OriginalName crawls from the rubble, battered and bleeding..

[Original_Name]

Triumphant.

He just beat Ecco the fucking Dolphin.

Fuck the Vortex. Fuck the Machine. Fuck Novotrade.

I loved it. But I'm never, ever, EVER doing it again.

[Paul_B-C]

You are a stronger man than me.


Now do the Tides of Time.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Im stronger than both of you. Ive done both ... and im never playing them again...

[equalsign]

Hell yeah! Way to go . I've gotta give that one another chance someday. Maybe when I inevitably get into Genesis collecting. Damn all you guys and your contagious Sega loving.

[racketboy]

** round of applause **

glad you at least enjoyed it

[Metalcrack]

Fuck the Vortex.

I'll agree. For some reason that thing CREEPED me out.

[corn619]

That game was the reason I bought a Genesis back in the day. They don't make games like that anymore thats for sure. Ecco CD maybe in my very near future

[Original_Name]

That game was the reason I bought a Genesis back in the day. They don't make games like that anymore thats for sure. Ecco CD maybe in my very near future

I'd definitely recommend it. I picked up my copy of Ecco CD at a used video store for $3 dollars. It had been there for about three years, and I finally picked it up after picking up a Sega CDX half a year ago. If you have a Sega CD, it's a no-brainer with a gorgeous CD soundtrack, extra levels, completely irrelevant documentary footage of dolphins, and the same dirt-cheap price as its brother on the Genesis. I've heard speculation that the Sega CD version was actually the original version.

And to the other fellow, I've heard alot of people who've talked about how creepy The Vortex are. I jumped out of my seat when I first saw them in The Tides of Time as a young one (never even saw the Vortex in the first one until just the other night). I'm sure my being so young was a factor, and I'm also pretty sure that the Vortex had more detailed sprites in the sequel (I know the dolphins and backgrounds do), but being 18 and playing "Welcome to the Machine" today, the Vortex hardly fazed me. I just got more than livid at their tendencies to push me down the wrong fucking paths in the second-to-last level. God, FUCK that level. I could honestly forgive all the other level's ridiculous difficulty levels, even "Deep Water", as absurd as that level was, but the Vortex levels were simply unforgiveable in their difficulty. The entire game plays like an already incredibly, unforgivingly hard game on hard mode, I wish they had put in a normal mode for human beings, and maybe a "practice" mode as well.

Oh well, I'm glad I beat it. A true testament to the incredible potential of 16-bit video games. The story wasn't great on its own, but in the grand scheme of things, it was a very bold move on the part of the developers. You go to the store, pick up the top-selling game about a dolphin with a star-spangled melon; pop it in your Genesis (/Sega CD if you were so privileged), swim around and speak to the kindly dolphins who say things like "The marks on your head look like stars in the sky," and "How high can you jump?" as relaxing music plays, then you try a high jump and "SKLOOOOOOARAOISAUOIUFOLKJAJJKRRRRGHP!!", everything gets sucked up, and the game kicks your ass for the next however long you play it before it reduces you to a sobbing mess. So, considering the situation, the bizarre tale of time travel and space aliens is incredibly novel and, as an extention of that, quite rewarding... I guess... except that after the Vortex levels I don't know if ANY ending would have sufficed.

[Curlypaul]

I remember playing the first few levels of this about a year ago, when my mate came round and saw what I was playing he scoffed 'but thats a girls game mate, why are you playing a girls game'. Clearly he had never played it because this game is hard as nails.

Well done on getting to the end