| Blackfin's review; | |
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Players : One
Levels : 23 Developers : Novotrade (now called Appaloosa Interactive) |
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This is it, the game that started it all. Back when it was first released ecco the dolphin got rave reviews for it's graphics, music and gameplay (well except from the ever present ecco haters) today it brings back a great deal of great memories for the old ecco fan to play it again, but what about for the new ecco fan?
Well this game is no Defender of the Future but it has aged consideribly well for it's age, the graphics still look good, not jaw dropping by todays standards but they are still enough to look nice. The music is still great, it's not DoF's cd quality but I think personally I like the older ecco games music just as well it fits the levels so well and is really great. The major things to consider of course are the storyline and gameplay, I fully think that even though it is shorter and less detailed than DoF's storyline, ecco the dolphin's storyline is still a far more interesting storyline. The gameplay is the just perfect, the controls respond well, there are only a few places where the puzzles get really frustrating, but the game is a bit short by today's standards - you can play through it in a hour once you know all the puzzles but you will still take quite a while to play through for the first time. Overall this game is a total classic, filled with unforgetable characters and great gameplay. As long as you like ecco and don't mind things that are slightly old you'll love this game. |
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| Reader's review - by Debaser | |
"Could we live in the water ? Could we sing in the water ? Perhaps we will try !" Since there's a wave of Ecco-nostalgia currently rising with Defender Of the Future making us its zombie slaves who can only blink, twitch and murmur about the pretty colors, it might be prudent to go back and take a look at the game that started this whole rigamarole : Ecco The Dolphin for the Genesis, or the Mega Drive for our trans-Atlantic friends.Roll up your sleeves, we're going whaling. WARNING : SPOILER TERRITORY AHEAD.READ AT OWN RISK ! The storyline goes as such, for the unknowing : Ecco is a bottlenosed dolphin living with his pod in Earth's oceans.Lo and behold one day, his family and much of the surrounding sealife are sucked up by a whirlwind engineered by The Vortex, a Giger-esque race of aliens who like locusts feed off a planet and it's floura/fauna for as long as they can and then move on to the next.Every 500 years when the planets are in line they have been harvesting life off Earth, but now it's getting more frequent, or as you are told, "The Vortex are getting hungrier ! ". Eep.And it's poor Ecco's job to rescue his pod and the earth from this menace.Luckily Ecco seems to be some sort of chosen one, bearing 5 marks on his head that look like the constellation Delphinus, and the lost culture and people of Atlantis had prepared for his coming before being destroyed by a beam from the Vortex, thus forcing them to go back in time with their technology.Did I mention the Time Machine ? And the Asterite, a very old, very wise creature who looks almost exactly like a giant DNA double helix..... ? Needless to say, this is a very deep, very complicated game to have been introduced on the Genesis way back when, almost RPG-like in its appeal.Back in that day game consoles were thought to be nothing but kids toys, but Novotrade thankfully knew better.The storyline is engrossing and helps make this one of the most original and memorable games ever created.Most games had some predecessor that paved their way, but this was and is totally original, even though it's a side-scroller.Long were the hours and many are the replays of this game in my hands. On to the graphics.For back then they were quite beautiful, and everything from the jellyfish to the coral to the pufferfish who attack when charged have detail.I especially like some of the backgrounds abovewater, my favorite being the orange sunset/moonrise in Atlantis.Beautiful artwork.And we can't forget our hero.Ecco moves and looks exactly like a real dolphin, and controls like a dream, barring the occasional accidental wedging into a rock crevasse.His enemies include octupi, jellyfish, and alien drones, among other things.Friends range from orcas to pteradactyls to everything in between. And the music.THE music.Noone who's ever played a second of this game will forget the music.It's....well, you have to hear it for yourself.It's sad at the right times and spooky at others *I will never forget the first time I hear the Welcome To The Machine music......and who at Novotrade was a Pink Floyd fan, anyway ?* and one of the best game soundtracks ever.I'll have the Time Machine music stuck in my head until the day I die.The soundtrack is avalible on CD, I'd suggest going out and buying it,if you like game music. If you haven't noticed already, I definitely recommend this game.If you don't want to make the labourous search through garage sales and Ebay for an old console and game, I'd say get the ROM.Just get it, by hook or crook.And don't forget the sequels, or Kolibri , another very good game from the Ecco makers about a superpowered hummingbird.Personally, I want whatever the Novotrade developers are smoking, and plenty of it..... |
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| Reader's review - by Trellia | |
| I like the first game alot Its challenging has good graphics,and music.When I got it I stayed up all night the first day playing it because its a very addictive game. And is a very good game for the year and console it came out in (I have found alot of the sega games have small glitches including lunar bay on the tides of time) This one has none that I know of And besides the tides of time its the only sega game I still play. | |
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