History
Ecco the Dolphin
Living together with his pod in Home Bay, the place his pod swam to after Home Sea. During one calm day the Vortex abducted Ecco’s pod and the nearby coral reef life via a swift and violent waterspout. Ecco, the only singer remaining in his pod, departed Home Bay to rescue his family. An orca advised Ecco to see out the wise Big Blue, one of the oldest life forms in the sea, noting that of all the creatures in the sea it would be him that would know what had happened. Ecco met the Asterite and was sent 55 million years back in time to recover the missing globe, an object that would let the Asterite help the young dolphin further.
After returning to his own era, Ecco was granted important powers by the Asterite to allow him to combat the Vortex in battle. Sent back in time a second time, Ecco was taken to the moment the Vortex storm struck, and was taken into the Vortex spaceship with his pod. After surviving the drone assaults inside, Ecco made his way to the lair of the Vortex Queen and fought her in a climatic battle. After defeating her, the ship began to self destruct and Ecco escaped with his pod back into the ocean.
Tides of Time
The Vortex made a surreptitious return to Earth and this time sought to colonize the planet instead of simply harvest resources. The Asterite was the first target of the Vortex and the ancient being’s globes were cracked and sent all over time. Trellia, an evolved dolphin with long fins, meets Ecco and takes him to his first destination in the future sea, one of many time periods Ecco must travel through using the Time Machine in Atlantis. After being hunted down and attacked by Ecco, the Vortex Queen uses the Time Machine and is sent to the Prehistoric Era, where she finds herself unable to rule over the creatures that reside there. Faced with the need to survive, the Queen is forced to adapt to Earth’s own life-cycles, and through the eons, the Vortex are integrated into the ecosystems of Earth as arthropods.
Though the Asterite instructs the singer to destroy the Time Machine to prevent anyone from using it again, Ecco instead activated it and vanished into unknown seas. His destination was never revealed.
Sequel
Ecco’s creator, Ed Annunziata, pushed for the rights to develop another Ecco game and continue the story with a new game on either the Sega 32X or the Sega Saturn. Over the years, Sega has repeatedly turned down these requests to allow Annunziata to continue the story, despite being pitched as recently as 2013, nearly 20 years after The Tides of Time was released. Although a sequel was never developed, Ed has shared some details about what would have happened in the third game.
“Had Ecco 3 been made. Would the Vortex still be the villains of the games or would you be introducing a new villain?”
“Ecco 3 was going to be about the Atlantans war with the Vortex. At the end of Tides of Time, Ecco goes back to help.”