About the same time as rumors were flying about Ecco the Dolphin 32X (around the 1994 CES show), SEGA reported that an Ecco the Dolphin title for the Saturn was in the works. A video seems to have been released to the media to promote it, and screenshots from it found their way to various magazines. Here are two of them found in a magazine article (thanks to Silverfin for the scans):

Click the images above to see the full-sized versions.

Blurry and hard to tell what’s really going on, but I have been able to make some sense of them. They
bear startling resemblance to the pre-rendered CGI videos included on Ecco the Dolphin CD and Ecco 2: Tides of Time CD, but don’t seem to be rendered in the same quality. In fact, these images could simply not have been rendered on a Sega Saturn. Here is why:

• Dolphin Model Polycount: Look at the smoothness of the models. There are almost no rough edges– this shows the polygon count is very high for each model. The Saturn had very limited 3D capability. In real world game situations, its theoretical maximum number of polygons in a scene is not realistically attainable with a smooth framerate. Given the number of dolphins in the scene, this is far too much for the Saturn to effectively draw at more than the pace of a slideshow.
• Sprites: On top of all the high-polycount models, large sprites for plants and parts of the background are evident, including a whole forest of ‘em off in the distance. This is even more for the Saturn to struggle with, if the dolphins weren’t enough.
• Real-Time Lighting: The models and their surroundings are lit up properly, with a defined light source. Real-time light-mapping is far out outside the scope of the Saturn’s hardware capabilities, while maintaining a playable framerate, especially coupled with the very large number of faces which must be lit in this scene.
• Heavy Draw Distance: It’s difficult to tell from the images, but if the backdrop is part of the 3D scene rather than a static image, the Saturn is drawing what looks like a quarter-mile into the distance! This would be effectively impossible to achieve, especially in light of the aforementioned high polygon counts and realtime lighting in use, on the Saturn hardware.

So, there you go. Despite being a powerful little system, the Saturn isn’t realistically capable of rendering the images shown above at a decent framerate. It also takes quite a bit of clever programming to get decent performance out of the system due to the outlandish number of individual processors and how memory is managed between them. Quite convinced, but wondering just what the story was behind the alleged Ecco Saturn title, I decided to get some real answers.

The Truth about Ecco for Saturn

To find out once and for all if this game ever existed in any playable form, I contacted Ecco’s creator and producer of the Genesis/MD Ecco titles, Ed Annunziata.

He informed me that no Ecco title for 32x or Saturn had ever begun development. He went on to say that the videos “were used to ’sell’ the idea of a 32x/Saturn game to Sega”, and that the videos (and screenshots from them) were the basis for the CG videos used in Ecco I/II CD. After the poor sales of the 32x and Saturn, they decided not to make either.

So, there you have it, the true story behind the planned 32x/Saturn Ecco titles. A big thanks to Ed Annunziata!