42 Great videogame shirts-Hilarious article

Recently, I posted a story about the worst gaming shirts I knew of. Now believe me, those 61 were just tip of the iceberg, as the online and offline stores continue to renew their supplies of unfunny shirt travesties, but some readers took the story to mean that unilaterally all videogame shirts are horrible. No, no, a thousand times no! If I thought that, why would I have spent far too much money on them instead of something sensible like more comic books or games?

Above: Still a fashion icon
Some jerks may say it’s because I have no taste and enjoy looking like a Junior High student, but they’re just jealous, I tell myself as I cry to sleep, jealous that I know the difference between a shitty shirt and a great one worthy of wearing. And just as I used my skills before to tell you what not to buy, I’m now reversing the polarity and helping you find the few shirts that are worth buying, the needles in the haystack as it were, if those needles were witty shirts buried in a dung heap of terrible puns and Scarface references. You’re welcome.


Keep it simple, dumbass


Let me restate: the first rule of gaming shirts is that, save for very, very rare occasions, words on a shirt ruin said shirt. Either it adds a lame joke to a cool image that didn’t need it or it over-explains the joke that the image featured should already do on its own. When starting one’s shirt collection, don’t get fancy. Stick with shirts that use classic game imagery to profess your love for said games.

See all those? They all simply show iconic pixel art that any real fan would get and outside of a logo in some cases, there’s no shitty pun or quote attached to them. People just look at you and say, “this person likes games. And he might have a sense of humor, as none of his shirts have jokes only a 12-year-old would laugh at.” Get ready to make a new friend!
That simplicity can, on occasion, get even better when taken to the extreme, in the case of these Pac-Man ghost shirts:

See, everyone will understand what that references, and aside from the tiny logo at the bottom, it doesn’t insult your intended audiences intelligence by trying to be overly clear that it’s a Pac-Man shirt. If the recent Google logo proved anything, it’s that everyone under the age of 55 knows who Pac-Man and his ghosts are.
But don’t think only pixel art is okay when it comes to official shirts. Often, official concept art can work just as well, so long as any words outside the game’s title stay the f*** away.

Again, those all use identifiable iconography for the games in question and show off some unappreciated art straight off the game’s cover or instruction manual. The shirts that make me saddest of all are the ones with great concept art that get muddied by some shitty SNL joke regurgitated on them. Let’s give special attention to that the Dead Space one near the end, which puts a sly reference on the reverse, using the health bar that’s located on the main character’s back, and the reference’s intention will be clear to your intended gameplaying audience.


When words are forgiven: Part 1



Time to break some rules. I know I’ve pounded it into your head a thousand times that words on a shirt make you look like an unfunny douche, but, when used carefully, ever so slightly, they can, in very, very rare cases, make a shirt better, maybe. But only when handled by professionals.

This first example is probably my favorite shirt from the site Threadless, which you’ll be seeing more of later. Why is the writing on this one great? Because it’s a parody of a classic piece of modern art called ”The Treachery of Images.” Both the shirt and the original painting underneath it state “this is not a pipe,” which they aren’t. They are merely images of a pipe depicted on a surface. They both make a statement about how art and artists lie to you while telling the truth, only the shirt does it via Super Mario imagery. When the parody is that smart and dead on, we can’t not love it.

It’s okay to get a little complicated


Again with the rule breaking. Once you’ve proven that you can find and wear shirts that simply state your love for said game, it’s time to take it up a notch and experiment with shirts that may be a little more complicated in design, but are better for it, instead of just being confusing.

All of these take a few moments to make their intentions clear to the viewer, but once they do that person will appreciate such extremes that were taken to state one’s love for gaming shirts. My favorite, and the only of those four I own, is the red Mario shirt. I love that the classic mushroom image is composed of tons of character art from Super Mario 3, which has scientifically been proven to be the best Mario game ever. My only problem is that the lines are so fine on it, that the images will wear out even faster than on a normal shirt. That makes it an extra -special treat every time I wear it. Oh the pains of being a trend-setter.


How to be super obscure and complicated


Recently the site LowRez was brought to our attention, and while its choice of normal gaming shirts ranges from good to hacky, we fell in love with these incredibly obscure shirts.

Only super-retro arcade freaks will recognize those as the images that appear on the monitors when some classic arcade games boot up. It’s so deliciously obscure, weird, and confusing to all but your gaming friends that it proves your retro cred without using tired images from Pong or Pitfall. Yes, these are a little pricier than the average shirt, but we’ll bet you’ll be the only person you know that owns one, and isn’t that worth something?


When words are forgiven: Part 2


Just as we allow logos to avoid our “writing is shitty” rule, that rule can sometimes ignore writing if said text is in a foreign language. And if that foreign language doesn’t use Roman characters, that’s even better.

We’ll admit that wearing shirts with Japanese writing is sometimes akin to Sorority Girls getting a tramp stamp of the word “love” written in Kanji, but all the above examples just have the character's logo and other plain details written in Japanese script. But be careful: have someone who knows the language make sure the words on it are innocuous and not some bad joke in another tongue, or else you defeat the whole purpose of getting the shirt in the first place.

Some online sellers make actual funny shirts


In my exhaustive search for new shirts to waste money on I’ve come upon so many sites, most of which I’d rather not name, because nearly all of them had the shitty, unfunny garbage I featured in the last feature. But two sites, while by no means perfect, have a pretty good ratio of wearable to crap.

We’ll start with SplitReason, which I’ve been a fan of for at least the last year. In the spirit of disclosure, it’s true that we’re involved in doing contests with them for our amazing podcast TalkRadar, but I’ve been frequenting the site long before that. Even though their best shirts can be more geeky than cool, but more often than not they pull off legitimately funny jokes, so long as they AVOID ANY WORDS. Otherwise, this Canadian seller has some kickass shirts. (Wanna win that Mega Man shirt? Check out the TalkRadar page for details.)

But if your tastes skew towards the hipster, then Threadless is probably a better fit (haha, pun). Now, they still have more than a few stupid joke shirts, but when their shirts have a simple enough concept that words don’t sully the intent, they have some real winners. The best thing about both these sites is that they are continually updating and that the designs are user supported, so they can really surprise you with the new things they produce, instead of boring you with the same old tricks.

Lastly, we want to briefly spotlight the only good shirt on NerdyShirts.com. I felt a little bad for kicking them for having so many unfunny shirts, so instead of kicking them when they're down, I want to celebrate basically the only good gaming shirt they have. Now that they’ve shown they can do good work, maybe they’ll use this as inspiration to stop making trash like this.


When words are forgiven: Part 3


We have one final exception to the no writing rule, and that’s when the letters aren’t just foreign, but made up.

It probably helps that this shirt is attached to one of the best games ever (Ico for the philistines out there). That writing below probably says something, perhaps even a dumb joke, but we don’t feel like going to the work of translating it. Either way, that’s a really cute image that isn’t sullied by the text, what more can I ask for?


What have we learned?


So what have we learned today about worthwhile game shirts? That simplicity is where it’s at, that rules are meant to be broken, that jokes are funnier the less you explain them, and that any shirt that features phrases in English are pure garbage. Perhaps you commenters can alert me to a single good shirt with writing on it that breaks my word rules, but I haven’t come across it yet after dozens and dozens of hours of searching, so I’ll be shocked if you do. Happy hunting kids.