And, of course, the developers must have thought they were developing a PS2 game or something, because the game uses a wide variety of polygonal hit-boxes and detection boxes, and terrain collision is achieved by a bunch of invisible collision polygons that vaguely conform to where it looks like walls/floors/ceilings are supposed to be. On top of all this, the game tracks position to the 65536th of each pixel, which combines with the eight-frame steering rule to snowball tiny variations in position and timing into gigantic differences in result. Additionally, the way acceleration works is obscure, requiring a repeated pattern holding the button for 11 frames, than releasing for 1, the fastest way to get to top speed from a dead stop is to accelerate for 5 frames, charge, immediately cancel the charge, and then charge again eight-frames later when the cool-down wears off (maintaining the optimal acceleration input all the while). Otherwise it takes 30 frames without any form of acceleration before Ecco begins to lose speed, and even then does so at a maddeningly slow rate. At top speed, Ecco swims just under 40% faster than Super Sonic can run, but has an eight-frame rule on steering (except orthogonal flips), and no way to slow down, except for orthogonal flips, which take too long, or crashing into walls, which slow Ecco too much. It is also highly resistant to speed-running. Some tracks are slightly different in the NTSC version, most notably Fault Zone and Fin to Feather.Ecco: The Tides of Time is the sequel to Ecco the Dolphin, and has been one of my favorite games for a long, long time. Track titles and order are based on the VGM packs from Project2612 and Zophar's Domain.

All tracks were recorded from within the game by using the sound test available in the debug menu. All tracks were recorded at 96 KHz 24-bit using a Sound BlasterX G5 sound card and the stereo headphones jack located at the front of the Mega Drive.

This soundtrack was recorded from a real SEGA Mega Drive (PAL, Model 1, VA4) using a Mega Everdrive X3 cartridge. Music Composer: Andy Armer, Attila Dobos, David Javelosa, András Magyari Title: Ecco: The Tides of Time / Ecco: Les Marées du Temps

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