When I got my Sega CD for Christmas 1993, I had two games for it: Sewer Shark, and Sonic CD. At the time, hop and bop platformers were hands down my favorite genre, and after Sonic CD I was looking for something new. The back of the Sonic CD manual had an advert for Ecco the Dolphin:
I had heard of the game through the adverts on TV, namely this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trYrKNAtUP8
And I figured, since I had fallen in love with a game series about a blue Hedgehog, that a game about a dolphin in the ocean could probably be fun. Those two adverts were all I knew about the games, so I was expecting something in line with Sonic. I read gaming magazines, but hadn't seen any reviews on ecco or anything. So, for my birthday, I asked my sister for Ecco the Dolphin on Sega CD, and she surprised me with both Ecco 1 and Ecco The Tides of Time, both on the Sega CD.
Holy crap.
This series blew my fucking mind. Today, the big twist about how batshit crazy the games get has been largely spoiled by the internet, but in 1994, I hadn't heard any of it. For those who don't know, the series, seemingly about a dolphin swimming in the ocean doing dolphin shit, is straight up eldritch cosmic horror. The series has a super heavy, very dark sci fi nature. It is heavily influenced by the works of H.R. Geiger. The most infamous pic that sums this up:
The games are very story heavy, much more so than you'd expect for a game like this. The story that unfolds begins with Ecco playing with his pod (school of family in dolphin-terms) when one dolphin challenges him to a contest to see who can jump the furthest into the air. While leaping into the air, an event occurs where ecco witnesses the entire ocean being sucked up into the air, excluding him (since he was not in the ocean at the time). Once he lands back in the water, the bay he was in is completely devoid of all life for miles around. And thus, Ecco begins a quest to find out what happened to his pod and rescue them. His journey takes him to the atlantic ocean, where he meets an ancient blue whale named "Big Blue" who has lived through that same event Ecco witnessed a couple of times. He tells Ecco that there is a higher being that lives deep under the ice caps of the arctic ocean, who is essentially god, who can explain what happened better. And thus, Ecco embarks to find this god, named the Asterite, an ancient souble-helix shaped being who has been on earth since the planet formed.
The Asterite is made up of globes, but one of his globes has been destroyed, and thus the Asterite is incomplete and weakened. Speaking to ecco through telepathy, he begs Ecco to find the ruins of atlantis to travel back 50,000,000 years into the past, to meet a younger version of the Asterite, to steal one of his globes to travel back into the future to restore him (creating a time loop paradox). After doing this, the Asterite, finally at full power, grants Ecco extraordinary abilities and tells him he's been destined since time began for this purpose, as indicated by the constellation pattern on ecco's forehead. Turn out, Earth as a whole is nothing but a farm for a race of alien bugs known as the Vortex, which is ruled by a giant vortex queen. Every so many decades, they plunder the earth's ocean, sucking it up through space, to be devoured as a feast for the Vortex Queen, who then lays eggs to conquer other worlds. The event Ecco witnessed was the harvesting of his family. They have already been devoured by the queen.
But, the Asterite says Ecco can use the time machine at Atlantis to go back and stop the queen, by allowing himself to be abducted. And thus, you return to the beginning of the game, only this time empowered by the touch of god, and remain in the ocean during the harvesting. This lets Ecco visit the vortex queen home world, which is a bizarre biomechanical maze. Ultimately, he kills the queen, destroys her brood, and saves his pod, returning to earth.
The entire story for Ecco 1 is presented as a CGI movie within ecco 2:
I can't say enough how great of a subversion of expectations this was. It was probably the most surprised I've ever been at a game series. Ecco the Tides of Time is a little bit different than Ecco 1, because it's a direct continuation of the story, so the shock factor of the twist is gone. Right from the beginning, you know about aliens and all that, so rather than focusing on a grand mystery to drive the plot, it's more like The Butterfly Effect, where Ecco's actions have "split the stream of time in two like a stone in the way." There exists now two alternate futures, and which one is earth's real future depends on the actions of Ecco. In one, dolphins hyper-evolve and become the dominant species on the planet, building a vast network of water tubes that connect all the planet's oceans. Dolphins in this future are telekinetic and can "sing their thoughts" to each other, as well as fly. Their evolution makes the planet into a utopia. The alternate future, by contrast, is one ruled by the vortex queen. When ecco killed her in Ecco 1, her last action was to send an egg to earth's ocean, which is currently unhatched in Ecco's time. When that egg hatches, it will turn into a vortex queen, who will make the earth her new nest, and resume her world-harvesting ways for other planets. Along with the egg, a number of vortex spawns have come to earth and murdered the asterite, which robs Ecco of his super powers. They kidnap him and send him to the vortex future to try and imprison ecco, who escapes back to the past. Using the atlantis time machine, Ecco restores the asterite again, once again gaining super powers, then uses his entire pod of dolphins to attack and take down the newly hatched vortex queen. But, in a last ditch effort, the queen makes her way to atlantis to use the time machine, with the intent of going back to the past, before Ecco, to find a more primitive form of life that she can conquer and rule. Ecco follows her into the time machine at the climax of the game, only for the machine to malfunction. The vortex queen is sent hundreds of millions of years into the past, where she finds life too primitive to conquer, and over eons, her race evolves into crustaceans on earth. Crabs and such are the modern descendants of the vortex queen. As for Ecco, he is forever lost in the stream of time, never seen again. An incredibly melancholy ending for such a series.
To me, in 1994, without any expectations of where the story would go, this was riveting. I had already liked sci fi, and this was pretty much right up my alley.
It helps very much that the Sega CD version of Ecco 1 is much, much better designed than the Sega Genesis version. It includes new levels, and more importantly, they rebalanced the game. One major point of frustration for Ecco 1 is how brutally hard the Genesis version is. By contrast, the Sega CD version is much, much easier, with better placement of air bubbles to keep you going, more fish for life, and most importantly: multiple mid level checkpoints, so that if you die, you don't have to repeat an entire 20-minute long level.
If you've never played ecco the dolphin, you might be surprised at how it actually plays. Despite being an "animal mascot" game, it doesn't play at all like Sonic or Mario or Bonk or anything like that. It's actually closer to something like Zelda than any of those. Much of the game doesn't involve combat, but rather puzzle solving, largely by pushing boulders or grabbing keys. In between these puzzle solving moments, there are usually moments involving dexterous challenges, where the main driving force is your dwindling oxygen (remember, dolphins are holding their breath under water, they need to breath air). So you'll have long caverns full of spikes or rocks to slow you down, where the challenge is maneuvering ecco quickly enough to reach the surface for air.
All in all, if I had to compare the ecco series to any other game, I'd say it reminds me most of Shadow of the Colossus. There is this same emphasis on very deep, foreboding atmosphere, and the moment to moment control is purposefully obtuse (ecco controls like a dolphin underwater, and Wanderer's horse controls like a horse in SOTC).
Oh, and I haven't even talked about the music. The fucking music, holy shit:
This soundtrack was done by Spencer Nilsen, the same person who did the USA soundtrack for Sonic CD. It's one of my favorite soundtracks ever. I would actually listen to this music in my car on the actual sega CD game when I was younger because I loved the OST so much. It's haunting and eerie.
I often see people today remark that they didn't get far enough into ecco to even see the Asterite, so all the deep scifi stuff in ecco gets lost on them, but despite this, the opening of the game still "scared them." And that's kind of the point, ecco is supposed to be very scary. It is, essentially, a 16-bit horror game. The fear is meant to come from the innate fear many have of the depths of the ocean. It's meant to be unnerving, and isolating.
The Dreamcast game that came later is also excellent, but completely unrelated to the earlier games. It's basically a reboot, that follows the same theme of Ecco 1 and Ecco 2 but is otherwise entirely unrelated. In Ecco: Defender of the Future, Dolphin and Man have evolved together as a symbiotic relationship. Together, they form a utopia on the planet, an inter-species pact, to defend themselves against an alien invasion from a fleet known as The Foe. Dolphin and man come together to form a shield over the planet, which repels The Foe, but The Foe learn of Time Travel and trick Ecco into going back in time to try and stop them, but in doing so he splits the future into 4 different scenarios, each one intended to destroy the relationship between man and dolphin so that they'll never build the shield, which will allow future invasions by The Foe to be successful. For example, in one future, Ecco accidentally makes it so Dolphins evolve to be hyper aggressive, and they enslave mankind. It goes into other cool stuff, but this OP has become too long and wandering. The main focus of this topic is how mind blowing Ecco was when it was new, if you never had it spoiled.
Today, I think a lot of people find Ecco hard to get into. I think part of that is because the Genesis version of Ecco 1 is much more difficult, and it lacks the incredible music of the Sega CD version. Despite that, Ecco the dolphin is very easily one of my favorite gaming series ever. It was a wonderful treat to go into blind.
I had heard of the game through the adverts on TV, namely this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trYrKNAtUP8
And I figured, since I had fallen in love with a game series about a blue Hedgehog, that a game about a dolphin in the ocean could probably be fun. Those two adverts were all I knew about the games, so I was expecting something in line with Sonic. I read gaming magazines, but hadn't seen any reviews on ecco or anything. So, for my birthday, I asked my sister for Ecco the Dolphin on Sega CD, and she surprised me with both Ecco 1 and Ecco The Tides of Time, both on the Sega CD.
Holy crap.
This series blew my fucking mind. Today, the big twist about how batshit crazy the games get has been largely spoiled by the internet, but in 1994, I hadn't heard any of it. For those who don't know, the series, seemingly about a dolphin swimming in the ocean doing dolphin shit, is straight up eldritch cosmic horror. The series has a super heavy, very dark sci fi nature. It is heavily influenced by the works of H.R. Geiger. The most infamous pic that sums this up:
The games are very story heavy, much more so than you'd expect for a game like this. The story that unfolds begins with Ecco playing with his pod (school of family in dolphin-terms) when one dolphin challenges him to a contest to see who can jump the furthest into the air. While leaping into the air, an event occurs where ecco witnesses the entire ocean being sucked up into the air, excluding him (since he was not in the ocean at the time). Once he lands back in the water, the bay he was in is completely devoid of all life for miles around. And thus, Ecco begins a quest to find out what happened to his pod and rescue them. His journey takes him to the atlantic ocean, where he meets an ancient blue whale named "Big Blue" who has lived through that same event Ecco witnessed a couple of times. He tells Ecco that there is a higher being that lives deep under the ice caps of the arctic ocean, who is essentially god, who can explain what happened better. And thus, Ecco embarks to find this god, named the Asterite, an ancient souble-helix shaped being who has been on earth since the planet formed.
The Asterite is made up of globes, but one of his globes has been destroyed, and thus the Asterite is incomplete and weakened. Speaking to ecco through telepathy, he begs Ecco to find the ruins of atlantis to travel back 50,000,000 years into the past, to meet a younger version of the Asterite, to steal one of his globes to travel back into the future to restore him (creating a time loop paradox). After doing this, the Asterite, finally at full power, grants Ecco extraordinary abilities and tells him he's been destined since time began for this purpose, as indicated by the constellation pattern on ecco's forehead. Turn out, Earth as a whole is nothing but a farm for a race of alien bugs known as the Vortex, which is ruled by a giant vortex queen. Every so many decades, they plunder the earth's ocean, sucking it up through space, to be devoured as a feast for the Vortex Queen, who then lays eggs to conquer other worlds. The event Ecco witnessed was the harvesting of his family. They have already been devoured by the queen.
But, the Asterite says Ecco can use the time machine at Atlantis to go back and stop the queen, by allowing himself to be abducted. And thus, you return to the beginning of the game, only this time empowered by the touch of god, and remain in the ocean during the harvesting. This lets Ecco visit the vortex queen home world, which is a bizarre biomechanical maze. Ultimately, he kills the queen, destroys her brood, and saves his pod, returning to earth.
The entire story for Ecco 1 is presented as a CGI movie within ecco 2:
I can't say enough how great of a subversion of expectations this was. It was probably the most surprised I've ever been at a game series. Ecco the Tides of Time is a little bit different than Ecco 1, because it's a direct continuation of the story, so the shock factor of the twist is gone. Right from the beginning, you know about aliens and all that, so rather than focusing on a grand mystery to drive the plot, it's more like The Butterfly Effect, where Ecco's actions have "split the stream of time in two like a stone in the way." There exists now two alternate futures, and which one is earth's real future depends on the actions of Ecco. In one, dolphins hyper-evolve and become the dominant species on the planet, building a vast network of water tubes that connect all the planet's oceans. Dolphins in this future are telekinetic and can "sing their thoughts" to each other, as well as fly. Their evolution makes the planet into a utopia. The alternate future, by contrast, is one ruled by the vortex queen. When ecco killed her in Ecco 1, her last action was to send an egg to earth's ocean, which is currently unhatched in Ecco's time. When that egg hatches, it will turn into a vortex queen, who will make the earth her new nest, and resume her world-harvesting ways for other planets. Along with the egg, a number of vortex spawns have come to earth and murdered the asterite, which robs Ecco of his super powers. They kidnap him and send him to the vortex future to try and imprison ecco, who escapes back to the past. Using the atlantis time machine, Ecco restores the asterite again, once again gaining super powers, then uses his entire pod of dolphins to attack and take down the newly hatched vortex queen. But, in a last ditch effort, the queen makes her way to atlantis to use the time machine, with the intent of going back to the past, before Ecco, to find a more primitive form of life that she can conquer and rule. Ecco follows her into the time machine at the climax of the game, only for the machine to malfunction. The vortex queen is sent hundreds of millions of years into the past, where she finds life too primitive to conquer, and over eons, her race evolves into crustaceans on earth. Crabs and such are the modern descendants of the vortex queen. As for Ecco, he is forever lost in the stream of time, never seen again. An incredibly melancholy ending for such a series.
To me, in 1994, without any expectations of where the story would go, this was riveting. I had already liked sci fi, and this was pretty much right up my alley.
It helps very much that the Sega CD version of Ecco 1 is much, much better designed than the Sega Genesis version. It includes new levels, and more importantly, they rebalanced the game. One major point of frustration for Ecco 1 is how brutally hard the Genesis version is. By contrast, the Sega CD version is much, much easier, with better placement of air bubbles to keep you going, more fish for life, and most importantly: multiple mid level checkpoints, so that if you die, you don't have to repeat an entire 20-minute long level.
If you've never played ecco the dolphin, you might be surprised at how it actually plays. Despite being an "animal mascot" game, it doesn't play at all like Sonic or Mario or Bonk or anything like that. It's actually closer to something like Zelda than any of those. Much of the game doesn't involve combat, but rather puzzle solving, largely by pushing boulders or grabbing keys. In between these puzzle solving moments, there are usually moments involving dexterous challenges, where the main driving force is your dwindling oxygen (remember, dolphins are holding their breath under water, they need to breath air). So you'll have long caverns full of spikes or rocks to slow you down, where the challenge is maneuvering ecco quickly enough to reach the surface for air.
All in all, if I had to compare the ecco series to any other game, I'd say it reminds me most of Shadow of the Colossus. There is this same emphasis on very deep, foreboding atmosphere, and the moment to moment control is purposefully obtuse (ecco controls like a dolphin underwater, and Wanderer's horse controls like a horse in SOTC).
Oh, and I haven't even talked about the music. The fucking music, holy shit:
This soundtrack was done by Spencer Nilsen, the same person who did the USA soundtrack for Sonic CD. It's one of my favorite soundtracks ever. I would actually listen to this music in my car on the actual sega CD game when I was younger because I loved the OST so much. It's haunting and eerie.
I often see people today remark that they didn't get far enough into ecco to even see the Asterite, so all the deep scifi stuff in ecco gets lost on them, but despite this, the opening of the game still "scared them." And that's kind of the point, ecco is supposed to be very scary. It is, essentially, a 16-bit horror game. The fear is meant to come from the innate fear many have of the depths of the ocean. It's meant to be unnerving, and isolating.
The Dreamcast game that came later is also excellent, but completely unrelated to the earlier games. It's basically a reboot, that follows the same theme of Ecco 1 and Ecco 2 but is otherwise entirely unrelated. In Ecco: Defender of the Future, Dolphin and Man have evolved together as a symbiotic relationship. Together, they form a utopia on the planet, an inter-species pact, to defend themselves against an alien invasion from a fleet known as The Foe. Dolphin and man come together to form a shield over the planet, which repels The Foe, but The Foe learn of Time Travel and trick Ecco into going back in time to try and stop them, but in doing so he splits the future into 4 different scenarios, each one intended to destroy the relationship between man and dolphin so that they'll never build the shield, which will allow future invasions by The Foe to be successful. For example, in one future, Ecco accidentally makes it so Dolphins evolve to be hyper aggressive, and they enslave mankind. It goes into other cool stuff, but this OP has become too long and wandering. The main focus of this topic is how mind blowing Ecco was when it was new, if you never had it spoiled.
Today, I think a lot of people find Ecco hard to get into. I think part of that is because the Genesis version of Ecco 1 is much more difficult, and it lacks the incredible music of the Sega CD version. Despite that, Ecco the dolphin is very easily one of my favorite gaming series ever. It was a wonderful treat to go into blind.
