Ecco: The Tides of Time

About Ecco: The Tides of Time

Ecco: The Tides of Time (1994) is Novotrade's sequel in which Ecco the dolphin travels to a future of flying dolphins and fights the returning Vortex Queen, gaining the power to transform into other creatures.

Ecco: The Tides of Time in Depth

After saving his pod and the Earth from the Vortex aliens, Ecco is exploring a cave when an earthquake triggers an avalanche, and he finds the Asterite's powers have left him, along with his freedom from needing air. Something has killed the Asterite and is spreading fear through the ocean. Ecco meets Trellia, a long-finned descendant who takes him to a future where the ocean has its own mind, linked by waterways through the sky, and dolphins fly using helium sacs and telekinesis. There the future Asterite explains that the Vortex Queen survived, followed Ecco to Earth and killed the Asterite of his time, and that his trip in the Atlantean Time Machine split time in two: one future of flying dolphins, the other a dead, mechanical world drained by the Vortex.

Play is much as before: Ecco rams enemies at speed, uses sonar to talk to other cetaceans, activate crystal Glyphs and map his surroundings, combines charge and sonar for ranged attacks, and must surface for air. New puzzles include following dolphins through a maze and hunting for the Asterite's missing globes. The Pulsar power-up fires multi-directional sonar for a stage, and the Metasphere transforms Ecco into level-specific animals such as a seagull, jellyfish, shark, school of fish or Vortex drone. Some stages use a pseudo-3D effect in which Ecco swims through moving rings while dodging or attacking enemies.

Making Ecco: The Tides of Time

Novotrade International developed it and Sega published it in 1994 as the second Ecco game, continuing the original's story with similar play and new additions. GamePro said it kept the best points of the first game, its concept and lifelike animation, praised Ecco's new transformations and called the audio "simple, soothing and effective", recommending it as an improvement. Electronic Gaming Monthly also called it an improvement and applauded its remarkably colourful graphics, and Next Generation gave it three stars, citing its "taxing puzzles, RPG elements, shooting stages, and some of the best Genesis graphics to date".