A quiet, slow-paced opening is suddenly, rudely
interrupted by a curious anomaly that sees your
pod and other sea creatures whisked up into the
sky. Shortly afterwards, you encounter another
dolphin and communicate by sonar. “Suddenly great
winds of water...” she says, setting up an intriguing
mystery that compels you to continue playing.
CLASSIC INTRO
The final, frustratingly hard stage will forever
be burned into our retinas, but the moment
Ecco reaches its surreal peak is surely the stage
where you breach the surface and a pterodactyl
catches you in its beak, carrying you to another
part of the ocean.CLASSIC LEVEL
A
t first glance, Ed Annunziata’s
gorgeous aquatic adventure
looks like a piece of
edutainment (or perhaps
even environmental propaganda)
as a bizarre incident sees the titular
bottlenose separated from the rest of
his pod. But what follows is something
truly, memorably weird, as a plot
inspired by conspiracy theories and
prog rock – no, really – sends Ecco into
ever stranger waters. By the end, he’s
visited an underwater city, travelled
to prehistoric times, and been chased
around an enormous, shifting machine
by grasping aliens.
More than two decades on, Ecco The
Dolphin is still utterly unique, with its
wilfully peculiar combination of peaceful
exploration and an often absurdly high
difficulty level. These days, it’s hard to
imagine any big publisher taking a punt
on a daring and singular creative vision
like this - though you can arguably
trace the lineage of any art game from
the modern era back to wonderfully
odd experiments like Ecco. Even now
it stands apart as one of the most
individual and idiosyncratic games of
its era. Though far from perfect, no one
who played it will forget it.