Friday, February 17, 2006

age is just a number, baby

When I sewed a Double Dragon patch onto the front of my jacket a few years ago, I figured I'd get a few comments from people who played the game in the 80s and remember it fondly. What I didn't expect were the questions I get from elderly Asian women.

Oddly, this happens more frequently than you'd think it would. There's something about the Double Dragon logo that apparently makes it look like the logo for a Chinese restaurant. I'm frequently stopped by elderly Asian women who always have the same conversation with me.

Old Lady: What is that? "Double Dragon." What is that?
Me: Oh ... it's just an old video game from the 80s.
Old Lady: Oh, okay. I thought it was a restaurant.

See? Proof positive. Anyway, I had the same conversation again this morning when I stopped for gas on my way to work. What I didn't expect, however, was the reaction I got when I told the 60-something woman working at the gas station that it was a video game and not a restaurant.

"Oh! Are you in the games industry? I love video games!" She then proceeded to tell me a story about how she made her grand-daughter cry because she hogged the game console. Her daughter apparently had to comfort the grand-daughter with the very soothing words, "It's okay, honey. Grandma is just like that sometimes."

This nice old lady then proceeded to talk to me about games and about my job at LucasArts. She was so excited to talk games. She also wanted me to know that if we're looking for testers that I "shouldn't let the gray hair fool [me]," she'd love to work as a tester and play games all day long.

So, the lesson for today is: don't let the gray hair fool you. Somewhere in the world right now there's probably a senior citizen making all of the neighborhood children cry with their mad Tekken skillz.

2 comments:

EmoRiot said...

I've given up wearing my jacket with the FORD logo on it because I'm sick of hearing about people's Mustangs and getting "Oh, so you work at Ford?" "no" "Oh, well I got this 68 thunderbird... the doubletop series... and I just put a new short-throw shifter in it, which should give me an extra tenth in the quarter mile. and BLAH BLAH BLAH!!"

It'd be like old ladies going "What's that?" "A video game from the 80s." "Oh I thought it was a restaurant." "Nope." "Oh well I go to Eastern Sunrise, they do a buffet on Sundays with a soy marinaded mushroom soup that's to die for."

you wouldn't care...

Bug said...

Yeah. I gotcha. Luckily there are enough times where someone who does know what Double Dragon is stops me and talks about it.

Usually it's kinda' sad, actually. It's usually some 30-something cashier or bag-boy at the grocery store who looks at my jacket a few times before finally saying sheepishly "Double Dragon ... that's awesome." And they always say it so reluctantly, as if they're quietly rebelling against their crappy bag-boy life by admitting they once had fun when they were younger and the memory of that fun is now staring them in the face and making them question their existence.

Or you know, maybe I'm reading too much into it. But that's what it always seems like to me, anyway.