VG Thought

The Marble Sea

Neat current challenge where you have to break chains as you go down. A glyph that says ACCESS GRANTED. An invincibility/free air powerup in a statue!

The Library

Some neat backstory. An interesting block pushing challenge that highlights how hard it is to lift blocks up. You can also use a charge attack to push a block up a hill. A cheap crusher section.

Deep City

This level begins in an area with currents to swim against, a glyph that gives you invincibility, and a statue that shakes when you sonar it. I spent a few days trying to figure out what to do here.

The solution is to make that impossible-looking jump over the ruins.

I even jumped up above the ruin wall once, but Ecco bonked his nose and went back to the beginning area. This took more effort than I thought was reasonable, so I figured the game had been designed so that Ecco would always fail to make the jump. But that isn't the case: it just has to be a clean jump in order for Ecco to cross to the rest of the level.

After that, there's some more current stuff, a lock glyph that must be a pretty sweet checkpoint in the Sega CD version, and some open rooms with chasing puffer fish that are annoying. Nothing crazy, and my experience was more defined by the puzzling opening segment than anything else. But remember, you'll have to do that nutso jump every time you die.

You'll also have to do that jump again if a current glitches you into an impossible-to-escape corner.

After you make the jump at the beginning, there's also a gray chain you can break with a block. There's nothing beyond it, so it's pointless.

City of Forever

This level opens with some more way high jumps! At the end, you jump down a million feet and then swim your way back up. There's some current challenges along the way, including one where you have to charge a block across a wide gap. At the end of it all is a time machine that you use sonar to activate.

Jurassic Beach

If you collect the stars from an enemy, they won't respawn ever. The thing is, I don't know what determines when you collect those stars. It's not like you have to swim into them, because they'll lock onto you if you can collect them.

Anyway,... there's not much to say here. A glyph gives you the power to summon a pterodactyl with sonar. Once you do, you can hitch a ride on the pterodactyl to travel to unreachable parts of the level.

Pteradon Pond

You can swim through the holes in the ground if bubbles come out of them.

I think the game is settling into a pattern. Glyphs, currents, glyphs, currents. And the occasional pterodactyl because we're in the Jurassic.

One glyph is half-obscured by the floor. I found it by using the map!

Another glyph both gives you the key and gives you the invincibility spell.

Near the end, there's one current that pushes you up through a long corridor into air. To swim down again, I had to do some flip trick--it seemed like I could only fight the current if I started by flipping Ecco from facing up to down.

And just a bit further, there's a current you can't swim through. You have to swim through a passage that looks like solid wall. This is right after talking to the glyph that asks why you're underwater if you breathe air. Good question!

Origin Beach

There's some neat setups with currents versus enemies. I still don't know how to consistently collect enemy glitter, so sometimes I had to account for swimming past enemies to fight currents. If Ecco kills an enemy, it'll halt him, and the current will push him back.

This level was smaller than the past few, but it still had a glyph to unlock.

Trilobite Circle

This level really is a circle. If you go to the end, there's a fork where a current will push you back to the beginning of the stage. Luckily, it's not very long, with only one lock glyph.

To get to the key glyph, you have to kill a seahorse miniboss. If you can kill the seahorse without getting hit and without using the death sonar, I'll eat my hat.

It's a short enough level that the unique ideas (looping back around, seahorse miniboss) stand out. But most of the challenge does come from familiar elements, and I definitely died to the annoying chasing enemies.

It's worth noting that the lock glyph respawns, but the seahorse does not. So, you can always just grab the key again. The key also has an invincibility spell.

Dark Water

This level has crushers, lock glyphs, and a seahorse. The first lock and seahorse can be skipped by fighting a current.

There's a boss fight with the Asterite. I was stuck here for a week before I decided to look it up. Turns out you have to hit four balls of the same color. This would be hard enough to figure out without Ecco's breath limit and the Asterite's lightning attack. I don't regret looking it up.

Deep Water

Did this level change at all?

You always collect enemy glitter if you mash the attack button after killing an enemy.