 ゼロ ; 0[0-7]* 8進数 ; 0x[0-9A-Fa-f]* 16進数 ; $[0-9A-Fa-f]* 16進数 ; [1-9][0-9] 10進数 ; ; <s> ; ホワイトスペース (スペースまたはタブ) ; ;---------------------------------------------------------- ;AramBank - ARAMバンクサイズの設定 ;AramBank <s> バンク番号 <s> バンクサイズ ;---------------------------------------------------------- ;ARAMのバンクの大きさは、プログラム実行中を通じて固定になっていますが、 ;このファイルで設定することで、実行開始時に変更することができます ; ;なお、ARAMにロードされるのは、波形データのみです ; ;---------------------------------------------------------- ; ARAMバンクサイズの設定 ;---------------------------------------------------------- AramBank 0 670000 AramBank 1 850000 AramBank 2 700000 AramBank 3 800000 AramBank 4 910000 AramBank 5 500000 AramBank 6 500000 AramBank 7 400000 AramBank 8 0 AramBank 9 0 AramBank 10 0 AramBank 11 0 AramBank 12 0 AramBank 13 0 ;---------------------------------------------------------- ; リバーブ設定 ;---------------------------------------------------------- ReverbHTime 1000 ;msec ReverbHPreDelay 10 ;msec ReverbHDamping 80 ;% ReverbHColoration 50 ;% ReverbHCrosstalk 30 ;% ReverbHMix 100 ;%

;---------------------------------------------------------- ; GCAX (AX SNDLIB) Settings ;---------------------------------------------------------- ; Format ; ; Anything after a semicolon will become a comment. ; LF (Unix), CR (Macintosh), and CR+LF (MS-DOS) may all be used as newline characters. ; Do not write in Japanese except in comments. ; ; Numerics ; 0 0 ; 0[0-7]* Base 8 ; 0x[0-9A-Fa-f]* Base 16 ; $[0-9A-Fa-f]* Base 16 ; [1-9][0-9] Base 10 ; ; <s> ; White Space (Space or Tab) ; ;---------------------------------------------------------- ;AramBank - ARAM Bank Size Settings ;AramBank <s> Bank Number <s> Bank Size ;---------------------------------------------------------- ;The ARAM bank's size is fixed during the program's runtime, ;but you can change its size at launch by setting it in this file. ; ;Note that only waveform data will be loaded into ARAM. ; ;---------------------------------------------------------- ; ARAM Bank Size Settings ;---------------------------------------------------------- AramBank 0 670000 AramBank 1 850000 AramBank 2 700000 AramBank 3 800000 AramBank 4 910000 AramBank 5 500000 AramBank 6 500000 AramBank 7 400000 AramBank 8 0 AramBank 9 0 AramBank 10 0 AramBank 11 0 AramBank 12 0 AramBank 13 0 ;---------------------------------------------------------- ; Reverb Settings ;---------------------------------------------------------- ReverbHTime 1000 ;msec ReverbHPreDelay 10 ;msec ReverbHDamping 80 ;% ReverbHColoration 50 ;% ReverbHCrosstalk 30 ;% ReverbHMix 100 ;%

Unused Graphics

Pause Menu

In the pause menu texture is an icon of an egg that doesn't appear anywhere in the prototype or the final. The fact that it's in the pause menu indicates that it could have been a cursor of some sort, as there's no cursor for the pause menu in any version of the game.

Also found in the demo's pause menu is a graphic for a menu option called "Exit". Both the demo and the final versions display the "End Game" option for quitting out of the game, thus rendering this unused. This graphic was removed from the pause menu texture in the final.

To do: Check international versions of the demo for these letters.

In the same texture for the "LET'S GO!" phrase shown at the start of the level are graphics for the "A" and "R" letters, which go unused.

Contained in the texture for the "PIRATES ISLAND" level title text is an icon for an egg. This is never displayed in-game and isn't in the final.