Ecco Jr is a spin-off of Ecco the Dolphin, having come out after the second game and using same engine. A spin-off for kids. The kind where you can't get damaged. It came out under “Sega Club” brand that Sega briefly used for kids games. Even had Parents and Kids sections in US manual, with “color this page” in the latter. It's not edutainment however. It has both but separately. It actually makes sense that they would release a game like this seeing how people expected a relaxing game when buying the original Ecco only to be greeted by a dark difficult game. It was made by Novotrade and published by Sega. Released only in North America. And Australia. Maybe some other regions in non-standard ways. 8 Megabit of ROM. And 3-letter passwords.
There also was Ecco Jr for Sega Pico, their weird toy hardware, of course it's very different, more of edutainment.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version. Revision 00. Less glitchy, earlier Dolphin facts.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "eccojr.smd".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "EJ_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf".
Ecco is a kid, not a squid though but a bottlenosed dolphin, and he, with his friends, is out to have fun and find the Big Blue. And his friends are Kitnee that is a smaller darker doolphin and Tara the baby orca. You get to select which one you want at the start and anytime you press pause. There is no gameplay difference between them at all. But at least some people made use of these art assets for main Ecco games mods, yep.
But before that he has to pass through many levels with certain tasks so the crystal gates will let him through. Yep, there is not much to say about core gameplay. You swim freely underwater all around and round in small mazes, almost. Back in good old childhood time, Ecco needed no air and all the sharks were domesticated. So there is no way to lose which moves the game from just kids to toddler level appeal. The tasks are simple and presented as icons on the top of the screen, you just have to find and shoot sonar at objects almost every time. The only difference would be tag games with dolphins and sometimes you have to bring objects somewhere else. There is no way to make a bad decision either, you don't have to think much. And you don't have to spend time searching either for with a press of A or B button you can shoot out a sonar wave. Unlike main games where it gives you a map, here it behaves somewhat more realistically as it will come back from a direction of a task with a pitch of a sound showing how close you are. Can't use it to talk with other creatures however. There is no charge/dash but you keep ability to speed up with C button.
Protip: You can grab babies with your mouth by pressing A or B nearby.
So yea. Just do few simple tasks. Kill your time. At least there is some maze navigation otherwise there is nothing of interest for non-kids or non-toddlers.
Now here is a cool thing. If you press A, B and C buttons at the same time and hold them at title screen, you will access Parent's Options. Here you can access Facts About Dolphin. It's pretty much a selection of random facts on this subjects, first you get a question then more info on selected topic. Just text. That edutainment part of the game for you, no math or spellchecking. Frankly, it's an old game so info is likely to be outdated, I haven't fact-checked it.
You also get other options. You can turn off the music. You can turn on autosonar in which game will make Ecco spam it non-stop. And you get to select difficulty which impacts how many levels you have to get through before reaching the final. On Easy it's 11, on Normal it's 19, on Hard it's 27. No ending difference depending on difficulty, nope. On theory you should go to Hard but the game is quite repetitive past Normal. You can also jump to any level you want but after beating it you will go back to options.
By the way, the passwords that you get don't keep the difficulty so you want to switch it in Parent's Options if you decide to continue with password.
Fun fact: There are two levels that use the same password. Quite silly, eh? Password will put you into earlier level, if you wonder.
Oh, and there is a Mode in Options. Normal is the main task-based one. Exploratory however just allows you to explore all the levels with nothing to do. It actually puts all level together into four big ones, you go between them by swimming toward levels sides. Curiously, the second one is small and is based off hidden unfinished Volcano Bay level. But eh.
There are graphics and music and what not. The game uses main Ecco games engine so it doesn't feel cheap. But despite having same ROM size as the first Ecco the graphics appear somewhat worse. Worse use of “dithering” and background appear to have more obviously repeated tiles. The title screen is simply awful. But at least they have kept the underwater nature of Ecco games instead of making it too childlike, it still appears to be rather realistic and dangerously wonderous. Music is main reason why I've at least enjoyed beating the game and is much better than this game deserves. It's more upbeat but there are few mysterious pieces.
If only this stupid happy yappy basic jingle for completing level wasn't so UGH.
But eh, there is no value for average Steam gamer. I mean, maybe you are some Sega geek that wants to give some Sega game fit for your toddler and not some pretty interactive iOS or Android game with educative material. But I would rather just slam Sonic against their faces if we are going down this path. Then again, it does increase their chances to grow up to be furry by 50% so maybe not.
