Interview: Ed Annunziata

[Melf]

Genesis fans might not be able to call out Ed Annunziata’s name on cue, but they probably can’t mention some of their favorite games without mentioning one that has his stamp on it. As the major force behind such franchises as Chakan The Forever Man, Ecco the Dolphin and Kolibri, he was all over Sega’s 16-bit console. Read the full interview for all the details.

[StarMist]

What an interesting man with a clear sense of humour! -- And damn I should've known Tiny Tank was his. Congratulations on scoring the interview Melf.

[vintagegamecrazy]

Really cool little read there. Very cool guy to hear from and I look forward to another Chakan game if he can get it off the ground.

[Joe Redifer]

That was an interesting hummingbird story. It looks like the Genesis layers in that game have more than 64 colors by themselves. All in all that game looks really good. It's tough as nails, though. And the music is odd.

[M4R14NO94]

That was a pretty good interview, although Ed's grammar was sometimes a little off.

And I think that you should have mentioned that Ecco: Water Wars 2 thing Sega made a few years ago to see how he reacted.

[Phosis]

Nice! And it only took us like six months to get him to answer everything, haha.

Also; holy shit! How did you manage to get a picture of his face? He was adamant about not sending one our way when I first asked for the interview.

[Melf]

What an interesting man with a clear sense of humour! -- And damn I should've known Tiny Tank was his. Congratulations on scoring the interview Melf.

Thank Joel (Phosis). He's the man responsible.

[grasshopper]

very nice work, kudos

[Kogen]

Ed is a COOL DUDE and will make Chakan on iOS for us.

[jerry coeurl]

For at least 15 years I’ve been trying to convince Sega to allow me to make another Ecco. Honestly I am not sure what the problem is. I even offered to find the funding for development myself if they would just license the character back to me. Maybe one day it will happen, but for now they don’t seem that interested. I would even be happy if someone else made a new version. Ecco deserves better than limbo. I have considered making a different, dolphin based game without the Ecco license, but as irrational as this may sound, I don’t want to hurt Ecco’s feelings. If I made Dave the Dolphin for example, I’d feel like I was cheating on Ecco. Silly, I know. So, I’ll wait and be patient. The current crew at Sega will eventually retire, or get laid off, then I’ll come at them fresh again and maybe get some support. The truth is, it took me almost two years of pleading to get them to sign up to the original Ecco – but luckily I rolled an 18 for tenacity and eventually convinced them. I’ll write you back if anything changes on the Ecco front.

Dammit, Sega.

I want Ecco the Dolphin 3!

[NeoVamp]

There's only one thing to do.. Get extremely filthy rich and buy the ECCO ip from Sega.

Then I'll be like, Hey Mr Annunziata, I would like to license Ecco to you for 2 games,

BUT~!

One needs to be Ecco 3 for Sega Genesis, and the special Ecco II ending code must work!

[Zebbe]

If he tried making Sega allow him to do an Ecco game for 15 years, one must wonder why he wasn't involved in Ecco: Defender of the Future. I mean, why would Sega let others but not the creator himself do it? Must be some reason.

[djshok]

If he tried making Sega allow him to do an Ecco game for 15 years, one must wonder why he wasn't involved in Ecco: Defender of the Future. I mean, why would Sega let others but not the creator himself do it? Must be some reason.

I imagine it's because by the time Defender of the Future was made Sega had undergone quite a bit of restructuring and was beginning to lose touch with their fanbase and the industry. I figure it was probably some dumbass in upper management that got convinced by a flashy presentation or some silly statistic to license Ecco out to the "new and somehow better" developers instead of that old Genesis dev who created the franchise. Just look at how they butchered poor Sonic on the Dreamcast. By that time Sega had all but destroyed itself and pretty much took a massive shit on all their big franchises -relegating them to countless collection re-releases Ie: SOR, Golden Axe or poorly redesigning into some new cracked out "more radical" reboot, Ie: Sonic, Phantasy Star.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Dreamcast as a bit of hardware and it has some cool games on it, but it really was the part of the timeline where Sega lost their cool. It's no surprise they mishandled Ecco.

[M4R14NO94]

If he tried making Sega allow him to do an Ecco game for 15 years, one must wonder why he wasn't involved in Ecco: Defender of the Future. I mean, why would Sega let others but not the creator himself do it? Must be some reason.

It is kinda weird, although since Appaloosa was Novotrade I guess that's why Sega let them.

And if MobyGames is to be believed, both AndNow and Appaloosa developed Tiny Tank, so maybe Ed still knew the guys there. He could have gone there to work on Defender of the Future.

[jerry coeurl]

Also, never knew Tiny Tank was Annunziata's game. Gotta get my hands on a copy in that case.