Ecco

Anyone familiar with the gaming industry can tell you – if there’s one thing the current, possibly-maybe-winding-down-soon console generation is lacking, it’s aquatic adventure titles starring time-traveling dolphins. That’s an oversight Ecco the Dolphin creator Ed Annunziata intends to correct.

Annunziata took to Twitter last month to announce his meeting with Sega, who published the original Ecco the Dolphin title for the Sega Genesis and its sequels Ecco: The Tides of Time, Ecco Jr. and Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (released on the Genesis/Sega CD,  Genesis and Sega Dreamcast, respectively). The meeting increases the chances of a new Ecco title “x100,” the creator says:

Twitter

Whether this will actually lead to a new Ecco title is anyone’s guess, and due to heavy cutbacks at Sega recently, it’s a safe bet that if a new dolphin adventure does see the light of day, it will release as a digital title.

Released in 1993, the original Ecco the Dolphin centered around (surprise) a dolphin named Ecco, who sets out on a quest to find the marine life in his home bay, including his podmates, after a mysterious storm. Using sonar to search areas and battling enemies using a ramming ability, Ecco’s adventure involves (but is not limited to) time travel by way of an ancient Atlantean time machine. As noted above, the game spawned three sequels during Sega’s console heyday, all of which featured similar premises and gameplay. The original title is available on XBLA for 400 MSP.