Ecco the Dolphin & Tides of Time Remasters Announced, Third Game in the Works

@Black Squirrel I remember that Ecco was the first game that ozisoft released as 'rental exclusive' in Australia, but not sure what the date was. (Ozisoft - Sega Classics)

I wonder whether some of Ed's ideas for his 'Big Blue' game will make it into Ecco 3. I kind of like the sci-fi idea of a distant future where Dolphin's survive the extinction of humanity, but then have to fight the artificial life forms that evolve from our rotting plastic waste (it is a soup of hydocarbons after all). I don't know whether this will stray too far of the central narrative of Dolphin vs Vortex Queen though.

 

Someone else on COH named Serga pointed it out, but I double checked on my end and sure enough there was an MP3 hidden on the site.


https://www.eccothedolphin.com/opening.mp3

 

I remember SEGA Europe having Cathy Dennis and I think it was John Barnes promoting Ecco at some event wearing Ecco T-Shirts and the like

 

WOW. What an incredible rendition of the Sega Genesis title theme. FUUUUCK this is soooo good.

Man I'm grinning ear to ear right now.

 

I dug some more

Ecco the Dolphin/Magazine articles

A strange one - the US mags picked up news of a project called "Dolphin" around October/November 1992, but nobody seemed to run proper preview articles. For the rest of the world, Ecco just showed up one day - reviews being posted in January or February 1993 editions.

Which means that VHS is an anomaly. Ecco was barely discussed before launch - no trade show appearances, no months of hype or delays, nothing. I'm thinking it might have been an unexpected hit for Sega.

 

This reeks of "We didn't know what to do with the money so we gave it away to actual dolphins"

 

I think I recall several years ago reading an interview where he said Sega was a little unsure about the game, so it doesn't surprise me they didn't put a lot of stock in it.

 

The authorised Sega retailer (in Portuguese "Agente Autorizado Sega") in the area had one of these UK limited edition boxed sets and also one of these French limited edition boxed sets (not for sale... just for display... according to him they were a gift from an Ecofilmes representative)... later when he closed up shop he sold them to a wealthy geek in the area (who happens to be our current mayor)... they were beautiful to see in person and attracted a large number of kids to his shop (I was one of them... and if I'm not mistaken, the t-shirt that came with the French version was black)...

 

I've been speaking with people on discord about the news on various servers and one thing becomes obvious to me: An enormous amount of people who find Ecco the Dolphin to be very difficult don't know about the map screen in the game. It's an extremely important game mechanic, it's pretty essential to solving puzzles. To use the map, hold the sonar button down. Your sonar will go off screen, then bounce back at you. When it bounces back, you'll be presented with a map of the level:



These maps are so useful. In addition to letting you navigate the labyrinthine levels (especially the bigger, more sprawling Ecco 1 levels), they also point out all sorts of important items. This includes glyphs for locks, air sources, enemies, and fish for food. You pretty much need to use this to complete the game, it'd be a thousand times harder without it. For example, in the level Jurassic beach, you are swimming over volcanic vents, and most of them are filled with lava and thus can't be entered. But a few are actually hidden corridors leading down to the second part of the level. You have to use your sonar to figure out which to go down, otherwise you'll be dying and having to restart the level over, and over again, experimenting with throwing yourself into lava.

 

Looking at Usenet posts, it should have released in the US 1992-12. In the UK it debuted at #1 in the ELSPA charts for the week ending 1993-01-09, so probably released 1993-01-08, assuming a friday release. I think our dates are pretty accurate for Ecco.

Edit: From December 1992;

https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/rec.games.video/c/Bgc-dbdQ3uQ/m/UC-UUODEGA8J

 

Games didn't have set release dates like that back then, down to the day. You won't ever find a set, concrete release date for an old game, unless it was a huge event like Mortal Monday or Sonic Tuesday, which were two of the first games to ever have an actual "release day."

EDIT: I'll give a funny story about this. In 1993, I won a contest at my school for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which is a huge event over here. The prize was $50, it involved the cattle races. I wanted to use that money to buy Tiny Toon Adventures Buster's Hidden Treasure for my Sega Genesis, which was releasing that month. I remember we had to go back to the mall 3 weekends in a row before they finally got their shipment in at Electronics Boutique. They couldn't actually tell us when it was coming in, because there was no set date other than "sometime this month."

 

Not in the US, but in the UK they had set release dates by then. Sega started advertising them from late 1992, but it goes back a bit earlier than that, thanks to Dixons. It wasn't nearly always a Friday until 1993 though, but I have a big gap in my copies of CTW (where SoE would advertise with release dates most weeks) from late 1992 until early 1994.

 

I suppose within a state like the UK made up of just a few small countries in close proximity that would be possible. Are you sure these are actual in-shop dates, not just the dates sega would ship them out? The page there is confusing, because it says games are "available on X" but then at the bottom, it only lists 3 games as "point of sale," and those don't have a date. In the USA, it was basically "whenever it arrives in store, that's when it's available." This really annoyed me when I would pre-order games. I pre-ordered Mortal Kombat II, which didn't have a coordinated release date like Mortal Monday, and had to come back saturday because they hadn't arrived Friday (despite Mortal Friday being a "thing").

 

"Point of Sale" just means those games have promotional materials available for stores, posters, cardboard cut-outs etc. Lots of national newspaper adverts from Dixons and competitors advertise "out today" or "out friday" from this period.

Edit: Examples;

https://retrocdn.net/File:DailyRecord_UK_1993-02-18_14.jpg
https://retrocdn.net/File:DailyExpress_UK_1993-02-19_12.jpg

 

FYI: While the fanmade fix for the PC port might otherwise be the best version of Ecco 1, it's got some caveats:

• All the CD quality sound effects were replaced with the Genesis version's ear-piercing ones for whatever reason.
• The built-in controller support kinda fucks with Ecco's acceleration. In the Genesis and CD versions, you gain speed from repeatedly mashing the acceleration button, but the PC version also adds sudden acceleration to certain D-pad prompts with no way to disable it. So if you're carefully maneuvering in tight tunnels and accidentally press the same directional button twice in a row, Ecco's getting catapulted at supersonic speeds into the nearest enemy or stage hazard. My recommendation is to add the .exe to your Steam library and use its keyboard-to-gamepad remapping instead.
• "Welcome to the Machine" has been renamed into "The Vortex Machine", and the removal of a cute little Pink Floyd reference is nothing short of a tragedy.

 

If they're redoing the game's entire OST in this style, it'll be amazing. I've always thought the Genesis tunes fit the game a lot better, but were limited by FM synth.

 

I'll be speaking to Ed in the next few months. Anyone have any questions to ask?

 

He's not the composer, but can he provide details on what he knows about how Ecco & Ecco II was tested, how the music was produced, basic details like if he used the original Mega Drive or the Mega Drive II?



While Ecco came out before the Mega Drive II, it'd be nice to have verification regarding why the game's so quiet.

Spoiler: Dirty details

(for the dirty details, it's believed Ecco heavily exploits a bug in the original YM2612's DAC that involves the MSB being improperly configured, dubbed low volume distortion because of what it does to the audio. Ecco deliberately hardpans audio using the YM2612's pan registers so that it softpans as the instruments decay in volume, because the DAC's MSB is never cleared on what should be a muted audio channel. The patches chosen are quiet to add a square wave chorus that the LVD itself adds. It's just not there on YM3438. Outside of a very vague mention on a M2 interview for the MD Mini 2, there's next to no references of how developers wrote around the bug or used it)

 

I’d have a couple, but I assume that he might not be able to answer them yet. Please feel free to either rephrase them or ignore them if you feel they wouldn’t be appropriate at this time.

What inspired him to persue a third Ecco game?
Did they have a plan for a third game back in the day. Follow-up question if yes, is the new Ecco using any gameplay or story ideas they had floating around?
Will this follow up on the cliffhanger ending of The Tides of Time?

 

Whatever happened to that Amico project of his?