Ecco the Dolphin for Sega CD

Reviews

A year after the succeeding Ecco the Dolphin for Sega Genesis, Sega published a Sega CD version of the game, which included several new features.

The first thing every Ecco game player would recognize would be the great music. This was a real improvement, cause it consists of the CD Audio tracks and has a great quality. The technology Q-Sound was used to give the listener a feeling of 3D music when he plays the game and connects the TV to a stereo system. Those really improve the whole atmosphere of the game.

There have also been added a great intro video, which shows first the Earth, and after Ecco swimming with his family in the Home Bay, accompanied by some remixed background music from the Genesis level "The Lagoon" I think. The video looked pretty good, although one can see by a really slow frame rate that the programmers seemed to have trouble fitting all of those sprites in a video. Also there have been put two FMV videos about dolphin's in general, their abilities and so on. Really interesting! Now if they only had added an ending video with Ecco defeating the Vortex queen or something, but the ending is kept the same as the Genesis version.

Another thing added were new levels. Some new levels which actually use the rock and wreck graphics from Ecco TOT had been placed right after the first meeting of Ecco and the Asterite. It's a sort of jorney to Atlantis and improves the story and variety a lot.

Well, all in all the CD version a good improvement of the Genesis game, the only thing I don't like are the loading times of the Sega CD, but still, if you are able to get the game, buy it and play it with an emulator, since the loading times will no longer appear. I myself always preffered the Sega CD music tracks, even though the Genesis had great music, too, but if I would have to decide, I would take Ecco CD.

Review by PsySonic