The Dreamcast's long life after its commercial demise has been amazing. Since 2001, the console has seen dozens of new fan games made for it, and some interesting prototypes have been unearthed along the way. Toejam and Earl III's Dreamcast version was released a couple of years ago, and the in-development sequel to Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future has been found as well. Hidden Palace has released the game as a CDI download, enabling it to be burned to a self-booting disc and played on the original Dreamcast hardware.

Based on the date of the prototype, it was cancelled right after Sega announced that the Dreamcast would be discontinued in January of 2001 and development was halted to such a degree that this build has no music or sound of any kind. A debug mode does allow you to explore multiple levels though, and active debugging code is visible when you play the game. It's amazing how crisp the texture work is - Ecco's character model looks fantastic even today, and the animations are impressive and silky-smooth. Definitely give this a download and try out this newly-minted piece of Dreamcast history.