Exclusive preview of Ecco 2 by 576 KByte
Some of our readers likely remember the era when the magazines used to be the main source of information on games as well as what was happening in computer world in general. Every country seems to have had one and for Hungary 576 KByte was certainly among the main ones. Originating all the way back from 1990, the name being a play on how much memory Commodore 64 and Amiga had, they would cover the latest in games and console market.
Being a Hungarian company, it would only make sense how eventually Martin, who was doing reviews for them, as well as hosting a short lived TV show of SzEGAsztok, would come to the office where Novotrade were busy working on Tides of Time, having a chance to get an exclusive preview of things to come. Apparently, some of the team he also knew quite well!
What we have for you right here is a translation of the original article from a July 1994 issue of the magazine where Martin lets us know of the things to come, clearly blown away by the fact such a beautiful game was developed right there in Buda.
Happy reading!
Happy new year!
Just a small update to the website for now: you know how the official Ecco the Dolphin website has music remixes by the original composers but currently no convenient way to listen to it.
There is now a small page on Ecco Online that aims to fix that until they do.
You can find the new tunes in the Official Remasters section.
Updates for forum and website
Happy Christmas everyone!
I have realized the old version of the website isn't terribly user friendly for browsing the contents, so as a temporary compromise I have put right under the main banners the main sections of interest of the website.
To see all of the available sections of the website Navigation for now remains the best choice until I come up with a better solution.
Forums are also seeing new topics which goes in line with what I was planning when I said information is going to be more structured and accessible. I will be posting new content to forum first as this is much quicker and gives me the opportunity to receive instant feedback. Once matured, materials there are then going to find their way to the main website.
Forums are open
Message boards have always been a crucial part of the Ecco community. It was there where most, if not all of the fan engagement would take place, where stories and art was shared, friendship was born and amazing projects were posted to. It was very sad to see them slowly fade away over the years in favour of social media, especially given that when some forums, such as Dark Sea closed, we also lost some of the very vital contribution to fan games and reverse engineering efforts by all sorts of talented people.
To me the Ecco community has always been about preserving what we cherish the most about the franchise and whilst the official materials would survive through the ages, what about the community content? Call me old fashioned if you will, but I think message boards are most suited just for this since it makes information accessible, easy to index and search and there is no danger it would float away on you. The fact that even Discord now offers a crude substitute for message boards is a clear indication there is still a demand for this.
Therefore I welcome you on our new and improved Ecco Online Message Board and I sincerely hope you will enjoy your stay here!
Under New Management
As you may have already read about it on our Twitter, Jonny has stepped down from managing the website. In early 2025, due to the circumstances beyond our control, the website had to move to a different domain that you are looking at now. The old domain has now unfortunately been lost to cyber squatters.
As the technical project of converting the website to a new design was never finished and source files for that have been lost, a decision was made to revert back to the original look and feel. This way all of the original content by the wonderful Ecco fans on this website is once again available. You are welcome to browse the Navigation section to discover more! To the best of our knowledge all the links should be operational, but please do get in touch should you spot any inconsistencies that we may have missed.
The incomplete new version of the website has now been archived and is still available for historical purposes under https://legacy.ecco-online.net/.
I sincerely apologize for not having posted this here earlier and all of the confusion this may have caused. Stay tuned for more updates on the website!
Happy Two Year Anniversary Ecco Online!
November 10th was the two year anniversary of Ecco the Dolphin Online. Two years ago today I had no idea what I was doing as I stumbled back into a scene I had abandoned more than a decade prior. My return had a grander purpose besides starting a new community: I wanted to reverse engineer the games and build a new game engine.
In two years time I have exceeded my expectations, we now have the largest collection of sprites and level maps from the Ecco the Dolphin series. We also have an awesome animated text generator that can produce GIFs that look exactly as the messages do in the game. We have our own state of the art password generators for both Ecco 1 and 2! So what’s next? Let’s go over some of our (or my own) ongoing projects.
The Ecco Password Generators can generate and decode passwords from all of the 16-bit Ecco the Dolphin games.
Project Enigma Machine:
The Ecco Password Generators
98% Complete
Project Enigma Machine’s goal was to reverse engineer the 16-bit Ecco Password formats and produce a tool that can both generate and decode passwords. This is similar to what Alan Turing had done in the 1940s to break the Enigma Machine code that helped the allied forces win World War 2. All that is left with this project is general code cleanup and reorganization. It will be ready for open source release soon.
Project Death Star:
The Ecco Text Generator
95% Complete
Project Death Star was our initial tool that was created to make our community stand out from other communities in gaming. It’s an animated Ecco Text Generator that uses the ripple generating algorithm from the games to produce animated GIFs.
The project is currently incomplete due to lack of support for Japanese characters. In addition I want to rebuilt parts of it from the ground up and add another file format superior to GIF (which currently produces large file sizes, something that is not ideal for web based platforms).
Project Black Omen:
A Graphical Extraction Tool for the 16-bit Ecco Series
60% Complete
Project Black Omen is the crown jewel of my work, it’s a tool that can extract graphical assets from all of the 16-bit Ecco the Dolphin games. This includes sprites, tiles, blocks, and the ability to generate level maps. It’s a very sophisticated tool that was used to dump all the graphical assets found on our website. My goal is to build a cross platform tool that will allow users to dump their own graphics. I want it to be simple, yet powerful.
In order to complete it I would need to do a lot of code cleanup. Some parts of it need to be redone and it needs an interface so people can actually use it. Currently it’s only a library that has to be tweaked manually in order to produce anything.
Project Blue Dream:
A Future Ecco the Dolphin Fan Game
1% Complete
Blue Dream is a game engine that will be built using ideas that went into creating the original Ecco games. It’s a 2D game engine that will require the Ecco games own graphical assets in order to complete. From there it could become anything but until Project Black Omen is complete Blue Dream cannot be realized as the two projects go hand in hand. Ultimately Blue Dream will be a future fan made Ecco the Dolphin game.
Final Word…
Overall I have a lot of ongoing projects. For a single person I have managed to get a lot done and will continue to do so. This year was stalled with a 6 month break that I took to focus on other things (like life). Next year I want to put all my energy into getting Blue Dream realized as well as continue to build upon Ecco Online’s overall preservation goal. With that said, I appreciate all the support everyone has given me and will need it to continue to push myself going forward!
On an important note, I rarely use the website to post important information regarding my projects or news about Ecco the Dolphin. If you would like more up to date information, follow our Twitter and Facebook pages.