by: John Olin

August 17, 2007

I remember as kid reading EGM or GamePro and all of these magazines and readers raving about some “Flipper game”. My grandma had a Sega Genesis for her grandkids at the time (I was a SNES guy myself) and I played it there for quite a bit, and after all that I still don’t understand what the big deal was. Over the years my taste have matured from Mario and ToeJam and Earl to the likes of Halo and Oblivion and I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

The first thing you have to know about the game is it is pretty weird. Ecco must find out why the ocean is so messed up, find his friends, find a “wise whale”, travel back in time and ultimately destroy the Vortex Queen to restore all back to normal. That is the most basic version of the story, so I will save the rest for you to be bewildered by if you decide to purchase the full game.

Ecco gets around fairly easily, his health is air, so you have to either surface, find air vents, or other special artifacts to keep going. He uses two kinds of waves for various purposes such as making a map of the surrounding area, and speaking to other friendly aquatic life. The game is a 2D side-scroller that has some platforming adventure elements, but because of Ecco’s abilities and the way the levels are setup it is more of a puzzle game. Many of the levels require you to explore and figure out ways past blocked paths in order to progress. It can be boring at times, but when you figure it out it is actually quite rewarding. Sometimes you have to battle other creatures in the sea, which can be done by charging and ramming with Ecco’s head. When you couple all of this with the fact that you have to be looking for air constantly to make sure you don’t die, some minor glitches throughout the game, and sometimes unresponsive controls, it becomes increasingly difficult to like the game enough to complete it. The Sega Genesis version of the game is pretty well intact with the ability to have a regular view or widescreen view of the area, along with some leaderboards to time your runs in the game.

Visually the game has a lot of well, blue hues all over the place. It is underwater after all, and while the visuals aren’t all that, they can be quite beautiful even for an older 16-bit generation title. My bathroom is filled with dolphin figures and has a little dolphin theme thanks to my girlfriend, and she just liked watching and trying to figure out the game just to see the aquatic visuals, and underwater glory. If you have a girlfriend that is like this, as shallow as it seems, you may want to get the title just for that reason, at least she will be more into your hobby right?

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The title is priced just right at 400 points or five bucks, and the score I gave for the game is right as well. The title is hard, and either you like it for the challenge, or you get aggravated and bored with it. If you played Ecco way back then and liked it, you should probably buy this, otherwise for the rest of us SEGA has a better title out on Live Arcade (Sonic the Hedgehog) and should have some even better ones in the future.

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