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| - A Sega video game series about a time-travelling bottlenose dolphin who fights space aliens. His friends include a pteranodon, a telepathic strand of DNA, and flying dolphins from ten million years in the future. Or, if you ask some people, a telepathic crystal and various alternate future dolphins. The series was originally for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and began with Ecco the Dolphin. In this game, Ecco's pod was snatched from the seas by a mysterious storm, so he set out to find them, helping other dolphins along the way.
- Ecco the Dolphin is the collective name given to a series of action-adventure science fiction video games developed by Novotrade International (known nowadays as Appaloosa Interactive) published by Sega, which primarily take place underwater. They were originally developed for the Sega Mega Drive and Sega Dreamcast video game consoles, but have since been ported to numerous systems. The games are named after their main character, Ecco, a young Bottlenose Dolphin. They are known for their high difficulty level. Ecco was created by Ed Annunziata, who also produced Chakan: The Forever Man.
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| abstract
| - Ecco the Dolphin is the collective name given to a series of action-adventure science fiction video games developed by Novotrade International (known nowadays as Appaloosa Interactive) published by Sega, which primarily take place underwater. They were originally developed for the Sega Mega Drive and Sega Dreamcast video game consoles, but have since been ported to numerous systems. The games are named after their main character, Ecco, a young Bottlenose Dolphin. They are known for their high difficulty level. Ecco was created by Ed Annunziata, who also produced Chakan: The Forever Man. The Ecco the Dolphin games hinge on the idea that cetaceans are sapient beings and have their own society. In the Mega Drive games, humans aren't acknowledged. The cetaceans call themselves "singers". In the Dreamcast game, dolphins and presumably other cetaceans have united with humans in a cross-species society. Ecco himself is a young adult male Bottlenose Dolphin, though his gender was ambiguous in the original game. He is very strong and intelligent, even for a cetacean. He is also able to use many unusual powers, such as shapechanging and using his sonar as a weapon. He has five distinct markings on his head; they are stars that form the constellation Delphinus.
- A Sega video game series about a time-travelling bottlenose dolphin who fights space aliens. His friends include a pteranodon, a telepathic strand of DNA, and flying dolphins from ten million years in the future. Or, if you ask some people, a telepathic crystal and various alternate future dolphins. The games feature notoriously difficult gameplay, which focuses on solving puzzles with the ever-present Oxygen Meter hanging over the player, and surreal storylines focused on a dolphin's perspective on alien invasions (that don't involve leaving with a thank-you note). Despite the apparent silliness of the premise, the alien (sometimes literally) setting, atmospheric music and minimalist dialogue create a lingering sense of eeriness. The series was originally for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and began with Ecco the Dolphin. In this game, Ecco's pod was snatched from the seas by a mysterious storm, so he set out to find them, helping other dolphins along the way. As the storyline went on, it got progressively more bizarre: first, Ecco went to see a blue whale for advice. The blue whale didn't know much, but sent Ecco to talk to the Asterite, the oldest being in the seas with the appearance of globes arranged on a double-helix. The Asterite, with no explanation, recognised Ecco and told him it could help him, except it was missing a globe and thus not at full power. The solution: travel to Atlantis and go back in time 55 million years to retrieve the wayward sphere. In Atlantis, Ecco discovers that the source of the storm was a species of hiveminded alien who had lost the ability to make their own food and was thus harvesting from Earth's seas every 500 years. In the end, Ecco saves his pod and destroys the Vortex aliens - or so he thought. Ecco: The Tides of Time picked up where the original left off. Ecco finds out from his descendant, Trellia the flying dolphin from ten million years in the future, that the Vortex Queen was Not Quite Dead and had followed Ecco to Earth, whereupon she killed the Asterite and began a takeover. On top of that, Ecco's time-travelling in the first game had split the timestream in two: one where Trellia and her fellows created a paradise for themselves, and one where the Vortex razed the sea and sky, killing the Earth. Whoops. The second game, then, followed Ecco's adventures as he sought to save the Asterite (also Not Quite Dead) and the good future of Earth. It ended with Ecco vanishing mysteriously into the "Tides of Time" Then, save for an Edutainment Game called Ecco Jr. and a few remakes, the series vanished from the face of the Earth for several years. Its return came in the form of Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future for the Sega Dreamcast, which brought the series to three-dimensions and completely ignored the universe and storyline that came before it. About the only things it had in common with the original series was the protagonist being a dolphin named Ecco, aliens, and time travel. It also introduced a dolphin/human (and whale) society, where the original games relegated humans to backgrounds in Atlantis and the odd background sunken ship. Fan reaction was mixed. In Defender, the plot centered around the Foe aliens breaking the timestream by stealing dolphinkind's "most noble traits" - Intelligence, Ambition, Compassion, Wisdom, and Humility - in the past, before they could unite with humans. It was of course Ecco's job to get these traits back, over the course of three different alternate futures: Man's Nightmare, Dolphins' Nightmare, and Domain of the Enemy. One was a dying world with polluted water, no humans on account of them having gone extinct in their war against the Foe, and stupid-but-still-sapient dolphins who either worshipped men as a benevolent force which had uplifted dolphinkind from being mere animals and eagerly awaited their return or regarded them as a nasty species that had enslaved dolphinkind. It turns out both factions were probably right. The next reality happened after Ecco sent back Intelligence and Ambition, turning dolphins into a surly bunch of warlords who drove humans from the seas. Arguably the prettiest section of the game, since the dolphins used a lot of organic-looking technology, and since it includes Hanging Waters, aka "Let's See How Many Mythology Gags Can Fit In One Level". The final alternate reality saw every trait but Humilty restored to dolphins. In this one, the Foe took over and turned Earth into Mordor. And... that's... about it... All in all, Ecco is a very bizarre, haunting, frustrating, and strangely charming series. Don't expect to see any more of him in either the Genesis or Defender storyline anytime soon. Unless it's for an official April Fools' Day prank.
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