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Habitual readers of the Game Boy Player Land blog are well aware of my affiliation with
http://www.racketboy.com and the Together Retro game club. July's game was
Ecco The Dolphin, a game I had never played until now. Though I had a Genesis at the time of its release, I remember thinking that it was a kids' game. And to be honest, I had never really thought about the game since. So when the game was announced for the game club, I looked forward to it. The concept of exploring the vast oceans in a game that was known more for puzzle-solving than violence seemed like a wonderful change of pace to me. How naive I was.
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/BzJXZ.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/s2OMT.jpg[/img]
When I first fired up the game courtesy of the
Sega Smash Pack available on the GBA, I found myself in the kind of open-water level that I imagined. The music was ambient, and although slightly creepy it was indeed relaxing. I was amazed at the wonderful graphics. My understanding is that the GBA port is based a bit more on the Sega CD version than the Genesis version, which was apparently a bit easier. However, the GBA version has a few less levels than the Sega CD version, so it's not a straight up port either.
I breezed through the first level without much problem, and felt like I was really going to enjoy the game for the month. But here's my actual notes that I kept while playing the game since it utilized a password feature rather than any battery saves:
Ecco The Dolphin
KRMCSRDK - Undercaves - 7/1
YJ.TFNFF - The Vents - 7/10
N-VSZKKY - The Lagoon - 7/11And that's it. Perhaps you're wondering what happened to my momentum? Well, let me try to recap. I spent about a week in the stupid Undercaves. As it turns out, this game is horribly hard. And I'm not the type to shy away from a hard game. I mean, I can get knocked around in
Ghosts N Goblins and actually have a good time. No big deal. But
this game is just a total jerk. Apparently
everything hurts dolphins! And if you try to swim away from whatever hit you, it will hit you three more times as you clumsily try to get away.
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To be honest, I would have just left Ecco in the Undercaves to rot if it wasn't for the fact that I really wanted to see the Octopus for myself. So I stuck with it, and made it past the Octopus. And then for a glorious two-days I made some progress. And then I just plain stopped playing. I just couldn't face the game anymore. It just stopped feeling fun to me, and there were so many more levels ahead. I wanted to stick with it, because I've always
really tried to do my best with the Together Retro games. But playing
Ecco just felt like I was being punished.
I will however end on by saying something positive about the game: it features some of the most beautiful 16-bit graphics you'll ever see. For instance, this has been my desktop wallpaper all month...
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