Hacker News

Unearthing a 31 year old Easter egg in Ecco the Dolphin

29 points by bbayles ago | 8 comments

_def |next [-]

> CD check gets rid of the This program can only be run from the original CD! nag screen.

A built-in no-cd patch, neat :-)

Jzush |previous [-]

That’s super cool! I loved the original Ecco on the genesis. Beat it several times. I miss when games had real cheats/debug modes. It’s part of the reason I hot in to programming and development in the first place. I feel like kids these days don’t get this experience anymore.

bbayles |root |parent |next [-]

This sort of thing seems to have really fallen off after the Grand Theft Auto "Hot Coffee" scandal. Having hidden stuff in a game went from being a fun thing to a potential liability.

WorldMaker |root |parent [-]

I think the other big thing that killed in game cheats and debug screens was Xbox and Steam Achievements/PlayStation Trophies. Some of the "value" in such tokens of game completion are the "skill checks" it takes to complete them. If a game provides cheats inside of it, it either needs to disable those Achievement systems, or it loses the ability to unlock them, and that's platform enforced by Xbox/Steam/PlayStation. So it's easier for most games to just not include cheats so they don't have to worry about accidentally violating platform terms on Xbox/Steam/PlayStation should players discover and "abuse" the cheat systems.

Similarly PC games with mod support often have to disable Achievement systems as soon as any mod is installed just in case the mod happens to offer cheats. Which also seems to have impacted mod culture to some extent with entire classes of gamers not installing mods ever to make sure that they still win Achievements.

It's an interesting social dynamic and I think one of the clearest lines in the sand for when cheat codes disappeared, especially in genres like the FPS where "God Mode" and "noclip" codes were genre staples until Achievements. (Because DOOM offered them, every FPS offered them. Until they stopped.)

account42 |root |parent |next [-]

PC games don't have to do this. Steam doesn't have a policy that achievements must prevent cheating. This is entirely a developer choice.

The main reason cheats have disappeared from mainstream games is because many of them prefer to sell them to you as micro-transactions, item pack DLCs, etc.

WorldMaker |root |parent [-]

Steam has the weakest enforced terms of all the three that I mentioned, but it does have terms in its contract with developers for how Achievements are supposed to unlock.

But most "triple A" games don't just release under Steam's weaker terms, they also want Xbox and PlayStation certification, which have been strongly enforced.

Ariarule |root |parent |previous [-]

Steam Achievements are trivially to cheat at for most games, especially single-player like Ecco, for example via SAM.

7bit |root |parent |previous [-]

You beat I *several* times?

I wanted to love this game and it's beautiful animations and art styles and music. But I think I never got past the actual first level.

I remember already having a lot of trouble triggering the storm and then just got confused in the first level with the big crystals and the maze. It got me really frustrated.