joyful in Home Bay
until a twister disrupts;
hate-filled ocean preys
Additional Comments:
Ecco the Dolphin may be the first game to brandish the award of being both equally loved and hated all at the same time. I have a sneaky suspicion I'm not alone on that sentiment either. Across the internet, people appear to both love and hate this game, but what's interesting is the enduring passion breathed into each polar opposite. Much like myself, people don't appear to casually love/hate Ecco, but do so with a beaming heart or a furious belly. How can this be?
For me, the tale goes back a number of years to that magical time known as the 90s. One year, while visiting family, I got to spend a couple days playing a Genesis where I played a couple games rather unfamiliar to me. One was some helicopter game which for the life of me I have no recollection of its name, but I recall enjoying it. My suspicions over the past few years is Urban Strike, but I'm not too certain. Anyway, the other game was Ecco: The Tides of Time. Tides of Time blew my mind. Everything about it was unlike anything I had ever played before and I relished every moment of it.
Skip forward to the early 2000s when I started my first round of game collecting. Immediately, Ecco: Tides of Time was named a must have as was its predecessor, Ecco the Dolphin. Logic dictated if Tides of Time was the brilliant masterpiece I remembered it being, the original must have at least been blessed with obvious merit. It should be noted that this is terrible logic, if my exercise in Beat All Games has taught me anything, but alas, I was naïve then.
After getting my hands on Ecco the Dolphin, I popped it in my Genesis, fought my way valiantly through all of two levels and was left sucking my thumb in the corner of the room scarred from such vicious and perplexing difficulty. I'm not even joking - two levels, and that includes Home Bay which is essentially a free lesson in swimming techniques while learning some very basic background. That means I struggled through a single level where after I collapsed in total consternation. But...but against all instinct based on this horrific turn of events, I absolutely loved the game. As such, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and returned for more...only to throw furious F-bombs at the torrid insanity passed off as challenge.
And so, over the years, my love for the game has been such that I'll go out of my way to pick up any of the various ports of the game because the game is simply genius. However, my hatred has been such that after my early attempts, I shelved the game; never to return again. Fuck that game! It's fucking ridiculous!
Eventually, I returned to Ecco, as it's swan song of beauty and grace couldn't keep me away forever. At some point, when most of my collection resided in boxes, I made a feeble attempt on an emulator. Recollections of yore soon triggered and I carried on to some other title. History repeats, it seems, until now. With a daunting pledge of victory, I attempted to tackle Ecco the Dolphin for what would hopefully be the final time, in regards to seeing it through to the end. This was two, maybe three years ago and once again I hit that brick wall of unforgiving difficulty. Since then, Ecco has sat on the back burner where I maybe knocked out one or two levels per years. Finally, in the past recent weeks, I decided enough is enough and pounded out the rest of the game. Holy mother of god! This game is intense. But it's not all intense.
One of the strangest quirks about Ecco the Dolphin is the irrational difficulty curve throughout the course of the game. It's all over the place which really unbalances the overall feel. Right from the beginning the game is relentless but may be considered acceptable to a degree - though I believe that degree to be the thinnest of margins. Eventually you face the ice levels where the difficulty suddenly ramps, or rather it shoots straight up like a rocket. The moving ice blocks in Hard Water has got to be some of the cheapest difficulty I've ever come across in a video game. In fact, that's not difficulty, that's just the developer being a total dick. Then suddenly, the game relaxes into some sort of Zen state. Despite some of the crazy ass jumps demanding Ecco to manage some incredible record-breaking height, the Atlantis stages as well as the preceding island stages, are surprisingly a joy to play. The difficulty for once seemed appropriate allowing a fair chance for proper exploration and general enjoyment of Ecco's abilities. But don't be fooled by the sudden charity because once Ecco travels back in time, all bets are off. I'm only going to say it once - fuck the Jurassic stages. They are a gamer's nightmare, especially Trilobite Circle, but especially Dark Water. Wow! That's all I can say. I'd rather fail endlessly at F-Zero's Master mode or continue to be self-delusional that any of the various Touhous are actually fun north of Normal.
All that being said, let it be known that I am a total idiot - a senseless nitwit if you will and likely have no reason to chastise the game's difficulty as harshly as I have. Although, it can still stand for a proper thrashing nonetheless. Only after beating the game and subsequently doing some mild research on it, I learned Ecco obtains a special sonic attack after rescuing three dolphins. Whether it was told through dialogue or not I somehow completely missed what was obviously a very helpful and necessary upgrade. I even read through the manual a few weeks back before I decided to make my final push but don't recall seeing anything along those lines, and just to make sure I didn't voluntarily omit some possible passage regarding said power-up, I revisited the manual again after completing the game. There's a brief italicized statement mentioning abilities after rescuing three lost pod members, but it's vagueness would never lead me to believe Ecco's subject to a sudden sonar death ray. That's a serious fucking game changer if that's the case and considering the controls are a bit wacky to use it, I'd think something more than an ambiguous disclaimer would be warranted. But I only have my own stupidity to blame I suppose - if, and only if, the lost dolphins laid everything out on the table. Otherwise, just another log to throw on the developer's fire of asinine bullshit.
It can be said, there may be enough wiggle room to argue the true difficulty of the game. Though, even with some debilitating echo location talent, I still imagine the game to be akin to nails on a chalkboard - harsh, disorienting, and enough to make you run screaming into the night. But honestly, for sake of argument, it's all moot for there is no measure of upgrades that can even minutely minimize the arduous challenge and flippant stupidity of Welcome to the Machine. With perhaps the exception of every level following Wookie Hole in Battletoads, Welcome to the Machine has to be one of the most unfairly designed atrocities to ever grace the video game universe. Using a mechanic most familiar to platformers and shmups, Welcome to the Machine, as well as the preceding level, The Tube, uses autoscroll. Ah, the dreaded autoscroll. Truth be told, I don't mind autoscroll. In platformers, it's a unique device that can easily instill intense anxiety into the gamer...when done right. When slapped on as an afterthought or poorly executed, however, than yes, autoscroll is the bane of quality design.
As far as The Tube is concerned, the attached autoscrolling feels natural, even if there are a dozen deadly barriers forcing you to weave your way through using the power of memorization because, yes, you will die. But compared to the ridiculous weaving of Battletoads' Turbo Tunnel, The Tube is a walk in the park. However, Welcome to the Machine quickly reminds you why autoscrolling is so universally panned. Between the clunky level design and the seemingly indecisive scrolling, it is so easy to get trapped multiple times. Just like The Tube's need for quick memorization skills, Welcome to the Machine demands incredible retention for approximately six minutes of disoriented scrolling hell. Most occasions, it's easy to guess where the screen will scroll next - which shifts in one of the eight cardinal directions roughly every 2-8 seconds - but every so often the level architecture can easily lead you astray. For these instances, I usually fell victim to the unfortunate ruse believing the next shift would go in X direction, based on the lay of the land, only to find my forecasting an oracle of doom. By the time I could react to the actual shift, it was too little too late and I found myself crushed to death. Mental note: remember the scroll shifts to the left at that point. Wait. Where was that again? After several dozen shifts, am I really going to remember that? Fuck me. And for anyone mental enough to play through this insanity, be sure you kill the Vortex Queen on your first attempt or else you'll get to enjoy that marvelous mechanized mayhem all over again. Spoiler alert: you won't because it's very likely she'll suck you into her voracious mouth at least once from whence there is no escape. Although, once you get the hang of her, she's not that bad. Unfortunately, you have to continually parade through six minutes of torture just to face her again. At least you essentially have unlimited health for the Vortex's nefarious machine, so...yeah!
I've read where Ed Annunziata, the game's developer, stated that he purposefully made the game hard to deter children from beating it in a single weekend. That's all fine and good, but there's a fine line between challenging and outright unfair, and at times, Ecco the Dolphin struts over that line for no good reason. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenges, when they were proper challenges. However, given some of the design choices in the last few levels, notably Dark Water and Welcome to the Machine, I fail to see the challenge there. I just see poorly executed mechanics and fiendishly evil level design. It's the type of design in which I fail to see anyone experience anything other than rage and frustration. Well, congratulations, Ed. I didn't beat it in a single weekend. It took me a minimum of two years - granted most of that time it was shelved because of my own personal frustrations. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that a good challenge can be highly entertaining, but frustration is never entertaining, and if I'm not mistaken, the general consensus is that a video game's primary value is that of entertainment. Sadly, Ecco the Dolphin doesn't appear to entirely grasp that notion. Yet still, I inexplicably love the game. Maybe not as much as I once did, but there's still a considerable fondness. Funny, that.
If it's not for the adoration of Ecco himself and his playful antics as he leaps out of the sea in amazing aerial somersaults, or the mystical setting of the ocean depths, the strangely enticing story of sudden vanishment, or the general eeriness of time-travel supplemented by the sunken mysteries of Atlantis, then it must be the music that makes me love this game. With that raw Genesis crunch and growl, the music helps push the overall ominous mood of loneliness to the forefront. With pieces like Opening Theme, Medusa Bay, and Ice Zone, you can't help but empathize with Ecco's sudden isolation from the world he once knew; left with only memories from before the Vortex came; of simpler, happier times. Only, it's funny how the Vortex is really the least of Ecco's worries. The sea is a far more dangerous place.
Nano-Rant:
The least of Ecco's worries, that is, except for the Asterite. What a ridiculous boss. No, ridiculous is too benevolent of a word for that twisted double helix of pain and demoralizing confusion. Not counting all the actual time spent traversing Dark Water's cretinous design, I probably spent upwards of an hour on the Asterite alone trying to figure out what the hell to do. Sadly, this led to death after death after death. Eventually, I turned to GameFAQs, and honestly, I only did so because I thought I was overlooking something in the level itself - a glyph perhaps - and perhaps this DNA replicant was merely "broken" until proposed trigger was flipped. My only argument against that theory was that the final barrier glyph closes once you pass it effectively trapping Ecco which is poor game design. However, if I knew the insanity expected in Welcome to the Machine, I wouldn't put it past the developers to create such an evil trap. Turns out I just completely misunderstood how the Asterite functioned. I don't remember if the present (future?) Asterite told me how to defeat his past self - again, something I likely missed - but I doubt I would have ever figured it out. I have a feeling if I did defeat it without looking up the solution, I would have done so without knowing how exactly I managed it. And in my opinion, that's poor execution on the developers part. But again, I likely skipped over a message, and if that's the case, I have no one to blame except myself.
Rating: 3 dangerous denizens of the sea out of 5*
I had a really hard time rating this game due to my love/hate relationship with it. As such, a fairly balanced score seems best, but perhaps tipped in a favorable light only because my love for the game still ever so slightly trumps the wicked cruelty found within.
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