09-15-2009 by Johnny L. de Alba

I didn't have to do thumbnails for this collection of box cover scans from various Ecco games but I felt not including them would cause people reading this article to miss out.

The most important thing one would observe are that the Japanese Ecco box scans are completely different from it's European and American counterparts. The American and European releases use artwork created by Boris Vallejo who is a very talented fantasy artist. The Japanese versions are done by a different artist altogether.

Comparing the boxes from Ecco 2 for Mega Drive and Ecco the Dolphin for Mega CD it could be safe to assume both boxes were done by the same artist. The artist must of been shown Trellia's future levels and incorporated them into the artwork. The only problem with Ecco CD is it incorporates elements from Ecco 2 in the boxes artwork.

Ecco the Dolphin for the Japanese Mega Drive looks like a cartoon copy of Boris's Ecco the Dolphin box art with minor differences. Both boxes have Ecco jumping out of the water with the marks on his head exposed. They have a shark chasing after Ecco as he leaps into the air and a Dolphin following not too far behind. It's hard to tell if this is the same artist who did the box art for the other Japanese Ecco boxes.

The Japanese box art was hard to find but thanks to Whitefin and Yuri Ivanov who scanned boxes from their collection we now have them. Yuri also gave me a rare Mega Drive Ecco 2 Russian scan that looks like it could be a possible bootleg. If we can gather more information on it and some well known bootleg cover scans then we could provide an article on it but for now please enjoy these scans along with the mysterious ones we do not have an explanation for at this time.