Talk:Ecco the Dolphin (video game)

Ecco the Dolphin has had a peer review which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

I remember a memorable television advertisement for one of the Ecco games back in the early 90s, but I can't remember which one. It featured a sea captain (supposed to be like Jacques Costeau?) reminiscing about Ecco, or some-such. --NeuronExMachina 19:17, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hm. I don't remember much of anything about advertisements from the early 90's - was born in '87 and have a terrible memory for them anyway. I wouldn't know where to begin looking for info on Ecco ads... --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 17:33, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Darn, I can't find anything about it online, and am hesitant to add info myself, since my memory might be flaky. Seriously though, for whatever reason this was one of the most memorable tv ads I'd ever seen, if only because it was a very different approach from how video games were typically advertised. --NeuronExMachina 20:32, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Even though I know you likely won't see this, I just wanted to give a heads-up on the commercial in question... It's amazing that something so obscure would have found its way onto the internet, YouTube to be specific, but nevertheless it has arrived. It can be viewed here.
Charles M. Reed 04:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Dude, that's so awesome! Thanks! --NeuronExMachina 19:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Game Gear

I know the Ecco games were available on GG, but... I believe they were all remakes. Does anyone know which games were ported to GG? I'm almost certain ToT was, but I'm not sure about the other two Genesis Ecco games. --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 00:24, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

GameFAQs says the original and Tides of Time. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:30, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

All right, how's this - we can leave the original systems in the intro, and in the character section we can have the re-release systems? --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 00:50, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

They are indeed remakes, they are very different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.207.117.248 (talk) 01:27, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Categories! Yay!

Well, I just put the article in several categories - all the various systems Ecco's appeared on... except the Game Boy Advance. I thought I should get some opinions first — in that case, Ecco was one of three games on the port, so would it count? I'm not sure, myself, so... let's get some sort of rough consensus.

(*trots off to add Sega Smash Pack to the GBA category*) --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 05:42, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Adding Ecco to the GBA category seems perfectly reasonable. -- [[User:Bobdoe|BobDoe]] 16:53, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Strangely, even the most well-informed sites hardly ever mention the PC Version of Ecco. I think me (or someomne else) should at least put a note of it into this article. I have bought the PC version two days ago ( ! ) and have never known the console versions, because I never had consoles. Alrik Fassbauer 12:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

New information.

Hello and welcome to the English Wikipedia, 24.98.179.223! I'd like to thank you very much for your contibutions to the Ecco article. ^_^ However, there are some things I took issue with and rephrased, tweaked, or simply manually reverted. I hope that we can discuss these issues so Wikipedia's Ecco article can be even better.

• Introduction: "Extremely creative" is, well, rather POV. I changed this to "rather unique", which sounds a more neutral to me.
• Storylines and ports: "The controls are also wooden-feeling, the graphics are terribly scaled and Ecco often goes right off the screen, message screens are near-unreadable at times, and many other problems made this port clunky and irritating to play." I rephrased this a bit, since it, too, sounded rather POV. If you could provide a source for these comments, particularly from a professional reviewer, that would be great. Also, are you sure it sits well with copyright to link to scans of the comic book?
• Ecco the Dolphin storyline: Several things here.
  • "the Asterite probably communicates telepathically; as the Big Blue puts it, "We feel great energy of thought from the Asterite, but it will not sing to us."" In an animation in the Tides of Time Sega CD version it appears the Asterite communicates by vibrations of its globes. I have added this as a possibility.
  • "Ecco left the frozen north and found the Asterite, the oldest creature on Earth, who spawned all life there." Woah, woah, wait, where is this ever stated? I removed the bolded bit.
    • An interview with a staff member confirms that the Asterite spawned all life on Earth (see http://www.ecco-darksea.com/int_annunziata3.php). You are right though that this isn't mentioned int the game. Drumnbach 02:05, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Fair enough. I'll add that to the Asterite article, then. --Sparky Lurkdragon 03:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I am almost certain the Asterite said 65 million, a number I tended to remember because this was about the time the dinosaurs went extinct, but I may be misremembering. I changed it back, but I think a double-check is in order. You were right, it was 55.
  • I liked your rephrasing of the description of the final three levels.
  • "Ecco and his pod return to Earth via what appears to be a gravitational field generated around them, perhaps behind by the Tube that captured them in the first place." Again, where did this come from? Changed it back.
• Tides of Time
  • No complaints here; just want to compliment you on the leaked ROM info. :)
• Defender of the Future gameplay: A few things here.
  • Rephrased your header a bit – it's a new universe, but I think the gameplay is pretty similar to the old games', except in three dimensions.
  • "Appaloosa Interactive" is Novotrade's new name. I have sources – [1], [2], and, well, a Google search for 'Novotrade' "Appaloosa Interactive – [3]. I don't, however, know much about the team being entirely different; do the credits point to this?
• And, finally, External Links:
  • Woah, that was a really overblown description for the site you had there. :) I pared that down quite a bit. I also moved up CoH only to have alphabetical order.

All in all, most of what I took issue with was writing style and what may be factual errors from one or the other of us. I look forward to your response. Once again, welcome, and happy editing! --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 02:34, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen a version of the game on a PC. Am I completely mad? - anon

• No, you're quite sane: [4] -- --

Bobdoe (Talk) 23:04, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on this: ""Ecco left the frozen north and found the Asterite, the oldest creature on Earth, who spawned all life there." Woah, woah, wait, where is this ever stated? I removed the bolded bit". The theory is that he created the other life forms and so on, but it is never said, so couldn't it be: "who is thought to have created all life"? I'm new to this, so I'm not sure.

That bit of info, taken from an interview with one of the staff members, is in the Asterite article now, in the form of a quote. Readers can take from it what they will. :)--Sparky Lurkdragon 22:31, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

This article needs a video game infobox. See Super Mario Bros. 3. Timbatron 19:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Except that we have four different games in this one article. Nifboy 19:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

True, would they be better as seperate articles? Or perhaps an infobox that was generic enough to cover the series? I seem to remember these games being pretty similar, and they were only released for a few platforms. Timbatron 23:10, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I originally wrote the article up with all four because it is, after all, a fairly obscure series, but might it be worth considering dividing this article up and creating an Ecco the Dolphin series article for a more general overview? That or we could have four infoboxes, one for each game, on this one article? --Sparky Lurkdragon 20:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I've placed an infobox on the page that is fairly generic. It doesn't have any specific information about any individual game. IMO, I think eventually each game needs its own infobox, either on this page or on individual pages. Timbatron 23:22, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Release Date

I see the release date in the article listed as 1992, and a source is cited at the bottom listing 1992 as the date on the instruction manual. However, when putting together the infobox, I see July 30th, 1993 as the release date on two seperate sites, gamefaqs and mobygames. Anyone know which is the correct release date? Timbatron 23:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

does seem odd, doesn't it? i'm really not sure from memory. wouldn't like to bet if it was '92 or '93 81.155.246.76 (talk) 23:56, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Separate

The game summaries need to be separated. This article is getting rather long. 67.188.172.165 22:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. There was some discussion of splitting the page earlier - with the 30/31 kb length warning, now may be the time. I'll put a suggested split template on the article and we can see what the other editors think.

Personally, I think if the page is split, this title should be kept for the actual first game in the series, with a general series description at Ecco the Dolphin series, ala the solutions in the Metroid and Legend of Zelda article series. "Ecco the Dolphin series" would use the general skeleton of this article, with links to the main articles on the actual games. --Sparky Lurkdragon 02:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I agree, leave this article as the original Ecco the Dolphin game, then create articles "Ecco the Dolphin series" and then subsequent articles for the other games. - UnlimitedAccess 01:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Seperate - Seth0708 20:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Game Gear

I have the Game Gear version and I clearly remember the Sega screen accompanied by a dolphin saying "Seeeeeeeee....Gaaaaaaaaaa". I always thought that was great. 67.188.172.165 22:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I've incorperated it into the article a little more gracefully - it's an interesting tidbit but not really meriting a whole section. Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for the contribution. ^_^ --Sparky Lurkdragon 02:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm not new here, I've actually been contributing to Wikipedia for a few years now. I provided the majority of the Z-Bots article, as well as the logo. 67.188.172.165 17:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Ecco Jr. and the Great Ocean Treasure Hunt!

One spinoff missed in this article is 'Ecco Jr. and the Great Ocean Treasure Hunt!' for the Sega Pico (storyware/edutainment) ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Pico 146.222.119.22 21:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Should spinoffs really be discussed here, or on the (series) page? 71.145.178.119 07:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

John C. Lilly

This is something I found out that I thought I'd share, since ECCO had been my favorite game since my childhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C_Lilly

John C Lilly was a scientist who did a lot of research with drugs and dolphins. In someone these experiments, he would take Ketamine and attempt to communicate with the dolphins, which, he insisted he could. He also spoke about contact with a cosmic organization called "ECCO" which stands for "Earth Communication Control Office". You can read any of his works to find out more about that, but he basically stated that there was a cosmic organization of overseers facilitating human evolution.

I notice a lot of interesting parallels between these two subjects that no one else seems to bring up.

"Lilly's work with dolphins may have inspired the Ecco the Dolphin games for the Sega MegaDrive/Genesis. Lilly coined the acronym Earth Co-incidence Control Office (ECCO), which refers to his belief that non-physical entities arrange for the occurrence of meaningful co-oincidences (synchronicities) in order to co-ordinate the physical and spiritual development of individuals on planet Earth."

The Vortex seem to parallel Solid State Intelligence.

redirect idea

somebody with an account oughta make "ecHo the dolphin" redirect here -anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.137.200.40 (talk) 11:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I went ahead and did so. --Sparky Lurkdragon 01:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Reception

I know it was well recieved, but how by how much? Titan50 (talk) 16:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Good question.