25 Nostalgic Gaming T-Shirts: Old School Rules!

For some of us, gaming is in our blood. It goes way back. Others merely adopted the Gamer’s life. We were born into it, molded by it. We’ve played Pong and Pac-Man. We remember crowding around a small, boxy TV with our friends and family for a Super Smash Bros tournament. A fun night out meant money spent at the arcade, and frustration meant being stuck on the same level of Mario for days at a time, only to finally ask our older sibling to beat it for us so we could move on.

I’m kind of young. The very first game I ever played was Super Smash Bros, and I wasn’t very good at it. We had an old Gamecube, and let me tell you…we got so much use out of that thing. I always played Zelda. My sister always played Princess Peach, and my eldest brother was always Samus and my second-eldest brother was always, always Kirby. There was a lot of button-mashing, a lot of yelling at each other and the screen, and a lot of hours wiled away switching between stages and unlocking new playable characters. Good times.

My favorite gaming franchise when I was little was Legend of Zelda. I was a huge nerd for those games, and honestly I still am. I wasted an entire summer in front of our gamecube on Wind Waker, sailing the seas, beating dungeons, and breaking pots. Often, I’d have to ask my older brother to beat a difficult level for me. Oh, and that was before the internet was a huge thing, too. We didn’t have gaming guides. Nope. I had to borrow my friend’s Wind Waker gaming guide in order to get through some difficult bits. It was worn, bent, and falling apart – totally well-loved.

Long car rides were spent with a Gameboy, trying to catch the light from passing street-lamps in order to play whatever game we were working on at the time. I was a Tetris master. Our friend owned a copy of Donkey Kong Island – and a lot of fights were had over who got the Gameboy for that one! There was Metroid 2: Return of Samus, Pokemon, and, of course, Super Mario Land. 

However old you are, all of us Gamers got our start in one game or another. What was your first video game? Do you remember? How old were you when you first played it? Let us know in the comments! Here’s a couple more classic gaming t-shirts that’ll spark your nostalgia, and if you haven’t seen it yet, check out our Ultimate Gaming Collection. You won’t want to miss it!