Appaloosa interactive - Mermaid tech-demo - 2001.01.05

[Aldo Remors]

This capture was posted by Sáránszki Mihály, developer at the now defunct Appaloosa Interactive, the makers of Ecco the dolphin. In the comment section, he was asked whether this particular demo would have been capable of running on DC, to which he answered « I think yes. »

The school of fish is particularly impressive and what I assume to be a good demonstration of CPU based particle effects.
The animation of the mermaid is sophisticated and graceful. Lots of transparencies, and effective use of environment mapping for caustics.

Feast your eyes:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/frYPYAXgBJ4?si=pCP4A2OoDyEEnjoZ[/youtube]
[youtube]https://youtu.be/rqIyX6_RT1A?si=z1gB8hcwkptDBIyf[/youtube]

Edit : Mihály later added in the comment section that this video capture 'is cut from finished parts of the game.' while later referring to Ecco 2.
So what we have here is not a tech demo, but an actual finished and fully playbale slice of Ecco 2 : Sentinels of the universe.