The Adventures of Ecco the Dolphin

Alex Kidd: In The Enchanted Castle

This game has to be a joke. There’s no way anything could be this ludicrous without design. Before you even start the game, you’ll probably get to see this… Could they possibly make the character look like any more of a dork? Maybe, if they gave him buckteeth with an overbite. I’m also having a hard time believing he has a regular humanoid ear back there if we can see that much of it.

The first thing you’ll notice about this game, (even before the bad controls) is that if you get hit once you’re dead. Not only that, but everything kills you. Even things that shouldn’t kill you kill you. Even things incapable of harming you in your wildest imagination kill you. This is paradoxical because on the other hand, Alex can punch the shit out of bricks, pottery, and even trees with his bare hands. And he can completely destroy a full-sized sedan with a single kick. But if he touches a toy airplane he‘s dead meat.

Here’s a selection of the more outlandish enemies. However, I’ll try to rationalize as many of them as possible. Technically none of these enemies even attack you. They just walk around waiting for you to touch them and die.

Prairie Dog: Well obviously these are rabid mutant prairie dogs with a thirst for blood. Clearly they aren’t normal if half of one is as tall as you are.

Porcupine: Porcupines walk up to you on their hind legs and lay down with their spines sticking up, basically hoping you’ll jump on top of them and kill yourself. They seriously won’t move from that spot until you jump over them. Apparently they have nothing else on their plate today other than doing this.

Vulture: Why would you die from touching a vulture? Everyone knows they’re cowardly scavengers. And they’re scavengers because they’re incapable of hunting.

Toy Airplane: O.K. This is a product designed for children to play with but for whatever reason you aren’t intelligent enough to not slit your throat with it… or something.

Toy Soldier: They’re small and move slow as hell but periodically stop, thereby tripping you and causing you to impale your spleen on them.

Tiny Fire: It’s a fire about the size of a light bulb that’s so charismatic that you can’t help but pick it up and burn yourself with it until you have 3rd degree burns over 80% of your body.

Turtles: This is possibly the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. When you’re swimming in the third level, sometimes turtles will just spontaneously hurl themselves spinning up at you from the bottom of the screen. Sometimes they launch clear out of the water. But that’s not even the half of it… Above the water surface are a bunch of turtles spinning around and flying, putting on an acrobatic display that makes Cirque du Soleil look like physical therapy on ice. There’s absolutely no reason or explanation for this phenomenon. Were they even thinking at all when they made this? Any three-year-old can tell you that turtles are slow and coincidentally would be the last creatures on this planet capable of flying. What the hell is they’re excuse for it?

Bee: Maybe he’s allergic.

Dung Beetle: It force-feeds you a ball of crap, making you catch hepatitis C.

Mouse: It’s carrying bubonic plague.

Old Man w/ staff: Let my people go!

Rock: Angry rock is angry.

The controls in the game suck. You can punch on command but kicking sort of just happens as you descend after a jump. Usually if you land on an enemy while kicking you can kill it but sometimes you don’t kick in time and end up dying. So basically you have to somehow coincide your randomly uncontrollable body movements with the moment of impact. Also you slide around everywhere like you’re walking on ice. Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t the character just stop moving when I stop pressing the control pad? Doesn’t that make sense? In reality I don’t wear Vasoline on the bottoms of my shoes. I don’t have to start walking backwards to keep from sliding past where I want to stop.

Within the levels there are “stores” you can walk into where there’s only ever one item for sale at a time. Instead of just handing money to the blue shirtless cueball store clerk to purchase the item, he makes you *bet* the money and then play him at rock, paper, scissors. If you lose the game, you lose the bet money and you don’t get the item, and you get a weight dropped on your head. If you win, you still lose the money, but you get the item and the store owner gets a weight dropped on *his* head. Now does that make any sense to you? Imagine if you went into Best Buy to get a laptop. As you check out, you pay full price for the laptop and then get challenged by an employee to rock, paper, scissors. You lose, the store keeps your money and the laptop. Does that sound like a good business model? Would you ever shop at Best Buy again? No you wouldn‘t. It’s a completely idiotic idea. And what's with the weight? Is it not bad enough that he already stole my fucking money?

The items you get from the store typically aren’t worth a damn. You can get several different things that “help” you and you can hold more than one of each. There are a few vehicles that you can ride like a self-powered helicopter that disappears for no reason when you touch something, and a motorcycle that also disappears for no reason when you touch something. On any given level that gives you roughly three seconds of ride time. What the hell’s the fricking point?!

There are a few bosses in the game. You don’t really fight them though, you have to beat them at rock, paper, scissors (go figure.) Well that sort of makes sense when you first hear it since your character is a worthless pile of chicken shit, incapable of touching everyday objects without expiring. Well that begs the question, how has he even survived for this long? Anyway, at the end of some levels there are bosses. You have to beat them at RPS or you die and have to do the level again. And then the shocking realization hit’s that beating the game is dependant to a large extent on chance. You could play the game perfectly and still lose because of a random number generator. When you lose to a boss they say something like “I can not be beat” or “you need more practice.” You need more practice?! It’s rock, paper, scissors for God’s sake! You can’t practice it any more than you can practice only hearing your favorite songs on the radio. This game scoffs at your childish notions of logic and sensibility.

The last level of the game is of course the Enchanted Castle. Actually it’s not so much enchanted as it is long and annoying. It’s like 20 times longer than any of the previous levels. It takes forever and gets boring really fast, especially with the droning music. Once you beat the boss at the end you find out that nothing was wrong in the first place and you just risked your life for absolutely no reason. Isn’t that special?