Helium Party Balloons

In 1986, on February 21st, a game unlike any other was released to the Japanese public. With its sprawling world and labyrinthine dungeons, that game would break the mold of traditional console games forever. The first cartridge game to sport an internal battery for saving data, it gave players a one-of-a-kind adventure and spawned one of the most critically acclaimed franchises in video game history.

I’m talking, of course, about The Legend of Zelda. Any kid who grew up with Link, Zelda and Ganon has a set of shared memories: using the recorder, trying to find the Magic Sword, and tackling the Second Quest. For many of us, exploring the land of Hyrule ranks the same as exploring our neighborhoods. Oftentimes we did it together, gathering around a friend’s NES and working through the puzzles, fighting the bosses, and cursing in confusion about what it meant that the Pols Voices hated loud noise.

My first exposure to Zelda was confusing, to say the least. Read on to see why.

While watching TV one night, I saw this advertisement for the game:

This has to be one of the worst commercials ever made. My dad, sitting beside me, muttered, “What the heck?” Even with my five year-old attention span, I couldn’t give him an answer. I certainly don’t remember rushing to the store to buy the game.

Thankfully, one of my friends had, and I was introduced to the game through sleepovers spent wandering across its vast overworld. Nonlinear gameplay was perfected with The Legend of Zelda and while it wasn’t a role-playing game in the strictest sense, its success had a huge hand in shaping the future of that nascent genre.

The franchise has always held strong. When I wanted a SNES, I wanted it for A Link to the Past, which, to this day, remains my favorite game of all time. I bought an N64 specifically for Ocarina of Time. And I actually enjoying sailing around a waterlogged Hyrule in The Wind Waker. A new title for the Wii, Skyward Sword, is in the works.

It’s not difficult to see why the Zelda series has captivated us for 25 years. I can still remember descending into a dungeon for the first time, the music changing, the color palette swapping out for something darker. That feeling I got, of not knowing what lay beyond the door ahead but knowing I wanted to see and experience whatever it was… it was exhilarating. And as long as Shigeru Miyamoto and the Zelda team keep recreating that feeling as they have, the Zelda series will go on.

Unless you’re Benjamin Button or T.H. White’s Merlin, you’re not getting any younger. While getting older may be better than the alternative, there’s no reason why you have to be completely upfront about your age. And, of course, as long as you’re concealing your age, why not use the opportunity to reinforce your geek cred?

Photo (and cake) by Fiona Henderson. Creative Commons license

Here, then — inspired by the recent birthday of GeekDad’s fearless leader, Ken — are the geekiest ways to hide your age:

10. Tell the truth … in a geeky invented language. For instance, I’m wejmaH jav (Klingon) years old, though nearly Odog-Nelchaen (Sindarin).

9. Point out that, if you were a Vulcan, you’d be the equivalent of a teenager. If someone should point out that you’re not a Vulcan, simply say “To the best of your knowledge, that is correct,” and turn away indifferently.

8. Express your age in Posix (Unix) time. That is, tell people the number of seconds old you are, by subtracting the POSIX time of your birth from the current Posix time. Really, how many people are going to take the time to convert the number into years?

7. Tell people the chemical element whose atomic number corresponds to your age. It has to be better to be zirconium than 40, right? This only really works until you’re 112 (copernicium), of course, but if you get that far you’ll probably be more than willing to tell people your age, right?

6. Invoke your right as a geek to stop incrementing your age once you hit 42. I mean, really, this seems like a basic perk of being a geek, doesn’t it? If anyone should express confusion when you’ve been 42 for, say, 23 years in a row, simply hold your ground, being sure to act offended at the temerity of the person for questioning the privilege.

5. Express your birth date as a Star Trek–style stardate. Technically, stardates aren’t supposed to be applied retroactively (according to Memory Alpha, anyway). But don’t let that stop you. The beauty of this is that you can pretty much pick a number out of thin air without fear of being proved a liar. Just be sure to remember the stardate you pick, because, if your friends are geeks, too, the odds are they’ll catch you if you should change it.

4. Create a puzzle, with your age as the solution. Make it as easy or difficult as you like, but do make sure your age is the only correct solution, or anyone who goes to the trouble to solve it is going to be justifiably annoyed.

3. Tell people your correct age … expressed in Martian years. See, a year on Mars is 687 Earth days long. So, for example, I’m not quite 20 Martian years old. You could reduce your age further by using one of the more distant planets, naturally, but using Mars keeps your age at least sounding somewhat realistic.

2. Repeat, over and over, “The birthday cake is a lie.”

1. Convert your age to hexadecimal. Really, base 10 is so … mundane: So we have 10 fingers and 10 toes — so what? Any geek will tell you that powers of 2 make much more useful bases, and in this case hexadecimal is especially handy. Sure, it might sound a bit odd if you’re 2C years old, but it’d still be better than 44, right?

Got a better idea? Please leave a comment.

(Many thanks to Ken for his help in coming up with items for this list!)

[Note: This article was originally published on GeekDad on February 25, 2010.]

Once again, the writers and editors of GeekDad will be going on the road to PAX East in Boston to talk about all sorts of things related to geeky parenting. We’ll be speaking at 1:00 on Saturday afternoon in the Merman theater and we are really looking forward to it. We’re busy putting together a great program and gathering lots of cool stuff to give away, too. Hopefully, we’ll see some of you there, but, in the meantime, if you have any topics you’d like us to cover or deep, meaningful questions you need answered, now is the time to let us know. Speak up in the comments, below, or drop us an e-mail.

[Note: This post, written by Dave Banks, was originally published on February 15, 2011.]