For everything leading up to the DS, this shirt displays all of Nintendo's hardware we've known and loved. It's really only missing the DS and Wiimote, but for us nerds who just love Nintendo more than breathing (we pretend it's a game Nintendo invented when we were born and we're maintaining the high score), the above shirt might be the best piece of clothing ever. If we owned this DS Lite and the shirt, we'd feel like we lived a meaningful and good life.
The problem is that it's only available in Large, meaning that bigger and smaller folks will have a tough time making the shirt work.
The Japanese site for the Pokémon 151 shirt series has opened, revealing in full the designs for all four shirts in the first set. We think it's interesting to see how different the styles are among the shirts: the Mewtwo and Articuno shirts look like promotional apparel for some European sports team, the Cubone shirt resembles a tattoo more than anything else, and the Hypno shirt has an interesting silhouette style.
Oh, and just in case you thought the shirt was a bit creepy before: the full design reveals that he is kidnapping children! Either that or two kids have just decided to follow the mind-controlling monster.
Here's something unexpected: a line of Pokémon clothing that we wouldn't mind letting ourselves show people! The adult-focused "Pokémon 151" series of T-shirts presents selected Pokemans from the Red/Blue era in bold, artsy, The King of Games-style designs.
Four shirt designs, featuring Hypno, Mewtwo, Articuno, and Cubone, are now on sale in Japanese Pokémon Center locations. The official website for the line will open on the 26th. In the meantime, we're left battling the bizarre feeling that we might ... like a shirt with Hypno on it. Another picture, showing partial images of all four designs, follows the break.
It turns out that staring at red-on-black images isn't so bad when you don't have to cram your face into a machine to do so. This shirt, created for German Virtual Boy fansite vr32.de, almost makes the Virtual Boy's reviled display palette appear ... artistic. As if Nintendo limited the display of the system because it would look cool, and not for technological reasons. It looks great on a shirt, anyway.
It features a Virtual-Boy-as-octopus design on the front and Planet Virtual Boy branding on the back. We doubt that many were made, but for the moment they're available for 17 Euros plus shipping (which would probably be a lot!) by contacting Planet Virtual Boy's DrAetzn.
Even though it's been far too long since we've seen the classic Blue Bomber in action, Capcom knows how much gamers love the little fella. That's why they're selling this simple but delightful Mega Man shirt at their online store.
This fabricized ode to the lovable robot will set you back $18 (not including Capcom's usually exorbitant shipping prices), but can you really put a price on nostalgia? Unfortunately, though, the website won't let you buy the shirt at present. Perhaps it's already sold out?
We still haven't heard word on whether or not Nintendo will ever bring Rhythm Tengoku to the states (Highly unlikely), but Sega has been keeping the rhythm-action title going in Japan with its GBA-to-arcade port and, according to this new find, UFO catchers filled with Rhythm-Tengoku-themed prizes!
Provided that you're proficient with maneuvering a claw to pick up crap, you'll be able to win a number of brightly-colored, long-sleeved shirts with the minigame collection's characters screen-printed on them, as well as pillows shaped like Rhythm Tengoku's iconic, hairy onions. Click the link below to the beat, and check out more photos of the vending machine goodies past the post break.
Since we've never been given the opportunity to playMother 3, we aren't really able to gauge the thematic radness of Edit Mode's new Mother 3 "Emergency" shirt. Still, just as we know that all shirts sold on The King of Games are awesome, we have an inherent knowledge that everything about this shirt is wonderful, except the $50 price tag. We know that the design is pretty nice, and that the warning text on the back is adorable.
The other new Mother shirt, featuring a logo for "The Sharks," comes from Mother 2 a.k.a. Earthbound, and is therefore easily verifiable as being great. You can totally pretend you're in an arcade-occupying, hula-hoop wielding gang led by a smilin', knifin' Frank Fly.
One summer night about nine years ago, I decided to try to play some Tetris DX to help me get to sleep; it was late and I had to go to work early. So I propped a pillow against the wall, sat up, and turned on my Game Boy Color expecting to relax with some falling blocks.
The game that followed was the longest Tetris game I ever played; I couldn't begin to estimate the time it lasted, but by the time it was over, I had amassed over 1,000 lines. I could have paused the game and turned the system off, but I didn't want to risk failure when I came back to zippy level-30 gameplay. At the same time, I was tired.
This shirt from Huzzah Goods reminded me of that night. Even if you haven't spent hours and hours battling Tetris for sleep time, Tetris dreams are probably a fairly common experience. It's a really cute shirt too.
Spike's Nihon Bungaku 100 Sen (100 Selections of Japanese Literature) is a pretty cool product to start with. It contains 100 classic works from famous Japanese writers like Natsume Soseki and Akutagawa Ryunosuke in a single, tiny DS card.
It gets cooler, though, but, like the software, is of precious little use to non-Japanese readers: in order to promote their game reading, Spike is giving away some clever Nihon Bungaku 100 Sen swag to people who can answer questions about the readings on their site. Correctly completing the quiz enters players for either a DS Lite carrying case, a waterproof DS holder (for reading in the bath, of course!) or a t-shirt featuring one of the authors whose works appear in the program. We're partial to the Natsume Soseki Wagahai wa neko de aru shirt, ourselves.
Despite our insistence that game t-shirts with jokes on them are terrible, we like this Mario shirt from Jeffrey Rowland's TopatoCo. Maybe it's because it implies Mario's skill in his apparent real job rather than his night gig as a princess-saving, kart-racing, tennis-playing, golfing, typing-teaching doctor. We also like that it appropriates something that, as Reggie's famous E3 line, has become a mantra for crazy Nintendo fans.
What we like about this shirt the most is that it comes in your choice of Mario red or Luigi green. We wish everyone would be so thoughtful!
The problem with gaming shirts is that even when they have fantastic art, they usually also involve some puerile joke. This one on Threadless is no exception! Oh, drug humor. It's a shame, because this artist draws Mario in a unique and cool-looking way, but we'd never wear this particular shirt.
Your mileage may vary, however. If you're into this design, you should vote for it at Threadless, because the number of votes will determine whether or not it gets printed. More gaming shirts on Threadless is a good thing, because it'll lead to better ones.
Why don't more t-shirts take this Wind Waker shirt's example? It uses official art from the game, and doesn't add any silly slogans. There's nothing here about how the 1980's were neat, or about being a "player" or anything. It's just a cute image of Link in some tall grass. We would totally wear this shirt, even to the grocery store.
Oh, we also like the shirt because the Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass art style is incredible, but you knew that.
We're slowly gathering entries for our yet-to-be-announced Phoenix Wright Shirt Makers' Club. These elite crafters have decided to express their fandom for Capcom's graphic adventure series and its characters in the most reverent way they know: by giving Phoenix Wright a place of honor on the front of a t-shirt.
The latest, from reader Maxy, goes beyond the limitations of home crafting. Maxy's sister has access to professional apparel-printing machinery at a uniform company, and transferred this iconic image of Phoenix on what looks like a 3/4 sleeve baseball shirt. Maya Fey, as pictured on the Gyakuten Saiban boxart, appears on the back. It's kind of unfair that we can't follow Maxy's example and make one of these! It may be unfair enough to warrant an OBJECTION!
The title is imperative for a reason. Seriously, you should either be working on a t-shirt right now or headed out to Michaels to pick up supplies. Oh, or reading this post. That's totally fine.
To make this Princess Peach shirt, HackerZen user Lenore adapted the technique used by a very faithful reader to make his Phoenix Wright shirt, adding the extra step of drawing a grid on the shirt with a washable marker, then filling in pixels to make a big sprite. Excellent.
But don't just default to Mario. There are a lot of sprites out there. Get creative!
Sunday came and went, taking with it our hopes of ever meeting Kanji Dragon's martial artist. The kung-fu character posed for a few shots at Success Corp's Akihabara event over the weekend, hyping the kanji-training action title. Just looking at the photos and all the fun we missed out on feels like getting crane-kicked right in the heart.
Though we didn't get to attend the soiree, it certainly wasn't from lack of trying. We stuffed our Pokemon backpacks with dozens of DS and GBA games, our favorite G.I. Joes, and a plastic baggie loaded with Pringles (these were crushed into little flaky bits before we even zipped our Squirtle bags shut) before heading out to hitchhike a ride to Japan, but we didn't even make it past two blocks before the police picked us up and drove us home. Our parents were pissed.
Hissatsu Kung Fu: Kanji Dragon DVDs containing all of the game's promotional videos, including an unreleased action clip, were passed out to attendees. Peek past the post break for another exciting image from the event and a look at the multicolored shirts that were given to those who preordered the title. You might also see us hugging our knees in the corner, sniffling and trying to pretend like we just didn't spend all afternoon crying.