Ecco the Dolphin - The Scariest Game Ever (Retrospective Review)
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- At this time of year, there's always talk of scary games - for me, one of the scariest ever is Ecco the Dolphin on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It looks like some flippy fun, but under the surface, Ecco is a surprisingly dark, unsettling sci-fi tale of alien invasion and time travel, and its apparent inspiration - the Dolphin House of John C Lilly - is just as weird. Swallow your thalassophobia and let's dip a toe into the terrifying, misunderstood masterpiece that is Ecco the Dolphin.
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Additional gameplay footage courtesy of World of Longplays (RickyC, Waldimart, MadMatty), hirudov2d and dosdaysareover:
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Based on an article originally for Vice
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fun fact: i was on the original subnautica team, and we did a podcast with EdA about underwater games! as a HUGE ecco fan, i was a bit star struck. i like to think i brought just a bit of that ecco spirit to subnautica :)
I love both Subnautica games. Great job.
That's so cool! I haven't fully played Subnautica yet (need to pluck up the courage) but I can definitely see the influence and I'm glad the spirit of Ecco lives on in some way. Thanks for sharing!
That's pretty awesome. I'm really looking forward to Subnautica 3, I don't even like the survival genre very much but Subnautica is a high level game for me, out of every genre
Subnautica is terrifying as well
As someone woth a deep fear of water. I want to say both, I hate you, and, thank you!
This game was so strange it's like trying to explain a nightmare to someone who has never played it.
Yeah, I always felt a bit awkward explaining how a game about a dolphin from 1992 really freaked me out, hence this video. Turns out a lot of people feel the same way! Thanks for watching.
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It's based on a true story
Ecco lives underwater but can't breath underwater. Then he has to venture into claustrophobic underwater caves.
That's where a lot of the fear came from for me.
Feeling anxiety as a little kid playing this lol
Ooohhh yes!
The Dreamcast version of Ecco was so terrifying that neither my sister nor I were able to play past the first 20 minutes or so.
Wow! I can't deny I'm kind of tempted now...
Really? The first 20 minutes of that game were basically sunny levels with a lot of happy dolphins and very few enemies.
Later in the game though, there was some true nightmare fuel
@@AutumnOnDvorI think it do with isolation and fear of unknown
@@AutumnOnDvor the dark future where human left and the world was basically a submerged wasteland was so eerie, sad and maybe not really scary but very creepy, like a ghost ship or something like that.
I liked the Dreamcast game, but I'd rather had a real third Ecco game, the reboot was ok, but I wasn't found of how they re-imagined the whole thing.
@@PsychoPatrick403 Yeah, the dark future on the Dreamcast game is not really that scary if you compare it to the last 3 levels of the first Ecco or in the Tides of Time when you fight the giant moray onwards. The music does a lot too.
Only those who played through it can understand how terrifying the game is.
In a way I envy those who couldn't get past the first few levels!
@@AMPlayem I had Ecco but i was not fortunate enough to pass through into the depths of hell which are described here. I feel deprived.
@@AMPlayem but then they would never see the deep evil squids, or the weird Antarctic animals!
@@jimmyjam3753 Never too late to psychologically scar yourself!
It was the Asterite in both games that was the stopping block for me. Only because I couldn't figure out how to get past it.
I can confirm that the Dreamcast Ecco and its PS2 port were terrifying. It was truly beautiful much of the time, but that didn’t stop the intense fear from rising up every time the bright, sunny levels gave way to darker waters.
Sounds much like the original in that regard... except in 3D you could be attacked from all angles! 😨
Thanks for watching.
A pretty torturous game to get through but man the aesthetic of Ecco is so unique, from the eery music to the isolating oceans you swim through and well of course the final section I mean wtf
Yeah, it's a shame that a lot of people gave up due to the high difficulty early on - there was such a weird and wonderful game to experience if you stuck with it. Thanks for watching!
I had such strong, fond memories of Ecco. Playing it back as an adult, I just don’t have the time!
I'll never forget that jump scare at the beginning. This was back when we played on big CRT TVs and sat on the floor right in front of them.
Yep! I have very vivid memories of that big storm and then swimming around the opening levels, which really glowed and popped on those old CRT TVs. Great memories, even if some of them ended up being unpleasant...
Thanks for watching!
OMG that scared me so much the first time
That violent red hurricane made me think I had broken my Sega for a few seconds. I didn't know what I had done, but I knew my mother would murder me for it. 😂
Hahaha. I'm not surprised, it felt like such a weird, unnatural thing for a game to do. Probably why it sticks in so many people's minds! Thanks for watching.
@@AMPlayemI played this game so many years ago when I was a little child and the only thing I remember from it is all the fish being sucked up so I searched for the game and FOUND IT im so happy
I think what creeped me out about this game was the fact that not only did the creators make a game about the ocean, which is home to god knows what, they were also able to capture the "feel" of the unknown.
Absolutely; the design comes together so well that just the atmosphere, the sense of isolation, can be just as striking as being chased by some big creature.
The sound effects and music really dialed in the tension. The sound of ecco scream in pain, the sound of the machine moving around ecco, the echolocation sounds.
Definitely. So many weird, sci-fi sounds coming out of a game set in the ocean really made things feel unsettling. Even the echolocation call has a sombre tone to it. Thanks for watching!
There was a maze stage in the game gear version where, if you navigated it the wrong way, you'd just be trapped in a section that was quite large but had no exit, until you ran out of air. That, coupled with the music, was horrifying.
Yikes! I haven't played much of the Game Gear version, but that does sound horrible. Is it on RUclips?
I remember my brother, sister and I playing this one as children. Even with all of us lending one another moral support, it became too frightening to continue. None of us could really express what it was that was so unsettling.
I'm an only child so I mostly played games alone, which probably made things worse! I remember showing friends what a scary game it was when they came over though, it really had an effect on me at a young age. Thanks for sharing!
It was the thought of being trapped under water and not being able to air. Then you throw in the music and everything else and I never rented that one again lol.
I was one of the kids who didn't get through the early levels. Just got stuck somewhere. Despite that a remember the game very well. Thank you for allowing me to enjoy it vicariously.
You're welcome, thanks so much for watching! A lot of people didn't make it past the first few stages due to the difficulty but those who did were in for a bit of a shock.
You're not alone
The FM synth use of the Sega Genisis absolutely induced terror in me as a kid. However, I kept returning to it because it was so captivating.
You said it, 'bro. It's as captivating as it is unsettling so I always end up coming back to it despite how uneasy it makes me feel.
I have some Pokemon vids on my channel if you're interested 🙂
I'm 38 years old and played this game as a kid. Sure it was difficult but I LOVED it so much. I think I loved the music more than anything. It's so hauntingly beautiful and sad. I love it 😢
The music is a big part of it; such a weird soundscape that conjures up everything from sorrow and loneliness to panic and terror. Those tracks are all forever burned into my brain. Thanks for watching!
37 yo, and SAME!
@@JustAnotherAlchemist such a great game. I actually just bought an Ecco the Dolphin poster because I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Memories! 🥺
This game wasn’t scary though. I liked it.
@@brj2343 who said it was scary? I sure didn't say that...
The Asterite is a complete multidimensional being. Just like how humans freely move in 3 Dimensions, it freely moves in 4, with the 4th being the time dimension. All experiences for it are memories of the future.
You just blew my mind.
Since everything is just a memory existing in the minds of those who observed it, It could probably read people’s minds to experience the past through a memory.
Actually, come to think of think it, spirits or ghosts or whatever, they may be able to read minds in a way that allows them to experience history and human life through through the eyes of a person that was there.
The game is based on psychonaut John Lily who took massive doses of LSD and ketamine in sensory deprivation tanks and was trying to teach dolphins English. No joke, look into it haha.
@@crono3339 Yeah I know of him. Just like I know how his assistant was giving one of the dolphins 🖐✊ every day.
Beat this game as a kid and have no idea how I did as I came back to it as an adult and couldn’t handle the stress.
The oxygen bar man it haunts my dreams.
Respect! You're in a minority, if these comments are anything to go by. Thanks for watching!
Respect. My whole family beat this game. Literally, as in one playthrough required the aid of parents and older siblings. It was a group effort
The Dreamcast game is still one of my favourites to this day. It's unsettling in much the same way as the original, though it does take a little longer to get there. Lots of industrial horror: ancient megastructural machine complexes of unknown purpose, that sort of thing. And the alien stuff in the final act really hammers home that dark, deadly Ecco feeling.
There's a quiet, claustrophobic loneliness to it all. I'd say it's sad almost as much as it is scary.
Yeah, sounds like it invokes the same feelings as the original, where the isolation can be as unsettling as the more straight-up horror elements. A lot of commenters have recommended it but I've yet to get round to playing it, as much as I'd love to do a follow-up video. Thanks for watching!
I played Ecco at a Blockbuster back when they had "test before renting" stations. Never did rent the game but decades later I watched a full Let's Play. I think about how strange this game is now and again, Ecco's family getting sucked up as alien food. Because this game involves time travel, they've already drowned and/or been devoured for most of the game.
Thanks, that's another level of horror to this game that I didn't need! 😅
I watched a playthrough of Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future. Yes, there are parts that are scary. There's creepy caves, a huge shark, and you time travel into three dark futures:
1. humans are gone, the ocean is barren, and dolphins are dumb
2. Dolphins took over the ocean and formed a caste system, with the strongest ruling over the lesser creatures
3. The aliens won against the humans and dolphins
Yikes! The barren ocean itself sounds really unsettling to me.
Story and lore of DotF are scary and epic...
That big shark always scared the piss outta me.
Defender of the Future's plot was put together by noted sci-fi author David Brin. It wasn't his magnum opus or anything, but it's very good structurally. After the calm, lovely starting area you actually start out successfully - if barely - fighting off the Foe invasion with the help of the Guardian, a joint human-dolphin planetary defense system. The Foe however does time travel shenanigans to steal the dolphins' five Noble Traits in the past: Intelligence, Ambition, Compassion, Wisdom, and Humility.
You then play three alternate futures after the Foe attack. In the first, with none of the traits, dolphins were barely sapient and got enslaved by humans (who then traded killing blows with the Foe) and divided into three color-coded castes: Cops/overseers I guess, machine operators, and brute labor. You find and send back first Intelligence and then Ambition, and shift to the second future.
In the second future, with smarts and ambition but no compassion, wisdom, or humility, dolphins drove humans permanently from the sea and divided into...three (different) colored castes: Basically warriors, laborers, and "Outcasts". They also enslave whales and exploit the world in the way humans did without dolphins' mutual guidance. You send back Compassion and Wisdom, shifting to the third future.
In the third future, lacking just Humility, the dolphins and humans get together as in the base timeline but never build the defense system and both get stomped by the Foe. With powers acquired in the other worlds you fight through the Foe and their Queen to send back Humility, restoring the original events but now with a statue of Ecco commemorating his quest which the Guardian also remembers.
Pretty simple, but it's got themes and stuff! That connect to the type of problems in each area! Pretty good. I also find it fun to compare it to the Elements of Harmony in My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic. MLP does a lot of scenarios where all the Elements are stolen/lost/nullified/reversed/shuffled, but I don't think there's any situation where only one or some of them are put out of action. I think you could build a full season or two on exploring how virtues could become vices without other virtues balancing them out - as Brin did, in a videogame about a dolphin bopping aliens.
no joke an old man gave this game and some dirtbike goggles to me when i was at the store with my grandma. I was 7 😂 and after that day I never saw that man again. I lived in a village called Shandon in California. everybody knew each other. but nobody knew that man.
I could never make it very far in this game as a kid since the opening levels were too confusing for my 5 year old brain, but this game still managed to stick with me over the years. Even early on it really captured the isolating, lonely and almost alien feeling and atmosphere about being the only creature in the depths of the ocean
Very well put! A lot of people didn't make it very far due to the notorious difficulty, but never mind the aliens etc - it's that overwhelming sense of mystery, isolation and dread that's the real wonder - or horror - of this game. Thanks for watching!
Same, never got far. Never knew how wacky it got until years later when I nostalgic for the old megadrive ^^
Tides of Time is my second favorite game ever (OFF taking the position after I played through it). Ecco games were liminal hellscapes with a pervasive sense of loneliness and danger, which made quite an impression on 90s babies. To this day the series influences my artistic and musical tastes.
Yeah, same here probably. My love of psychological horror (and the ocean) was probably born from my early exposure to Ecco - ironic, considering how much the game freaked me out. I've been learning about liminal spaces and vaporwave over the last year or so, and the influence Ecco had on that.
Thanks for watching!
Tides of Time was a fundamental part of my childhood, it wasn't just my big and little sister who were addicted, but also my mum.
I was the only one who could beat the medusa level. If they were playing and reached that monstrosity, they'd drag me back from whatever I was doing and demand me to play.
It shares a high pedestal along with Prince of Persia and Monkey Island. My mum was dangerously addicted to Prince of Persia.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish"
-The dolphins
The paradoxes you speak of are causality loops, events that have no origin
Is that like the bootstraps paradox?
@AMPlayem yeah, it's like say in the Terminator, Skynet is made possible by a chip from the Terminator in the first movie, but in order for that chip to exist, skynet had to exist, so there is no origin, it just loops, skynet exists to create the Terminator and the Terminator exists to create skynet.
Chicken and egg.
At some point I researched these loops and my favorite example of infinite regress is Bradley's Regress, and Aristotle's concept of the unmoved mover.
The prehistoric part actually happen after the end of ecco 2, even more mindfuck tier than the old paradox.
That's right, you mean how the Vortex evolve to become the crustacean enemies?
Came for the cute dolphin... stayed for the thalassophobia-inducing lovecraftian nihilistic story where the future of all existence lies on the fins of such cute dolphin.
The unsettling atmosphere of Ecco reached me, even through a 14 minute synopsis video. Well done, and thanks for making this vid! I'd only known intriguing bits and pieces about Ecco and its reputation before watching.
It feels similar to a SF novelette I read: "At The Fall" by Alec Nevala-Lee. A lonely, abandoned creature, deep in the ocean, with one improbable goal. Washed in an eerie mystique of Why and How.
Thank you so much for watching and for your kind comment! It really means a lot to hear that about my videos. That story sounds really up my street, I'll be sure to read it!
TIL ...that's the story of Ecco... seriously?... i was one of those kids that couldn't get past the first few levels with so little to go on.
Yeah, so many players didn't get past the opening levels due to the difficulty and open-endedness, but those who did were in for a big surprise! Thanks for watching.
Exactly man. I remember f*cking around with a "crystal" for half an hour then taking it back to Blockbuster.
The soundtrack of the Sega CD versions of Ecco and Tides of Time deserve a listen for sure. It's the main thing that sets those versions apart from the originals (aside from a few cute FMV segments in Atlantis in the first game). Very Tangerine Dream-esque.
I've heard some of the music from those versions. Pretty nice from what I remember but for me it wouldn't be Ecco without the original tracks. The GBA version only used the time travel music through the entire game from what I remember which really took away from the atmosphere. Thanks for watching!
I think part of what makes games from that era so magical in the real sense is that it gave birth to an entirely new medium to tell stories in, in ways that could hardly be dreamed of previously. I think of games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and Earthbound, how they all shaped and sculpted not just the games that I played, but how I thought about things (especially myself in relation to the world/my place in it), how I viewed love, sacrifice, and being the true embodiment of a heroic person set on to fix the things that are not right with the world. It really helped mold me into the person I eventually became, so going back to those games decades later and replaying them, beating them, and going further than I had been able to when I was a kid - it really is a poetic journey in itself. Can anyone really say that seeing -no, *being* in the opera scene from Final Fantasy 6 really didn't touch them on not just an emotional level but even a spiritual one? To me, they are more than just "games" - they are a part of me down to my core.
Omg dude, I was just telling my girl that this game triggered my fear of games with ocean levels. And you have now justified everything I was literally just saying. Thank you for this video because now she understands.
That honestly means a lot, that my video could help you in some small way. Thanks so much for watching and you're definitely not alone!
@@AMPlayem Thanks again man. I kept telling my girl how scary Ecco was and she didn't understand till your video 😆
Always nice to see Ecco getting some attention! I remember playing it when I was very little and I still think about how it affected me to this day. I recently bought both Ecco 1 and 2 and the ps2 version of Defender of the Future just so I could have those pieces of my childhood memories in a physical form. Excellent video!
Thanks so much for watching! Glad people are keeping Ecco alive 🐬
Ecco is like Subnautica, the talasophobia, claustrophobia and loneliness that they make you feel when playing without you truly realizing what those feelings are. With time and iteration, those feelings don't usually stop you too much, they actually turn into masochistic pleasure as you venture deeper and deeper for the sake of moving forth till you beat the game... most times (?) Nice video, thought it was a personal "feel" i got when i played it when little, but it seems we are not alone
I suppose that masochistic pleasure is why horror fans consume that type of media in the first place - we obviously get a kick out of something which we should naturally want to avoid. I haven't plucked up the courage to fully play Subnautica yet though! Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts, always glad to hear I'm not alone 🐬
@@AMPlayem it gets easier to delve deeper when you get enough courage to tackle killing some leviathans (at least the most common ones).
This was the foundational game of my childhood, and I agree it was terrifying, and a real challenge. Replayed it countless times.
To this day. I can still beat "welcome to the machine" even though there was a 10 or maybe even a 15 year break. (i think it was in the first go too)
That's how deeply ingrained the game is burned into my subconscious.
Nice! I only remember beating it once, it sort of becomes a game of Simon. Ecco definitely ingrained itself into my subconscious in other ways though...
Thanks for watching!
Imagine never being able to get through the ice stages, and then one day playing with the password screen, typing i n "NNNNNNNN" and getting "Welcome to the Machine" without any context or lead up. That was me as a kid.
I don't need to imagine it - the same thing happened to me 😅
A few other commenters have said the same thing - one guy commented nothing but "NNNNNNNN" and I was like, this guy knows the score.
Whats weird is when i was younger i don't think i remembered how scary it was i just remember like swimming around and i forgot about the game until today and i didn't know if it was a dream or if anyone knew what it was or not
Oh yeah, there's a sizeable community based around it and so many people have unpleasant memories from playing it. Give it another try sometime, it's a bit of a tough game to get into but quite a unique experience. Thanks for watching!
Yet for all of that, the Ecco games are easily among the best games ever made. Not to mention, they absolutely maxed out the graphics capabilities of their original systems in ways no other games came close to.
Totally, its graphics were so realistic for the time. A lot of the designs were actually lifted by the graphic artist Balogh Zsolt from Hungarian picture books about the natural world - I might do a video about the origins of the creature designs at some point.
I LOVE Ecco the Dolphin. Yes it’s hard and unfair. Yes the controls and mechanics are fucked. Yes it’s a buggy mess that makes you repeat stuff over and over again. But let’s get real. The story is insane. The music is atmospheric and beautiful. The graphics were incredible for its time. The feeling of being alone, lost, tense and fearful were all very real.
Now imagine it today with todays graphics, sound, evolved story telling and in the hands of someone who could put together incredibly tight fluid controls and offer up a balanced AI and game mechanics and add a ton of new fun elements, abilities, features and customizations to the game….
I am willing to argue it could rival even the best of the best platforming / Metroidvania / cinematic adventure games out there.
How do we will this into existence?
I'd say the retro graphics and music are part of what makes the original so special so I'd be in two minds about updating those *too* much, but I would certainly love to see a third installment of the original 2D series, especially since The Tides of Time ended on a cliffhanger. Ed Annunziata has said he'd want it to involve Cassandra, the Atlantean girl who made the glyphs to guide Ecco in the first game, so an interplay between her on land and Ecco in the water could be a neat mechanic. Maybe when the dolphin travelled through time at the end of TTOT, he went back to the era that the Atlanteans fled into and the story could pick up from there. Who knows if we'll ever find out though? :(
Thanks for watching!
5:25 That's called a closed time loop. Dolphins exist, Ecco exists, Ecco goes back into the past before Dolphins exist, inspires their ancestors to take to the water, Dolphins exist. The thing to remember is the start "Dolphins exist" this is a constant and regardless of any changes will always happen in some form.
The theory being that Ecco's ancestors would have re-entered the water regardless and Ecco later going back to influence them is just incidental?
@@AMPlayem Pretty much. A lot of closed time loops can be explained by the loop simply speeding up what would have already happened or applies in the mindset that time is not linear. Non-linear time feels like more of a cop-out than inevitability. Its also odd to assume that Whales' ancestors would still take to the water without Ecco, since Ecco doesn't sing their song, but the dolphins ancestors specifically needed Ecco to inspire them the first time around.
Still an absolute favourite game, for these exact reasons.
Yep, I love it in spite of myself. Thanks for watching!
Ecco the dolphin is a fever dream after accidentally drinking the water at sea world.
I played Ecco CD and always loved the expanded music, sound effects, and atmosphere the CD version offered. Definitely worth a replay.
Yeah, the CD soundtrack is cool, but I don't think it'd really be Ecco for me without the original one I grew up with!
With Q sound!
One answer for time travel problems is just this.... the helical creature remembered the dolphin because it had seen him in the past. It had always been that way. At least one of the movies you mentioned is actually set up this same way: In 12 Monkeys Bruce Willis's character remembers seeing himself as an adult when he was a child. It was always that way, and always had to be that way. Dr. Manhattan agrees "If only you could see time as I do... the past and present are simultaneous... we are all puppets, I'm just a puppet who can see the strings..." etc
These aren't paradoxes per se. It depends on your conception of spacetime, causality and metaphysics.
Great video btw. Loved this game as a kid
Thanks so much for your kind words and insight!
I remember as a kid i got to a DNA looking thing, and had absolutely no idea how to progress past that point
You just talk to it via sonar then go back the way you came! 🧬
This game held me down back in the day. I can still hear the sound effects. And I love the way you can just play around at the beginning before getting into the levels.
Yeah, despite the scarier parts that come later, the opening stages can be quite serene. The animation and controls are so fluid that it's fun just to swim around and dive over stuff.
Great breakdown of a game that I haven’t played in many years and yet still haunts me. You summed it up perfectly… despite the difficulty, the aggravation, the fear… it still captivates.
How high in the sky can you fly?
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed! Even those words have a haunting air about them in retrospect. If only I'd ignored that dolphin!
There is something inherently frightening about the ocean and this video game encapsulates it perfectly.
Yep, known as thalassophobia. I don't have a fear of the ocean as such but I love that kind of unsettling imagery, which I'm sure Ecco sparked my interest in from a young age.
I bought the game after watching this video. Never played it before. It is really amazing. It oozes atmosphere. Probably the hardest game that I have ever played.
That's awesome! I'm quite honoured that my humble opinion helped you find a new game you enjoy. Glad it's still appealing to people all these years later - there are level select passcodes and invincibility cheats if you get stuck.
I played Ecco on the Dreamcast. Wasn't exactly scary, but I did feel mind blown by some of the technologically advanced dolphin/extra terrestrial themes that game had.
A lot of commenters have recommended it, some say it's scary, some say otherwise, but I'm hoping to play it in the near future to do a follow-up video.
It was the graphics and controls that did it for me, like how smooth Ecco swam around and the animations, the game has some really nice graphics especially for the time, it really captures that "mystery of the abyssal unknown"
Yeah, even for a game of the time it looked quite realistic and things moved so fluidly. Here's a great video looking into the animation of the game: ruclips.net/video/UzF_xe77xkg/видео.html
Thanks for watching!
It definitely is! These ecco games were some of my absolute favourite games and very difficult back in the day.
Swim slowly past eight arms, and welcome to the machine friend.
Those words will forever haunt me.
For me the killers were tubes of Medusa and the hanging gardens from the 3d one
Yes…the Dreamcast version is equally if not more terrifying. The feeling of dread when you time travel to the future, the dark levels…giant eels in caves.
Eek... I'm kind of regretting my commitment to play it for a follow-up video now! Thanks for watching!
I love Ecco. I got really far on it when I was a child and teenager after being really persistent with it, but let me tell you; it took me years to work out how to beat the Vortex Queen. I kept trying and trying that I knew it all like the back of my hand. Didn't work out how to complete it for several years. I've not played it now for a good few years. Played it this evening and I'm so rusty
Yeah, she doesn't really telegraph her weak points - you sort of just need to figure out that you sonar out her eyes, then ram her jaw, then ramming her head suddenly becomes effective. And you can't really afford to screw up because it means repeating the entire previous stage. What a nightmare.
Thanks for watching, hope I brought back some memories!
Interesting little piece of Ecco the Dolphin lore:
The stars on the forehead of Ecco are the constellation Delphinus.
That's right! It's hinted at by one of his pod in the opening stage and then Delphinus is mentioned in the Library level (as is the star system Cassandra, the name of the Atlantean girl who created the glyphs for Ecco to follow.)
Big Blue jump scared me the first time I got to its chamber at full speed. I'm just gonna forget this an chill out a bit in Subnautica, they have such pretty fishes.
Yep, vivid memory of just swimming along minding my own business than that goddamn whale call booming at me and the biggest sprite ever appearing from nowhere.
I haven't properly played Subnautica yet but I hear it's very peaceful and relaxing, enjoy!
My brother laughed at me when I found this game scary when the dolphin kept drowning, that scream Ecco made scared me I didn't pick it back up until my teen years.
Yeah, as if it wasn't tense enough at times, Ecco doing that piercing shriek every time you take damage just makes it worse!
Personally, I thought 2 was scarier. But Ecco was TOTALLY a whole new diffrent subtle kind of horror.
I find 2 just to be more weird than anything else, they really amped up the sci-fi element, but completely agree about the first game. Both the plaintive, melancholy opening levels and the straight-up horrific final levels are effective in their own way. Thanks for watching!
Ecco the Dolphin is a horrific game that I loved very much as a kid. So much I even got the Dreamcast Ecco the Dolphin which was equally terrifying.
Yeah, a lot of commenters have recommended/warned me about the Dreamcast version. Hoping to get around to playing it and doing some follow-up videos!
I grew up with this game and it is in my top 5 favorite games. It is so nostalgic and I love it even now! 🐬❤
That's awesome! I'd probably count it among my favourites too, despite all the mental scarring. It's amazing how one little relatively unknown game from 30 years ago boasts such deep lore and such a passionate fanbase. Thanks for watching! I have some Pokémon vids on my channel too.
Big Blue used a technique that was often used in shoot-em-ups, where they used a background layer to draw a boss that was much bigger than standard sprite size would allow. Something about it's use in Ecco was completely unexpected, and made me jump out my skin.
Great video! I definitely think the loneliness and isolation the game makes you feel add to the terror.
Thanks so much! A lot of the time it is indeed just the empty sea that's disturbing, before we even factor in any giant octopi or Lovecraftian abominations.
I played Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, and part of the horror of that game is the Sonic in water effect: You can drown, but you're forced to risk drowning to progress, and enemies are often much stronger and more scary due to their alien or aquatic nature.
There was a line in my original script for the video that I accidentally cut, but it was "all of this while you're technically drowning." It often stopped you from taking your time and anticipating dangers or scary things because you were effectively on a time limit. That's probably bad game design in a sense but the oxygen mechanic definitely added to the tension.
@@AMPlayem indeed!
I couldnt get past the sea of darkness level for sooooooo long. Those scary vortex drones were too much for me.
Ugh, that level looks like it'd put me on edge too!
One of the most underrated games in history. Loved the story and the immersion.
I think a new Ecco...would possibly be even more terrifying
It was kind of lightning-in-a-bottle stuff so it might be hard to replicate that, but a new game would be cool, especially in the same sprite-based style. Sadly it hasn't happened, even in this age of series revivals. Thanks for watching!
Ecco was probably the first game I played as a kid that blew my mind graphically. Everything else was a video game cartoon, but as far as I was concerned, I was watching national geographic while playing Ecco.
Yeah, its graphics felt realistic compared to how cartoony and comic-book other games at the time felt, which I think plays a big part in how unsettling I found it. Still holds up today in terms of gorgeous sprite artwork!
I didn’t realize how emotional some of these old games were, if anyone knows of more like this please lmk
Chrono Trigger has quite a sombre atmosphere a lot of the time. I can't recommend it enough if you've never played it before. Here's my video on it: ruclips.net/video/2ZkWOJTDSJE/видео.html
Super Metroid has a similar foreboding atmosphere to Ecco, while EarthBound isn't quite scary but just *weird* - like a cross between a Sunday morning cartoon and a bad acid trip.
@@AMPlayem I’m gonna have to check those out thank you!!
Dude the Dreamcast version is pretty bad ass, it has such a deep story for no words spoken, it also has awesome time paradox and that humans and dolphins teach each other things, the alien goes back in time to stop humans and dolphins from meeting… it’s awesome
@@The80Kat People are speaking highly of Defender of the Future, maybe I should get around to playing it. Is it as difficult as the first game?
Valis
What a Wild ride that backstory is about where this game came from. Madness. Literally.
Crazy, isn't it? As I mentioned, Ed A has since distanced himself from it in terms of its influence on Ecco, but it's just a wild story regardless.
The trilobites still attack me in my nightmares
Me too, my friend. I'm told I even make the Ecco damage noise in my sleep.
The trilobites, giant sea crabs, and atlantian puffers are the worst enemies in the game
This game on megadrive was a) very hard b) scary about drowning all of the time c) emotional d) intense music e) thelassophobia f) getting lost g) very lonely h) for a 9 y/o me, pretty trippy i) existential alien or eldritch threat.
Yep, all of the above! It was a very intense experience as a kid, compared to the rest of the console's catalogue.
soundtracks are very disturbing in this game..
Everything is disturbing about this game. The way the plot unfolds and becomes gradually more insane as the game goes on; the way the levels are designed like underwater labyrinths to choke the life out of you; the way the edge of the screen gets gradually darker as Ecco swims further down into the depths. It's all really messed up in a really subtle way.
@@CopiousDoinksLLC Definitely. I touched on that in the video - yeah, there are sharks and dinosaurs and aliens, but sometimes it's the isolation and darkness that really gets to me.
Really? I think a lot of them are lovely
Definitely one of the weirder games I owned as a kid. Never got too deep into due to my lack of patience and how frustrating it was. But given how I exist, or chose not to exist now, seems I had it for a reason. Great video. Cool reminder of a forgotten part of a distant of life.
Thanks so much for the kind words, glad it gave you a trip down memory lane!
That's classic! I was almost always a little poor, but loved gaming. The first game (and system) I ever actually owned was this. I made enough money to be able to spare some cash for it. I've always wondered if I finished the actual game, and for a moment in your video in the prehistoric part, I thought "Oh, I know I've never seen that. I must've given up cause it was too hard." Then I saw the Giger levels in the end and realized I had totally beaten it. Just forgot parts. I'm going to have to see if it's on PC now with an emulator or something. In this era, I'm into Dying Light, Dying Light 2, Dark Souls 2 and 3, and getting ready for Elden Ring. I've missed a couple waves along the way, but I've been gaming since Pong in '74 at my friend's house.
That's awesome! Glad it brought back some memories. You can get Ecco on Steam for next to nothing these days (or there's always emulation, as you say.) Thanks for watching, keep on gaming!
The game was released for PC with CD music, the best way to play the game.
Simply put it's well done atmosphere, it was open, it was alien and it was unsettling. Not noted this was also a metroidvania game
I'd say it certainly has elements of Metroidvania - as you mentioned, the unsettling alien world, plus having to navigate tight tunnels and mazes while finding keys to open different rooms, but having linear stages instead of one big interconnected world means I probably wouldn't list it in that genre. Can definitely see why there'd be an overlap in fans though. Thanks for watching!
Uff the music... great and opens wound at the same time.
I hear ya! The music's a big part of my complex relationship with the game. Thanks for watching!
The Sega version traumatised me as a kid with the concept of being trapped and dying alone in a cave.
Yeah, never mind the aliens and other predators, sometimes it's the claustrophobia and unsettling atmosphere that really play on the mind.
Just started playing it and yes, it's truly terrifying!!
Glad it's still scaring people 30 years later! Thanks for watching 🐬
My jaw dropped the moment that, all you had to do in the first level was jump so freakin' high into the first strastosphere to pretty much time travel....My whole face literally froze as you were explaining all of this.....I have heard about this game while looking through Sega Genesis games to emulate on OpenEmu back in 2014/2015, and I was stunned to know I probably didn't go far. I thought it was some sort of movie, or a platformer I wouldn't mind having fun with. But seeing that the game was difficult, I didn't even think the game was that brutal or even know where to go. Many games back in the 1990s and before would plop you right into the action without any intro or cutscene, but holy crow man. This game is something I probably would have not experienced, had you not make this video.
And yes, I do have the fear of open bodies of water, I've had a dream/nightmare about it back in 2004, long before I knew this game existed. But what I was mostly afraid of was the darkness and the underwater meters deep within. Even the darkness on land was pretty terrifying to the younger 7/8 year old me.
Glad to hear I got you into the game! Hope it doesn't make the nightmares worse...
Thanks for sharing!
I literally couldn't play this game at night. It was too scary 😨
It was bad enough during the day!
I played it as a 6 year old. All I would do was swim around in the ocean. It now feels like a fever dream.
I think that was the experience of a lot of kids - it was so fiendishly difficult that many players only saw the first few levels but it has such a unique atmosphere that even those made a big impact. Thanks for watching!
Great video and yes, truly terrifying 🥶
Thanks! Always glad to hear I'm not alone 😅
I never owned Ecco. I got to borrow it twice, once from a friend and once from a relative. However, with my brief stints with the game I was never compelled to get it myself as even though I never got far enough to see the truly scary things, the opening couple of levels were primordially unsettling to me.
"Primordially unsettling" - I like that! I think the non-scary levels can have a really melancholic atmosphere to them, even without monstrous creatures lunging at you.
I just noticed your avatar and username - I mentioned Satan/the mysterious stranger in my video about The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, that game's animation reminded me of the creepy stop-motion from the Mark Twain movie!
I ❤ this game. Beat is several times. The second one was too hard to beat
I love it too, in spite of myself. I've never fully played the second one but it looks really frustrating at points.
@@AMPlayem very! That second one wasn't fun
Tides Of Time was my favorite one to play over the first Ecco the Dolphin.
The music always had this foreboding atmosphere
Great game, back in the 90s people hated it or loved it, no middle terms.
It's definitely a divisive one. I was always into it, despite the psychological impact!
i loved the games on sega cd. the music was amazing and I think they changed some things to make the game easier. The dreamcast ecco is awesome as well but also ridiculously difficult at times. Ecco games don't hold your hand or make things easy that's for sure.
Just like me, people love me or hate me.. or think im alright
Yeah I play those other games too but, this did get me as well. The first note of this episode the first note of the music grab me by the very soul in my heart stopped for a moment. Oh Ecco the dolphin!
You slippery rapscallion!
What I distinctively remember from playing Ecco (someone had it installed on my pc back then) was the eerie loneniless felt in that vast a in large part empty submarine world.
Subnautica is far more terrifying. lol
Edit: Oh, someone else said the same thing 4 days ago. Oh well. lmao
I haven't played much of Subnautica... I don't think I can after what Ecco did to me! :(
I played the PS2 port of the Dreamcast game. The fact that, in one of the first few levels, you're forced to acquire a power up straight from the jaws of a great white shark terrified me. The puzzle to get the power up was also not that forgiving, so my wracked nerves were no help
Oh God, that sounds intense! I'm hoping to get round to playing it in the near future, I'll steel my nerves.
Currently swearing at my TV and cursing the designers. It's ridiculous how you could have such an amazing concept for a game, art, music, mechanics, story, and totally botch the game with its design, rendering it unplayable. Making my way through this game over the past week or so has gotten me so frustrated at times thinking how much better this game could've been; why didn't they make fun and enjoyable levels featuring flipping around on the surface like an actual dolphin (instead of a claustrophobic, enemy-ridden, survival maze game), or more of a scavenger hunt, or a puzzle game with actual puzzles that aren't frustrated by terrible physics? When most people think fondly of Ecco, they think of swimming around the Home Bay for 15 minutes at the start of the game. Not beating it. Why would anyone make a game that 99% of people never beat? Like most people who fondly remember Myst, about 90%, never made it off the island. It's more of the idea of the games than the actual games themselves that people like. I call for a re-do of this game. WAY too difficult and unenjoyable, but I want to like it so badly.
Yeah, I can definitely see where you're coming from. So many people were so confused by the game's difficult, idiosyncratic nature that they never made it further than the Undercaves. As I touched on at the end of the video, as much as I can still be entranced by the game's atmosphere, I'm more likely to skip to certain levels just to mess around rather than persevere through its more difficult ones. Nostalgia probably plays a big part too.
I'd also be interested in a version that cuts out the artificial difficulty to make it more accessible for people. I'm not sure if such a mod exists. It's certainly a shame that many players didn't get to see the amazing things the game has to offer due to the devs deliberately making it unwelcoming. Some of the commenters in here weren't even aware of the sci-fi storyline!
Thanks for watching and for your input!
If it was unbeatable, then how do you explain all the people who did beat it legitimately?
I remember as a child seeing this game thinking it looked interesting. However, I never played it. I’m starting to have regret not playing it. Sure, I may of end being scared of it, but it would have been one hell of experience.
Fun fact: inputting different combinations of A's and N's in the password screen will take you to different levels. All A's will take you to the 2nd level, all N's will take you to 2nd to final level, the machine.
@@BMXyamabushi Yeah, another commenter said earlier they discovered the horrific final level by unwittingly typing in all Ns! You could also enter PLEASE + a pair of letters to access different stages. I used to know loads of them as a kid but can't remember now. Thanks for watching!
@@AMPlayem did not know about the please passwords I'll have to give it a shot. Good thing I kept my retro consoles all these years.
Story of a “woman BANGING a Dolphin”
Part had me DYING 🤣🤣
Glad to brighten your day! 🏊♀️🐬
I remember getting constantly jump scared by sharks when playing the Ecco Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast
In my experience, the first 3 stages were very relaxing. Then came the fourth, the lagoon, with its very dark music, and longer level design. Then I started realizing that the game was not exactly what I thought it was. One of the best for the genesis.
I never beat this game as a kid because that last boss terrified me.