Gamer Chic a look at video game fashion

By Katie . March 31, 2006 . 2:00pm

There’s a product in town that’s all the rage with the 20-something crowd, something branded and patented and propped up in display cases like never before. Crammed to overflowing in the specialty shops of the underground, and sometimes peeking out from bottom-of-the-pile aisle in your local Shoppe Mainstream-In-Denial, it beckons the collective eye and the pocketbook of a generation with its triumvirate powers of cute, quaint, and simple. There’s something for everyone in this offer, and while its inspiration is oftentimes flawed, it’s undeniable and pure in a new world of focus-group machinations and daily-dose edutainment… something you can own en masse, for the right price.

Nostalgia.

Whether you call it retro revival, regression, sentimental marketing, or by any other name – beneath the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar that it might have become, nostalgia is untouchably good to a great many, and that good is permeating the generation that partook of gaming’s renaissance. There was a time when people had actually tired of games… a time that spurred the industry crash of the early 1980’s (which sank its lowest just around 1984, the year I was born – go figure). From there, a rebirth occurred starting with the revered NES, and kids’ media in general was transmogrified as never before. The Video Game was now king.

Now lately we’ve seen our share of Transformers’ and Turtles’ tees, Thundercats Collector’s DVDs, all the big names of TV from the late 80’s to early 90’s revived. TV was important, but games… THERE was an untapped goldmine of riches in the collective cultural stockpile, possible sales that finally called one nameless vendor’s name loud enough to go to town.

As a result, there is quality gaming merch out there for your wardrobe. Shirts bearing the age-old Nintendo logo, readily available from EB Games, make an understated impression of your loyalty for a reasonable price, while the Soul Calibur III pack-in, a top featuring artwork to cover a whole continent, might publicly identify its wearer as a more recently-turned geek, but it does look damn cool for a freebie. There are the shoestring-styled keychains that proclaim ‘Xbox’ or ‘Nintendo DS’ from around your neck, which aren’t hurting anyone, and there’s the classic Mario 2 tee in all its mushroom-lifting glory. A fashion buff I ain’t, but even I once bought a Megaman cartoon t-shirt – a happy marriage of TV and game-fandom – and even if that show is laughably bad for the most part, I keep the shirt… for pyjamas.

All this could make you stand out quite nicely, for those who like that sort of thing, while the rest of us can take solace in not looking like a clone, or an abomination, or one of those other insecure thoughts. Just this much was all we needed.

And then… then they sold out.

In trying to avoid a diatribe on the misplaced values of capitalism, or better yet, mass-consumerism, let me say I have no qualms with people buying cherished representations of their youth – quite the contrary, as I openly confess to oldschool games being among my most-purchased items. But when every too-young kid and his brother has the same Atari t-shirt, it becomes just like anything else. Personally, I avoid game-related fashions – it’s a statement that shouldn’t be worn, because your person holds far more memories and memorabilia than can fit across your chest from one shoulder to the other.

And have you SEEN some of the generic, mass-produced trash they try to pass off as legit? I’ve seen a very unofficial NES shirt reading ‘Classically Trained’ in altogether too-70’s-styled text, whereupon I realized the worst offense. The LED was green… GREEN. Anyone who’s anyone knows the NES LED light was RED. I’m not saying you should unequivocally put your money elsewhere on fanatical grounds like these, or that if you like something, to care what other people think, but know that you can wear a better bang for your buck out there than a half-baked print like that.

If you’re insatiably hardcore, for example, you could take a cue from many a gamer’s Photobucket album and try something terribly personalized and permanent – like a tattoo in a place that people won’t see every day. No, I’m not being perverse – not moreso than usual, anyway – and I’m not recommending tattoos out of personal experience, but two of the best examples of gaming fashion I’ve ever seen came in that form of body art, and they’re dangerously persuasive – in a true-to-their-roots pixelated rendition, on the tops of a girl’s feet, the two and only stars of Bubble Bobble, Bub and Bob. Tell me that’s not cool! For squeamish needle-fearers who might enjoy automobiles, there’s also hope for individual expression – I’ve seen a nice Zelda-themed ride, the kind of paint job that can’t be bought in a store.

Then there’s the e-Store phenomenon. Web-comic readers can delight in having their favorite internet denizens plastered all over their clothes, head to toe and front and back, and even I get a truly heartfelt chuckle when I read some of the offerings of Vgcats.com– “how I mine for fish?” is probably the most apt summary of the MMORPG experience, ever. Someone buy me that shirt and I’d actually wear it, not just for pyjamas.

You can’t buy back or shine up memories with a shirt, a hat, a bag, anything. You can’t relive them with anything short of a time machine, and any other attempts to do so will often leave you and your wallet feeling a little emptier. That said, it’s important to keep gaming history alive, but there are better ways to do it. Read up, reach out, and lobby the head honchos to bring that newest crazy compilation CD our way for a change. If you can be both fashionable and enterprising at the same time, all the more power to you – I just don’ t find they often truly go hand-in-hand.