A year or two down the line now, this stalwart from the 16-bit days has once again resurfaced - this time on the Playstation 2 - in a port of the aforementioned Dreamcast title, which was generally well received at the time. Can he make a big splash on the new machine now, though?

You may be smelling a pungent fishy odour around about now - and I'll bet you're thinking it's the aroma of yet another 3D adventure aimed at the younger, mainstream audience. No... that's not it, you just need to take the rubbish out. Ecco may indeed initially come across as a simple, gentle, cute-looking article of the find-these-and-beat-the-boss variety ... but there's a bit more to it than meets the eye.

For a start - you're a dolphin of course... and the Appaloosa development team have spared no pains to stick with all that this would entail. So, graceful turns and dives replace the platform-hopping, and your starry-nosed alter-ego comes complete with numerous tricks with which to while away the lazy submarine day (no Tony Hawk-style point scoring mode, though. Boo!) What with being a mammal and all, returning to the surface every now and again is a good alternative to drowning - and any damage you might incur from say, sharks or jellyfish - can be soothed away with a snack from a nearby school of fish. Communication with your aquatic neighbours is via sonar... and well, to cut a long story short - even as a dolphin simulator this wouldn't be too far off the mark. Learning to manage all this can be a little tricky at first, but thanks to a reasonable control scheme, it soon becomes second nature.

Similarly, your environment is definitely out of the ordinary for the genre: a fully realized under-sea world which seems quite in keeping with all the relevant laws of marine physics. It's in this that Ecco truly shines - the sheer beauty and attention to detail in these seascapes are surely some of the finest graphic work yet seen on the PS2. Words can't properly convey the interplay of light through dappled waters, of shadow in the murky depths - the colourful profusion of fish, coral and other such flora and fauna. It's all... just great. Sort of thing that starts heated discussions about videogame-as-artform, etc. Funnily enough though, it's not a whole lot different from the Dreamcast version - certainly, there are a number of light-sourcing, animation and framerate improvements that without doubt put this new version ahead - but it's not the great leap forward that you might have expected.