The Genesis games
- Fandom Life Cycle: While the Genesis games sold pretty well (even being included in multiple collections), the series is constantly overshadowed by other Sega franchises, most likely due to the games' infamous difficulty and out-there plots. As a result, the series is perpetually in Stage 1 or 2, with a small but passionate fandom.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Ecco: Songs of Time, the official soundtrack album for the Sega CD versions, was only released once in 1996 and never again. It's since become a highly coveted collector's item among Sega fans, with secondhand copies fetching upwards of $160.
- Kids' Meal Toy: In 1999, Jack in the Box released a set of four toys based on Sega PC games. Besides Ecco the Dolphin, which received a wind-up figure of Ecco, there were also toys based on Sonic 3D Blast (Sonic), Sonic & Knuckles Collection (Knuckles), and Bug (Bug).
- Sleeper Hit: There was no reason to believe a nature-themed dolphin game from an unknown Hungarian upstart would sell well on a console known mostly for sports and shooting games, but Ecco defied all expectations and became one of the top-selling games for the Genesis. The press theorized at the time that it successfully appealed to a female audience, who were otherwise underserved by the Genesis's catalogue.
- What Could Have Been:
- Michael Jackson (who was also working on both Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Scramble Training at the time with Sega) visited Spencer Nielsen & Ed Annunziata at Sega Technical Institute during the development of Tides of Time, and freestyled songs on the spot while Nielsen was composing the OST. Unfortunately, none of Jackson's vocals were recorded, and he would end up temporarily blackballed from Sega due to the child molestation allegations that came out not long afterwards.
- This Facebook post
from Ed Annunziata goes into detail about the games, including the planned third game, which was to have "mankind extinct, ocean silences, sea mammal metacosm (again), an earth mind arises, apocalypse, genesis, rebirth." A Twitter post further clarified the game would be about the Altantans' war with the Vortex, with Ecco going back to their time to help.
- Word of God: A short story by Ed Annunziata details Ecco's backstory. Ecco was born to Elisia and Darana and gained his star-shaped marking as scars from a shark attack when he was a calf, with his mother giving her last breath of air to save him.
- Written for My Kids: Ecco maestro Ed Annunziata has stated in interviewers that he designed Ecco Jr. with his young daughter in mind.
- Ecco was the first game developed in an ex-Eastern Bloc country to be officially released on a console (Tetris was Russian in origin, but was released within the Soviet Union's lifetime and was ported to consoles by American and Japanese teams).
Defender of the Future
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Defender's not an expensive game but unlike the Genesis games, it doesn't have the blessing of being Port Overdosed. In fact your only official options for playing the game are either the Sega Dreamcast version or the Playstation 2 version, neither of which are very common games.
- What Could Have Been: In both continuities, no less!
- There was a definite plan to close the Genesis games' storyline as a trilogy, complete with a secret password that would port your data from Tides to the third game, but it never materialized.
- Defender, too, was supposed to get a sequel, titled Sentinels of the Universe, and it's known that a Dreamcast version made it at least as far as an early alpha, but it quietly died with the system.
