The excellent, and affordable, line of Sega shirts from Japanese retailer UNIQLO are now available for purchase via the company's website. Sure, they only deliver within the United Kingdom, but that's a big step closer to, say, Texas, just to name a random location where someone might want to buy a shirt with the House of the Dead 4 logo on it.
Besides, we're mature enough to let our UK friends know about things they may enjoy, even if it doesn't benefit us in the least. Or if, among us, it just benefits Chris, as is the case this time. The Japanese shirts, by the way, come in Sonic-emblazoned bottles -- no idea if UNIQLO is doing the same in the UK.
The King of Games' "Get Ready" shirts, like all of their shirts, are mindblowingly awesome. The designs are attractive and interesting -- much more so than most gaming shirts. To us, they look a lot cooler than most non-gaming-related shirts. The new shirts from Meatbun are similarly spectacular and arty, while also being undeniably aboutvideo games.
Our discussion question comes in two parts: first, is it worth the premium "fashion" prices to get awesome, fashionable gaming shirts? Second, can a video game shirt be cool? We don't mind being visibly nerdy to an extent (though we have a rigorous Shirt Nerdiness Rubric), but then we don't really have to leave the house that often.
Japanese game shirt maker extraordinaire The King of Games is producing a special shirt in celebration of Sega's newest mascot revival. This NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams shirt comes in black or white and features glow-in-the-dark elements (NiGHTS and the text area on the black shirt, the moon and stars on the white shirt). Unfortunately, it not only costs 4,200 yen ($38), it's only available in Japan. Also, preorders for the thing opened two days ago and most sizes are already sold out.
Does that translate into interest in the game? We hope so! Does it translate into inconsolable sadness for us, sitting in stupid America with no NiGHTS shirts? Definitely.
The NES-themed collection of shirts, jackets, and hoodies from designer Torrel is no longer just an abstract topic of discussion on blogs. You can now buy the things in the pictures! From a website! On the Internet! Truly an auspicious day for practical applications of previously abstract concepts (where we're defining "t-shirts that you can't buy" as "abstract.")
Well, maybe you can buy them. The t-shirts start at $50. The jackets run $200. Someone would have to be excellently wealthy and also weird to blow $50 on an Urban Champion t-shirt. In fact, we'd like to meet that person, so we can convince him or her to invest in the crazy inventions that we'll make up for the occasion.
We can't help but continue to enjoy the eye-catching NES cartridge shirts. We're warming to some of the others, but the cartridge design is a definite winner. Is it a $50 winner? No, but only because it is currently impossible for such a t-shirt to exist, given our financial situation.
We have suddenly decided to care more about one of the Virtual Console's oldest shooters. Japanese t-shirt company Mars Sixteen, as part of their ongoing (and amazing) Namco shirt collection, has created two cool Xevious shirts. The grey one shown above features the game's logo and Solvalou ship on the front, and an edited screenshot of the Fortress on the back. The other features the Nazca Lines as seen in the game.
Mars Sixteen's other video game shirts include a lot of great Falcom and Sega stuff, as well as more Namcoclassics. They've made some surprising choices regarding which games deserve their own shirts! Would you wear a Samurai Ghost t-shirt?
Clothing designer Torrel will debut their new limited edition Nintendo-based clothing line on November 15th at the Nintendo World Store. It's marketed as "urban", which seems to translate into "enormous all-over prints." Most of the shirts, hoodies, and jackets follow this design philosophy of HUGE ART, and of those, some manage to be kind of cool-looking, like the giant NES cartridge design. Others are just kind of garish, but hey-- we imagine there's an intersection of "people who like Nintendo stuff" and "people who like garish stuff."
Other items in the line manage to be somewhat subtler and more our speed. We think the Sub-con potion shirt is pretty great, for example, and we would also wear a Wild Gunman boxart shirt just because it's a little too weirdly obscure to get its own shirt-- and we support that.
To commemorate No More Heroes, developer Grasshopper Manufacture had some shirts printed up. There are seven different designs, most of which have color variants as well. As would be expected from the guys responsible for the rocking look of No More Heroes, they look awesome. They run from the somewhat normal (the No More Heroes logo on the front, "KILL ONLY" on the back) to the weird (a big Tengu mask with the word "TENGU" printed above and below in Japanese and English) to the obscure (the Santa Destroy shirt above).
There are a few problems. The shirts seem to run very small-- some are available in sizes up to a US small. They're also a little pricey at 3500 yen ($29). That's not quite King of Games territory, but it still seems a little high. Most problematic of all, however, is the fact that we haven't figured out how to get one out of Japan yet. They seem to only ship to Japanese addresses. Maybe NCSX or Play Asia will pick them up-- or maybe we can bug Ubisoft to sell some to US fans.
To commemorate the British release of MySims, EA commissioned some apparently famous fashion designers to come up with some crazy junk as part of the MySims Capsule Collection. The four items are all intended to serve dual purposes, and embody "the core attributes of the game - Self Expression, Customisation, Creativity and Collectability."
The item descriptions should give you all the information you need to make informed decisions about whether or not you want these items. For example, the House of Holland MySims Pouch Tee is a t-shirt with a pouch for a DS. It also uses a big-slogan style that you may remember from "FRANKIE SAY RELAX" or Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" video. Also, two of the four items are Wiimote bags.Bags-- for your Wiimote.
Considering the amount of remixes Mims' hit rap single "This is Why I'm Hot" set off -- R. Kelly's "This is Why I'm Cold," the NBA's "The Phoenix Suns Are Hot," and Chubbs' "This is Why I'm Fat" for example -- we're surprised that it took this long for its catchy hook to reach video gaming's catch-phrase-hungry communities.
Mirroring Mims' insipid lyrics, the simplicity of SnorgTees' shirt design leaves no room for confusion on its message or the company's plans to rake in crazy money by exploiting our nostalgia-addled minds. We can imagine the office congratulations and "props" received by the young designer who paired the 8-bit fire flower with the narcissistic mantra. They all agree, this is why he's hot.
The $16.95 shirt comes in royal blue and black, its lowercase Myriad Pro text staying chalky white on both colors. If you haven't heard the song several hundred times already, you have the option of checking past the post break for an embedded music video of the club track.
Mark Newton and his coworkers at Gamestop received this "We're Building an Armii" shirt from their store's Nintendo representative, making sure to post a photo of their spoils for us to envy over with aching hearts. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for NOTHING.
We're not sure which war Nintendo plans on shipping these Miis to, but just how useful would these guys be in any combat situation? Playing Wii Sports: Tennis is one thing, but keeping your cool while you're under fire and your buddy next to you is filled with shrapnel, begging you to take him home and make things alright again like they were before, is another. March two klicks past the post break for a closer look at the shirt swag.
Keeping track of all the Wii t-shirts being sold on the internet can be tough. Whenever we try to wade through our bookmarks to pick one out, it feels like we're drowning in a sea of outdated pages and bad puns.
OMG Tees has listed over a dozen of the best Wii-related apparel, providing photos, descriptions, and information on where to buy them. We've featured the Beatles and custom Mii designs before, but some of collected shirts (like the Bruce Wii one shown above) have managed to escape our attention until now.
Would you actually dole out cash for any of these shirts? Or are you more like us, always putting it off and telling yourself that you'll buy one as soon as you have a little more extra cash laying around?
Nintendo recently held a fashion show at their NintendoWorldStore in NYC, where gamers displayed clothing items for sale in the store, as well as fanmade creations. We've developed a new classification system for Nintendo fandom based on this event and the accompanying photo gallery:
People who play Nintendo games
People who wear Nintendo t-shirts
People who make their own Nintendo t-shirts
People who model those t-shirts at Nintendo events
We personally fall into level 3 of the Nintendo Fanboyism T-Shirt Scale. We think it's a pretty good measure of fandom, although it doesn't take into account the whole "working for a website called Wii Fanboy and writing about Nintendo all day" thing. Hmm.
This weird-looking t-shirt with the phrase "NO MORE HEROES" was spotted in Japan recently. Just from looking at the shirt, we have no idea if it's related to the Wii game, but the 4cr poster who purchased it seemed to think so, indicating that it is part of a line of No More Heroes shirts.
We'd like to see the full line of these shirts; we'd be unlikely to purchase this one, but we really like the idea of having some No More Heroes memorabilia. Suda 51's games and his company Grasshopper Manufacture's website prove that they are capable of remarkable stylishness. Check their shop for some amazing stuff that doesn't look like it was designed by a video game company. Of course, the store is for Japan only, but go and gawk anyway.
Mark Newton and his coworkers at Gamestop received this "We're Building an Armii" shirt from their store's Nintendo representative, making sure to post a photo of their spoils for us to envy over with aching hearts. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for NOTHING.
Keeping track of all the Wii t-shirts being sold on the internet can be tough. Whenever we try to wade through our bookmarks to pick one out, it feels like we're drowning in a sea of outdated pages and bad puns.
