Classic Sega Genesis games Ecco the Dolphin and its sequel, Ecco: The Tides of Time, are being remastered for release on modern platforms. The remasters were announced by original series creator Ed Annuziata in an interview on Xbox Wire. The announcement was made as part of an effort by Xbox to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander heritage this month.
“Me and the entire original team are going to Remaster the original Ecco the Dolphin and Tides of Time games,” said Annuziata in the interview when asked about the future of Ecco the Dolphin. “Then we will make a new, third game with contemporary play and GPU sensibilities.”
Back when it first came out all the way back in 1992, Ecco the Dolphin was praised not only for its fun gameplay and impressive art, but also for raising awareness for environmental issues affecting various oceans around the world. In the interview, Annuziata also spoke about first making the games, and how his career evolved from there.
“Long ago, back in the 8-bit days, I used to make educational games for the Apple II,” he explained. “I knew even then the potential of games to enlighten. I made a bunch of games in 6502 Assembler, or my favorite, Machine Language.”
“Once I started learning about whales (and making games about them), I became obsessed with the subject matter,” he said about finally getting to work on Ecco the Dolphin after working on TV series Voyage of the Mimi.
Ultimately, his research on sea life is what ultimately got him into developing games based on everything he had learned from books like Hank Searls’ The Sounding.
“My heart was always in video games, even though I made learning games for a living at the time,” he said. “I started to dream about a game where you experience life as a dolphin. I chose a dolphin because I figured it’s as close to a person as all the whales. But when I considered the actual play mechanics, I had to prototype it.”
In talking about the impact that video games can have when it comes to raising awareness about environmental issues that affect everyone, he credits the gaming audience as being uniquely engaged with the medium they partake in. “Like the ocean, a gaming community is an ecosystem – games like Ecco can and should be a conduit to join these realms,” he said.
“A big part of the game is understanding the ocean as a singular biological system that is made up of systems that interact with each other. This is a complex biological dance that humans can be a part of.”
While Annuziata has confirmed that work will begin on a third game in the Ecco franchise after the remasters are out, no further details have been confirmed. Interestingly, the official website for Ecco the Dolphin has a timer ticking down from, at the time of publishing, 8,500 hours, which would roughly amount to a full year. We will likely see trailers and more marketing materials closer to the remasters’ release.
