Was at my parents home during easter, the other christian holiday since this will show up around Christmas, and decided to play through one of the four different Ecco the Dolphin games I have bought through the years and it landed on the 3DS, since that was what I had with me to my parents. Part of the 3D Classic Collection where they took classic games and spruced them up in 3D for the 3DS. At release seen as one of the more impressive graphical titles, great music and atmosphere but seen as one of the harder games. Mostly because the developers set out to ensure that kids didn't finish it in a weekend.
It's about Ecco the Dolphin who one day tries to impress the others in his pod so he makes a high jump out of the ocean and as soon he leaves a tornado hits the water sucking all life out of the ocean, including his pod. So Ecco has to set out rescueing his family. First he has to find the Big Blue, a blue whale that have traveled to the North Pole awaiting death it seems. Traversing shark infested waters and deadly ice blocks that crush you over and over you finally finds him, but he only knows that the tornado appears every 500 years and sucks the oceans clean, but he directs you to the Asterite, the oldest living creature. Turns out it's some kind of DNA-Helix that lives in the waters who directs you to Atlantis where there is a Time Machine so that Ecco can travel 44 million years into the past and help the Asterite to power up so that he can power up Ecco. Turns out that the tornado is caused by the alien race the Vortex from the planet Vortex in the Pegasus constellation (which they note lies very close to the dolphin constellation... why that matter beyond that it's a game about a Dolphin I don't get). Anyway, the Vortex have no food so every 500 years they suck the oceans of Earth to feed on it.
With this knowledge Ecco travels back right before the tornado appears and jumps with it, ending up on the alien space ship where he fights off the Alien Queen and rescues his pod and returns to Earth. I gotta say, even how bonkers the story is with aliens, time travel and Atlantis... I kinda liked it! Following the story it gets weirder and weirder and I love it.
Now was it as hard? Well, since I used the 3DS version I set up the Super Dolphin Mode which means infinite health and air. Yeah, since Ecco is a mammal he needs air to breath so a challenge of the game is to traverse underwater mazes before the air runs out or you get killed by the hostile creatures, like crabs and sharks. So no anxiety over that, still got crushed by the ice blocks or the walls of the alien ship. I would probably never have finished it the normal way, which probably explains why I have bought it four times, for Wii Virtual Console, the Sega Mega Drive Collection for PS3 and the Switch collection. Graphics are nice and the music is really good, I really like the Mega Drive sound of it. I got the sequel for the Mega Drive compilation on the PS3 so might try that one day.
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