Sega’s Mega Drive was the console that kickstarted my love of gaming, and I still have a strong attachment to its library 30 years later. Sonic 2 is still an all-timer, and Aladdin was the first game I ever beat. Even the ones I sucked at like Ecco the Dolphin have stuck with me. But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered Ecco isn’t a 2D dolphin sim at all, it’s a time traveling epic with a bizarre sci-fi twist.
What exactly happens once you make it out of Ecco’s starting pool has been playing on my mind ever since I stumbled upon some gameplay footage a few months ago, so I figured its birthday would be the best time to share my feelings with the rest of the world. I’m sure some of you already know what happens in Ecco, many of you may have even figured it out yourselves, but plenty of you are still blissfully unaware of just how weird the game gets.
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Time Travel And Outer Space Were Waiting For Me And I Didn’t Even Know
My lasting memories of Ecco the Dolphin exist almost exclusively in that opening area, because that’s where I spent almost all of my time as a kid. That there are regular playthroughs, not speedruns, of the entire game on YouTube that run for less than 90 minutes blows 35-year-old me’s mind because five-year-old Josh spent tenfold as long doing almost nothing.
To kickstart the story, you need to leap as high out of the water as you can. That triggers a cyclone which sucks up your dolphin buddies and all other marine life unfortunate enough to be nearby, leaving Ecco behind in a now-empty opening area.
I have a vague memory of making that happen, but I’m assuming it was my dad or a friend’s older brother who figured it out because I certainly didn’t. I was happy enough swimming around Ecco’s home, chatting with his mates, assuming that was the entire game. Once the whirlwind has been triggered though, the next area opens up and Ecco goes on the hunt for his lost friends. I remember that part too, assuming the game was all about tracking down and rescuing your fellow dolphins. Kind of like an underwater, two-dimensional Spyro.
30 years passed and now I’ve discovered that’s not the premise of Ecco at all. Had I just pushed on a little further as a kid, I would have discovered that time travel plays a very big role. When asking around about his lost friends, Ecco is told to go and visit a mysterious creature known as the Asterite. There isn’t enough weird stuff on the ocean floor as it is, so Sega felt compelled to make it even weirder.
An Alien Race That Harvests Life On Other Planets, Sounds Familiar
The Asterite is just a bunch of orbs bobbing about in the water, but since some of its orbs are missing, it tasks Ecco with going back in time to retrieve them. Not a few years either, but 55 million years in the past to battle a prehistoric version of the Asterite. To do this, Ecco must journey to Atlantis. In Ecco’s universe, Atlantis has been lost to the waves after its human inhabitants went back in time to save themselves, only to be attacked repeatedly by an alien race. More on that in a second.
Once the Asterite’s orbs have been retrieved and returned, it is able to grant Ecco additional powers that will help the dolphin in its upcoming battle. This is where things get even weirder. Ecco must leave Earth to battle an alien race called The Vortex. That’s the same alien race that sent Atlantis to the bottom of the ocean and was also responsible for the cyclone at the beginning of the game which, for 30 years, I assumed was some sort of freak weather event.
The Vortex are an alien race that, after using up all of their own resources, feed on life from Earth every 500 years. It’s starting to sound a lot less Spyro and a little more Mass Effect at this point. With his new powers, Ecco travels back in time to the beginning of the game and intentionally joins the rest of his pod when lost via that initial cyclone.
The portal between Earth and The Vortex’s home is called The Tube. Once Ecco has passed through that, he must battle through the aliens in an attempt to help him and his friends return home. Knowing what he’s up against, and equipped with powers that can take her down, Ecco splits from the pod and battles The Vortex Queen.
Upon defeat, the queen spits out Ecco and his friends, allowing them to resume their peaceful lives back in the ocean. That is until The Vortex come back for more. That’s right, there’s a sequel, and much like Mass Effect’s Reapers, The Vortex returns for round two. I wonder if Ecco 2 has its own suicide mission too.
Ecco the Dolphin
Ecco the Dolphin was originally released on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1992. Ecco must travel back in time and to outer space to figure out what happened to his friends and rescue them from an evil alien race.