CAPA: ECCO THE DOLPHIN (MEGA DRIVE) ................. PÁG

Por Luciano Coelho

At a dinner party after the first day of CES in Las Vegas in 1990 Ed Annunziata and Hugh Bowen along with Al Nielsen, Sega's Director of Marketing, started talking and there Ed and Bowen saw the opportunity to reveal to Nielsen about Ed's idea of a new game he had in mind.

Ed Annunziata was a self-taught programmer from New York and he was the first producer to be hired by Sega of America. his first jobs were localizing Sega of Japan games.

But after a while, Ed Annunziata , started producing his own games.

Ed was working on Spiderman vs the Kingpin when he had an idea for a game about life. But it wasn't life as we know it, it was life at the bottom of the sea, as seen by a dolphin. The game starts with a dolphin and his friends swimming in the bay. And then all of a sudden, a huge weird giant waterspout forms and sucks all the marine life out of the bay except Ecco, leaving him alone in the bay.

So, with only his sonar, he sets out to try to find out what happened to his friends and how to get everything back to normal. Ecco will set off on a journey where he will come across exotic and centenary animals, millenary scenarios and even pay a visit to the famous city of Atlantis.

ECCO THE DOLPHIN

Plataforma: Mega Drive

Desenvolvedora: Sega

Lançamento: 1992

Ed Annunziata was inspired by the book The Fouding, by scientist John C. Lilly, who researched the communicative ability of dolphins, and he was also the creator of the "sensory deprivation tank".

During the 1970s, John Lilly became addicted to ketamine and so he began to believe in the existence of the group of extraterrestrial entities, which was known as the Earth Coincidence Control Office (ECCO). And it was the inspiration that helped Annunziata build the world of Ecco.

And let's start with the graphics and visuals of the game: They are simply wonderful, starting with its opening: rays of sunlight break through perfect white clouds and we have a brilliant blue sky. Suddenly, a family of dolphins appears jumping frantically giving an acrobatic show through the waters full of life. This is Ecco's world. The graphics are clean, well detailed and colorful. They impress us right away, besides, of course, all the life forms we see in the ocean, like whales, sharks, jellyfish...

It is truly a treat when you see the level of detail and quality that went into bringing the ocean of Ecco to life.