Soundtrack Saturday: Ecco the Dolphin

In this weekly feature, I recommend game soundtracks. I share a few of my favorite tracks, talk about why everyone should listen to the soundtrack, and (usually) a little bit about the composer. This week's choice is Ecco the Dolphin & Ecco: The Tides of Time.

IT'S COMPLICATED...

This entry is going to be a little different from previous Soundtrack Saturday installments because there are, in fact, four different soundtracks I will be discussing. There are five games in the Ecco series, but I will be focusing on just two of them. They had releases on both the Sega Genesis (also called Mega Drive) and the Sega Game Gear, and thus had different soundtracks due to the audio capability differences between the console and the handheld. The Genesis was 16-bit while the Game Gear was 8-bit. That's right, folks -- I'm about to drop some 8-bit music on your ears!

THE SERIES STATS

Name: Ecco the Dolphin
Creator: Ed Annunziata
Developer: Novotrade International
Publisher: Sega
Genres: Action-adventure

MY FAVORITE TRACKS

These are listed by order of my overall preference of soundtrack, then by favorite track.
(The titles link to YouTube videos... and I highly recommend some good headphones to best enjoy all of the subtle elements of the music!)

ECCO THE DOLPHIN (GAME GEAR)

Release date: 1993
Composer(s): Csaba Gigor, Gabor Foltan

Deep Water - The harmonies! It's epic and percussive!
Medusa Bay - Mysterious, then frantic! Panic!
The Ocean - Lilting and pirate-y?
Time Travel - I replayed parts of the game to death just to hear this.
Credits - Nice closure, classical-sounding, shows off more composition skill than some of the other tracks -- a reward in itself for finishing the game!

Click here for the full playlist.

ECCO: THE TIDES OF TIME (GENESIS)

Release date: 1994
Composer(s): Attila Dobos, Andras Magyari, Andy Armer

Title Theme - This is my all-time favorite track from all of the games.
Two Tides - This is my 2nd favorite. Transistor vibes, anyone?
Crystal Springs - Moving and fun... with a sense of danger?
Tube of Medusa - This is the most popular track/level of the game.
Fault Zone - This was a level I hated. Bad memories, man.

Click here for the full playlist.
...and click here for an awesome, faithful-to-the original cover of Tube of Medusa! (No, really. It's great. I promise.)

ECCO: THE TIDES OF TIME (GAME GEAR)

Release date: 1994
Composer(s): Csaba Gigor, Gabor Foltan, Laszlo Fazekas

Vents of Medusa - There's a repeated theme here that ends up elsewhere.
Vortex Future - I didn't like this track when I played the game, but I rather like it now. It's a percussive and melodic piece that would be amazing with today's gaming audio range.
Title Theme - This is nothing like the title theme from the Genesis version of the game, but I share it because it sets a good tone for the dire story of the game.

Click here for the full playlist.

ECCO THE DOLPHIN (GENESIS)

Release date: 1992
Composer(s): Spencer Nilsen, Brian Coburn, Andras Magyari

I don't actually recommend this soundtrack at all -- it's grating to listen to compared to the other three, even if it is on the Genesis. But if you want to listen for yourself, you can click here for the full playlist.

WHY I RECOMMEND THEM

If you are a child of the 80's or 90's, there's a good chance you enjoy a well-composed track from classic consoles and handhelds. And being the millennials that we are, we can compare these tracks to today's game music and find them downright impressive because of the level of technology the game developers had to work with. You probably won't listen to these tracks as part of any regular playlist, or in the car, or share them with your friends. They're mainly a great dose of nostalgia for those of us who remember when the Genesis and Game Gear first debuted, fighting to compete with Nintendo as a household staple of entertainment.

THE OTHER GAMES IN THE SERIES

Normally this is the place where I talk about composers, but there are a lot of names listed above and, well... [insert "Ain't nobody got time for that!" meme here]. So instead of gushing about how awesome people are, I thought I'd talk about the series itself.

In 1995, two more titles were released, but not a continuation of the story from the first two games. As it is, the Game Gear version of Tides of Time was heavily edited and shortened compared to the Genesis version because of the handheld's limitations. I don't know if this contributed to the decision not to pursue a third installment. The two titles they did release were Ecco Jr. and Ecco Jr. and the Great Ocean Treasure Hunt, both of them "edutainment" games. The first released on the Genesis, but the second released on the Sega Pico (which I only learned about when researching for this blog entry, probably because it was marketed for kids ages 3-7 and at the time I was almost 11).

The last title in the series was originally released in 2000 for the Sega Dreamcast. When the Dreamcast was discontinued in the US, the game was re-released in 2002 for the Playstation 2. This game was Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, and it has its own stand-alone universe and story, separate from the original games. I have it, and tried to play it when I was in my mid-20's to relive my enjoyment of the Ecco games from my childhood. Sadly, the controls were poor and the story is... pretty terrible. Your best bet for enjoying an Ecco game these days is to pick up the Genesis versions available as part of the Sega Mega Drive collection on PC. Plug in a controller and go save your pod!