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Welcome to the Machine
Nov. 3rd, 2005 01:31 pmGood heavens, LJ's updated its interface a bit since this morning. In fact it's probably the most major overhaul that I've seen since starting this about two and a half years ago. It looks like it'll be useful, but it does have the Facebook-like disadvantage that there's a constant reminder of people's birthdays over on the right, meaning that I have even less of an excuse for forgetting them.
But dolphins are what I really want to talk about. I've mentioned before that I have a lot of unusual phobias, but there is one that I recently found out is shared by many people. I am scared of Ecco the Dolphin.
I'm not quite sure what it is that makes that old Megadrive game quite so unsettling, but I can fairly confidently guess that the haunting music plays a large part in it. It's also the whole weird presentation and storyline of the game. At the beginning you're swimming happily with the other dolphins, you mess about for a bit getting used to the controls, eventually you decide to see if you can jump out of the water - and suddenly the others are sucked away by a huge storm and you're dumped back down, with water water everywhere, alone on a wide wide sea, without even an albatross in sight.
Yesterday I decided to confront my fears and start the game up again. The screen that you're presented with at first gives you the choice of entering a password or starting anew, neglecting to mention which direction is which. I tried left and found that I'd accidentally gone to the password screen, so to get out of it I put in a row of letter Ns, thinking (as would be logical) that when I pressed Start it would reject the password and bring me back to the choice screen.
I'm more scared than ever now.
But dolphins are what I really want to talk about. I've mentioned before that I have a lot of unusual phobias, but there is one that I recently found out is shared by many people. I am scared of Ecco the Dolphin.
I'm not quite sure what it is that makes that old Megadrive game quite so unsettling, but I can fairly confidently guess that the haunting music plays a large part in it. It's also the whole weird presentation and storyline of the game. At the beginning you're swimming happily with the other dolphins, you mess about for a bit getting used to the controls, eventually you decide to see if you can jump out of the water - and suddenly the others are sucked away by a huge storm and you're dumped back down, with water water everywhere, alone on a wide wide sea, without even an albatross in sight.
Yesterday I decided to confront my fears and start the game up again. The screen that you're presented with at first gives you the choice of entering a password or starting anew, neglecting to mention which direction is which. I tried left and found that I'd accidentally gone to the password screen, so to get out of it I put in a row of letter Ns, thinking (as would be logical) that when I pressed Start it would reject the password and bring me back to the choice screen.
I'm more scared than ever now.
