Summary
Do The Right Thing And Put It In The Bin
The Good
Adam Greene is a teenager who has teamed up with his dad to help clean up the environment. One day, they released a dolphin who was trapped in a fishing net. It tells him to search for Cetus, the great whale king whose underwater city is in trouble.
EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus is what I call an “EcoAdventure” - it is an adventure game about ecosystems, its inhabitants, and how to overcome the hazards that threaten it. At the start of the game, you are encouraged to deal with a sea gull who has oil all over its body, and in doing so, you discover a few reasons why you are doing this, and to apply your actions when you are faced with it in real life.
And not long into the game, you find litter dumped into the ocean, as well as those found underwater. You have the option of just leaving it or placing it in your recycle bag, by the use of the game's “recycle” symbol. Not only will this give you bonus points, but you are also taught that throwing litter away may cause harm to other animals. There are some litter that may be developed into useful tools like the toilet bulb that can be found lying on the ocean floor.
The graphics are excellent, and every scene, particularly those underwater have hand-painted backgrounds with some colorful underwater scenery. It is interesting to see other fish swimming by Adam. While swimming, I felt that I was actually experiencing life underwater for the first time, not knowing what dangers are lurking ahead of me and how I could deal with these dangers. Each underwater scene is filled with wildlife, and they look excellent. The characters are well animated. Since
EcoQuest is a kids game, the icon bar at the top of the screen looks quite colorful, and each icon is animated when you click on them.
The CD-ROM version of
EcoQuest features some excellent voice acting, mostly done by people who voiced the characters in the underworld city. I like those creatures with some attitude on them, especially the “cool” creature and the seal creature that tries to look like a sailor. Most creatures will help you if you help them, and some of them are unfriendly and can try to hinder you in your progress to save the city.
The sound effects coming from certain creatures are what you expect, since the creatures make similar sounds when you are with them often enough. The game's soundtrack is excellent, and has that reggae-style to it when you play the game with the MPU-401 General MIDI turned on. The music at the end of the game is enough to make you feel good.
There are one or two puzzles in the game, but they are not really hard. They would take about five minutes or so to complete. Also, you are given a prophecy that outlines how to save the ecosystems. It is finding out what to do that is the hard bit.
The Bad
Nothing that I can recall in this game.
The Bottom Line
As I said before,
EcoQuest is an adventure game that teaches you how to look after the environment. With the help of a dolphin, you must find a way to save an underwater city from destruction, and to do this, you must search for Cetus, the great whale king, and face dangers that await you. Along the way, you find rubbish laying on the floor, and you can pick this up for points The CD-ROM version of the game is quite rare, but if you find it, you won't be disappointed as it contains excellent voice acting and ambient sound effects that are not heard in the disk version. But even if you are unable to obtain the CD-ROM version, both versions of the game feature a colorful interface and excellent hand-painted backgrounds.
