Ecco the Dolphin

Ecco the Dolphin was a game nobody expected and nobody has ever replicated. An underwater adventure where a dolphin used sonar to communicate and solve environmental puzzles, with a plot escalating from ocean protection to alien invasion in a surreal crescendo. Underwater graphics were hypnotic — currents, bioluminescent jellyfish, dark abysses — and difficulty was brutal. Kids attracted by the cute cover dolphin discovered a near-horror game, with underwater levels where oxygen ran out and abyssal creatures attacked from darkness. Ed Annunziata created something genuinely unique: a game resembling nothing else.