SEGA's Sonic team is a small development team that, like amusement vision, love the GameCube more than the rival formats. Also nearly all of the game series' they've made has created commercial or Cult success. Such games include the legendary Sonic series, the cult favourite NiGHTS and of course Phantasy Star. But with Phantasy Star Online 3 set to be the last in the series and Sonic going multi-format we are all left wondering what the team have in store for the GameCube… and joy of joys it's a Platformer featuring a boy in a chicken suit.

But this isn't any old chicken suit; it's a legendary chicken suit that possesses the power to control special eggs. Billy Hatcher, the star of the show, must use the various eggs to beat the evil King that has brought darkness to the magical land and captured the creatures living within it. The storyline is so bad and the concept is so ridiculous it puts Conker's table leg shenanigans to shame (The storyline of Conker's Bad Fur Day featured an evil king who tried to capture Conker and use him as a table leg). There is no way this wasn't due to the storyline editors drinking addiction, it has to be deliberately tongue in cheek cheesy… which is just great in my books. Storyline aside though it does look as if Billy Hatcher will gain the cult success of the NiGHTS series, because it just looks so damn fun.

Despite how ridiculous the concept of a small lad in a magical chicken suit pushing eggs around until it hatches into a cartoon penguin is, it does look damn fine. It's as if Sonic Team looked at Super Monkey Ball and thought, “Now that is the most insane thing ever… lets beat it”. Basically Billy beats the hell out of a collection of the traditional platform baddies (all equipped with traditional cheesy grin) until he locates an egg. Now he must “feed” the egg with various power ups (Often fruit icons and other such doodads) that scatter the level or dropped by the defeated enemies. Then that egg will hatch and out pops your very own accomplice, perhaps it will be someone who can shoot ice and freeze a bridge across a river, or a fire breathing friend set to break down any snowy blockades. Each egg has its various size, shape and colour and are as equally useful as the animals within, you can use the egg to block attacks and to mow down oncoming enemies.

The movement in the game continues the Sonic Teams lust for speed, despite being obviously slower than the insanely fast Sonic it does move at a quick pace. It is also far easier to manoeuvre than you'd imagine as the egg and Billy become one unit… which makes things much easier. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is a mere 30% complete and yet despite this the murmurs emerging from E3 were all promising stuff and the graphical style appears very nice. Although SEGA of America try to dumb down the graphical “kiddy” style it runs very smoothly and looks far nicer than the new Sonic Hero's game. Some notable effects is the frantic lighting effects and the gorgeous transparency effect on the first Pirate boss.

So. Well done Sonic Team for quitting your mass of ports and finally releasing a new franchise, a first since the Saturn era. Watch out for it.