Title: Ecco: The Tides of Time（「エコー・ザ・ドルフィン2『時間の潮流』」）
Media: Cartridge
System: Master System
Catalogue: 028630
Released: 1996
Region: NTSC
Scans: Cover | Cartridge | Manual Sample | Manual [PDF]
Information:
The Master System release of Ecco 2 is an interesting one. Made by TecToy, a company that is still active to this day and even still produces Master System and Mega Drive hardware in the Brazillian market, it technically is an official release as they are SEGA's official distributor for that region. What makes it a real oddity however is that the game is just a port of the Game Gear release made to operate on the Master System archetecture. Being a port of a Game Gear game however does mean that it comes with complications such as the health and air bars being almost in the middle of the screen as the HUD was never adjusted for a larger resolution, and there were even numerous issues with the translation which caused confusion as to how to progress.
Despite that, it is a unique release that can be hard to track down for a sane price these days. I was quite surprised to end up getting a copy of this locally—sometimes thats just how the cards align!
There is a fantastic Revision 1 version of this game made by the community that fixes the above issues noted for this version, both in the original Portugese and with an English patch available. You can view the Revision 1 of this release over on Ecco Online.
Additional Photos:
Coming soon!