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Talk:Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis)

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Ed Annunziata said that this was the answer to a question put on earlier in the game, "Why do dolphins live in the sea?". These glyphs were meant to be ancestors to Ecco, but due to time constraints, they were simply moved out of the way.

I have to disagree with this; they're not unused. Sonar will show them easily, and they're easily reached (and not stuffed offscreen or even deleted, which would've been easier). Their placement makes sense when you consider it, too; you're sonaring up and out of the water, so the beings on land hear it (hence the messages). It's a neat little nod to Ecco's changes to the stream of time, much like the Asterite's missing globe. It's cool trivia (and not worth removing, maybe just rewording) but it's far from unused/deleted. --Xk-sig.png Xkeeper (talk) 12:38, 28 June 2012 (EDT)

I can see why you think that, but something's wrong here: I can't see them with the sonar, no matter which angle I try. I even tried activating the sonar while above water, but they simply won't appear inside the sonar's sphere. (Unless you don't mean the echolocation map). And it's a bit hard to hit them anyway. If you're on the water's surface, aim up+left/right and sing, it won't reach them, you need to make a high jump and sing a bit horizontally, into the wall. I'm not too sure I want to consider them "unused" but... I don't think they were fully intended either. {EspyoT} 14:36, 28 June 2012 (EDT)

It doesn't show up in the Echolocation map, and you can still sing to the two glyphs. However I believe Ed Annunziata was going to have a bigger role for the ancestors than just being two glyphs. I think that was why he says it was unused/scrapped.

Unused tracks

Tracks 06 and 12 are both used in the Japanese version. Track 06 is used in Cold Water, and Track 12 is used in the first version of Open Ocean. --Kahran042 02:33, 23 August 2012 (EDT)

3D Ecco the Dolphin interview

An excerpt from the interview about the 3DS port, regarding regional differences:

YO: I know that when Hasegawa-san was localizing the English version into Japanese, he added some drama and flare to the Japanese translations of some of the staler in-game messages. But that’s just changing how the messages are worded, right? I had no idea that the difficulty and the way the game looks also changed during the localization work.

RH: I played a ton of games back when they first asked me to take charge of Ecco in the MegaDrive days. Despite that Ecco was a still considerably challenging game, even for me. I didn’t feel it would be appropriate to release (a Western version of) the game as-is, so I had the developer cut down the number of enemies, add in a few air points etc. You know, tweak things in here as much as I could.

Ecco’s developer was a Hungary-based company called Novotrade, and there were things that they could and couldn’t do. For example, I’d say things like, “This section is really hard, so let’s get rid of it” But they would reply, “There are internal flags that rely on it, so we can’t.” On the other hand, for the original English version, the text screens that appear when you talk to orcas and other dolphins can have limited amount of text, and they expanded that for Japanese at my request. So we were able to insert lots of hint-like features into the game text which really helped.

YO: Here are some examples of the differences between the original and the Japanese version:

  • A dolphin call will play when the SEGA logo is displayed in the Japanese version.
  • When you pause the game, the Japanese version shows PAUSE text on screen and the music stops.
  • The Japanese version has more checkpoints. In the original version, if you lose a life, you have to start back at the start of the stage. The Japanese version lets you start halfway through.
  • Places where you can lose objects you have to carry are different. In the original version, if you move the screen past an object, it will immediately return to its original position. But in the Japanese version, it won’t immediately reset even if you move away by a screen or so.

… etc, etc…

YO: So in this way, there wound up being some intricate adjustments to the game balance.

--Rabidabid (talk) 19:17, 16 February 2018 (EST)

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