Fancy A Nintendo Tee?

Imagine my surprise today at the post office when I found out that the kind folks at US-based 80stees.com sent not 1, not 2, but 3 videogame-themed shirts to yours truly. And the best part is all three t-shirts are Official Nintendo merchandise!


First up is the "retro-but-oh-so-8-bit-cool" "Go Zelda on You" t-shirt. Good for old-school gamers in touch with their inner erm, 8-bit selves.



I'm pretty much a fan of Gap t-shirts, with their abundance in our local cut-label stores, but the quality of Gap t-shirts is dwarfed by these t-shirts from 80stees.com. Very nice.

For Zelda aficionados (this is dedicated to you, Anthony, if you are reading this), here's one t-shirt that you would probably want framed somewhere.

According to the 80stees' website, The History of Zelda Collage t-shirt features a distressed print of things that can be found in all of the Legend Of Zelda games as well as how the appearance of Link has changed over the years:



I don't know much about Zelda, but this looks like a piece of art with a t-shirt as the canvas. Hence the talk about framing it earlier on.

Last but not least, this is probably my favourite among the three (and having a cheeky tag-line does help). The "Call Mario Brothers Plumbing" t-shirt has the tag line "We'll Clean Your Pipes" and it was my first choice when I was asked to pick some t-shirts for this write-up.



Thats about it! I would certainly recommend 80stees.com to anyone looking for video-game themed t-shirts and accessories. Head over to their website to view their wide selection of t-shirts for all things from the 1980s such as cartoons, tv shows, movies, and video games. Like their tagline says: Great t-shirts for the kids in us all!

He Got Game

The latest issue of Time magazine (Asian ed.) lists Shigeru Miyamoto as one of the heroes in its "60 Years of Asian Heroes" list which coincides with the Asian edition's 60th anniversary. Among his peers include the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Bruce Lee, Hayao Miyazaki (of the Spirited Away fame), Lee Kuan Yew (first Prime Minister of Singapore), Akio Morita & Masaru Ibuka (the Sony guys), Mother Teresa (the late "Saint of the Gutter"), Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar's pro-democracy leader, under house arrest) and Gong Li.

There are many other Asian heroes in the list, so grab a copy of Time Asia's Anniversary Issue.

According to the Wikipedia article, Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of the Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Star Fox and Pikmin franchises for Nintendo game systems. Without the Mario franchise, we certainly wouldn't have one of the best kart racing games around, Mario Kart DS.

In an episode of Icons (or was in an article in 1UP) featuring him, I remember him talking about the creation of Mario and on how the character design (mustache, jump suit) was actually used to overcome the hardware limitations at that time.

My own personal opinion, Shigeru Miyamoto stands equal with other great computer/video game creators such as John Carmack (id Software, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake), Will Wright (The Sims and the SimCity franchise; he wrote the write-up for Shigeru Miyamoto in the Time magazine Anniversary Issue), Sid Meier (Civilization), Tim Sweeney (Unreal) and Warren Spector (Deus Ex, Thief). Before I forget, it's the guy's birthday today, so, Happy Birthday!

On a side note, it is way cheaper to get a copy of Time Asia magazine in Malaysia compared to Thailand. I get my issues from a newsstand in KL for RM 8.50 a piece while a copy sells for RM 13.50 in Bangkok!