It’s happening dot gif – we are getting more Ecco the Dolphin. As teased in January, series creator Ed Annunziata and development studio A&R Atelier are working on a remastered collection that includes Ecco the Dolphin and Ecco: The Tides of Time, together with a brand new game. The collection also features “meta quests” that allow players to weave “custom courses” through “any combination of levels from any game in the franchise and share them with the community.”
New to Ecco the Dolphin? He is a 2D Sega dolphin from 1992 who uses echoes (sonar) to zap magic crystals and undersea nasties. He is the most very speciallest good boy who ever did a jumpy spin against the sunset and accidentally got sucked into another dimension. I love Ecco and so do you. Let us hope this is the good kind of remake or remaster package, the equivalent of a warm footbath for our wizened memories, rather than the kind that slaps on a letterbox format and smothers the old pixels in Vaseline.
Indeed, let us hope it’s a flamboyant and ingenious as Sonic Mania, which ravelled elements from the old 16 bit Sonic the Hedgehog games into a playable celebration of the fan culture that had foamed up around them. The Ecco remaster collection includes every version of Ecco “from the 8-bit Master System era through the 16-bit Genesis / Mega Drive generation”, which implies that the Mega CD releases are in, but not the Dreamcast/PS2 game created by Appaloosa Interactive. Lots of material to go meta questing through.
“Ecco the Dolphin: Complete is built by original members of the Ecco development team, reunited after more than 30 years, and includes original creator Ed Annunziata along with members of the original composition, art, and programming teams,” thrills the press release. I’m writing this a little prematurely, I must confess. The project’s official site has a countdown clock, due to elapse at 1am PT / 4am ET / 9am BST tomorrow Thursday, April 23rd. Please let it be a trailer and please let it not make me sad. I didn’t even particularly like Ecco, as a Mega Drive kid, but I’m big on hallucinatory swimming games and Ecco is the patron saint of that shit.
