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Ecco The Dolphin
Ecco the Dolphin
Dreamcast

ESRB Rating

In the halcyon days of the Sega Genesis, select developers started to create games that would break out of the 8bit rut and begin to harness the 16bit powerhouse's potential. During this time period Appaloosa Software developed an original, challenge based, side scrolling adventure title named Ecco the Dolphin. Eight years later, Appaloosa's Ecco: Defender of the Future raises the bar, yet again, and offers a slew of new gameplay elements that have yet to be seen on any other title on the market today.

Ecco The Dolphin In a nutshell - you take control of Ecco; a young and agile bottle-nosed dolphin lives during a future age when dolphins and humans share leadership over a vast and peaceful civilization. Together, they have proved greater than either race could be alone. Wise and invincible, they saved many other races from a cruel set of despots. But the game's not over yet! These evil tyrants, in a last gasp, send a ship back through time to disrupt the historical moment when humans and dolphins first united. It's up to Ecco to set things straight while dodging the ocean's natural dangers such as sharks, giant octopuses, and poisonous creatures.

In a departure from the traditional level-based game, Ecco takes you to a great number of different environments built around themes of several unique worlds. One world, Paradise Island, contains various multiple environments. From the island you can move seamlessly between coral reef, underground caves, and lakes. Appaloosa took a lot of time to make the underwater scenes feel as authentic as possible. A research team spent many months working with videos, photographs, and hundreds of copies of National Geographic magazine to come up with a realistic depiction of the oceanic flora and fauna. Within these environments the team had a relatively free hand to design puzzles to take advantage of their surroundings, and some of the better and more inspired puzzles came after the worlds had already been created. The enemies too are more involved, with, for example, multiple sharks running different AI routines to present different game challenges through various tuning of speed, turning, and attitude.

Ecco The Dolphin

The natural settings are gorgeous to look at, and the worlds are relatively peaceful. However, the other environments emphasize more traditional action and role-playing elements, and are filled with less friendly and benign creatures. In these parts of the game the story takes sharper turns and it introduces characters and scenarios from the realm of science fiction.

Ecco The Dolphin Appaloosa's goal was to create nothing less than an onscreen dolphin that was as alive as any documentary footage you might see on television. The fact that they appear to have succeeded is a testament to the power of these next-generation platforms in only their first iteration. While a number of other Dreamcast titles have been more lauded, Ecco The Dolphin: Defender Of The Future has the potential to be the defining Dreamcast experience.

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