My favorite game of all time on my old Sega Genesis was Ecco the Dolphin. I'm not sure if my obsession with dolphins at the time stemmed from the game, or if I so loved the game because I was obsessed with dolphins. In any case, I do hope I'm not the only person here who played Ecco and wondered about those glyphs. Those oh-so-helpful glyphs that Ecco relied on for key information were about as helpful as Counselor Deanna Troi, or as I attempted to depict in my picture, a Magic 8 Ball. Ecco's sonar was useful for pushing around starfish, but when he aimed it at a glyph, all he was doing was shaking up that Magic 8 Ball. "Hi there glyph! I'm surrounded by jellyfish, sharks, poisonous bubbles and falling rocks. What should I do? ... Outlook not good?! Well thank you, Captain Obvious. Too bad my super-speed attack can't crack you into a million pieces, you worthless piece of quartz!" But that didn't stop us from being so overwhelmingly happy each time we discovered a glyph. Why? Clearly, because they are shiny.

I had a lot of fun setting up the stage to take a picture of me in the glyph. I draped the props, such as the supports for my feet, in white to make it easier to photoshop out. Gotta love the timer feature on cameras. And researching screenshots of the old Ecco games to layer together for the scenery made me want to play all over again. :-) I took letters from an actual glyph message screenshot to create the Magic 8 Ball message, a la newspaper ransom note.

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Dr. Cox: Every time I shake my Magic 8 Ball and ask it "are we going to be best friends forever?", do you know what it says?
Turk: No.
Dr. Cox: Outlook is buh-leak.
Turk: Doctor Cox, you can't really trust those things. When I was nine I asked mine if I should crack it open and drink the fluid inside. I puked blue for like three days.
- Scrubs