De SEGA Dreamcast kon zich back in the days makkelijk meten met de PlayStation 2 van Sony, maar door marketing fouten en een eigenwijze opstelling van SEGA en piraterij werd deze console een flop. Maar leeft dankzij een grote bibliotheek nog altijd voort bij veel retro gamers (sterker een Dreamcast staat al jaren hoog op mijn verlanglijstje) en deze zullen zeer blij zijn met de prototype van Ecco II: Sentinels of the Universe die je hier kan downloaden. Gewoon even op CDR branden (of je moet een mod gebruiken en het op SD kaart zetten) in je console mikken en spelen maar. Het spel is verre van af, maar dat mag in mijn ogen de pret niet drukken.

Almost eight years ago, I acquired a large lot of prototypes and assets related to the Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future game for Dreamcast and PS2, including a Katana Dreamcast development kit. To my delight, the previous owner also had a prototype build of the cancelled Dreamcast sequel Ecco II - Sentinels of the Universe.

This game was a planned sequel to Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future for Dreamcast that got canceled around the time SEGA announced that they would be stopping production on the console and focus on being a third-party developer. Given the fact that the first game was later ported to the Sony Playstation 2 later the same year, it's not clear why Appaloosa decided to stop development on the sequel, rather than port it to PlayStation 2 as they did with the first game.

The previous owner had a GD-R copy of perhaps one of the last builds of the game. As you can see, the game was last built sometime during the announcement that Sega would be going third party and production of the Dreamcast would be shut down. A similar nonworking version of the game appeared many years ago on a Katana Devkit. The version that I have is one of the few extant working GD-R copies of the game that can be dumped and played on an actual console or in an emulator.

This game features a few playable levels via level select with a complete working debug mode. There is no music and sound but perhaps there are leftovers on the disc. Keep in mind, development on the game had only just begun before it was canceled, so this might be perhaps all there is in terms of playable builds.