In theory, you could outfit yourself head-to-toe in a Shadaloo uniform, as there are caps, beanies, shirts, jackets and even jeans on offer. Most of it tasteful, much even stylish (barring the "German nightclub" vest, anyways).The stuff is up for pre-order now, and should be out early next year.

Shadaloo Psycho Brigade by Triumvir (Pre-Order) [Triumvir]

The single R-Type shirt has actually been available for a while, but we're showing it anyway. Not because you can't buy it outside of Japan (none of it is on the English site) and that it's sold out, but because it's so great.

The new stuff, however, is part of KoG's Spelunker line, and adds to the existing t-shirt by introducing a range of hoodies (top). And "Weakest Explorer" aside, they're as refined, subtle and tasteful as you'd expect from such a pricey outfit.

アイレムから発売された名作スペランカー、R-TYPE をフューチャー！ [KoG]

The Mishka NYC × Brütal Legend collaboration not only gives metalheads an opportunity to proudly display their love of all things Tim Schafer on their torsos, it draws upon real thrash and metal credibility.

The above "Headbanger" tee features the gory result of Ironheade's headbanging foot soldiers thrashing concert-going wimps in a design crafted by artist James Callahan, known for his work with bands like Municipal Waste. The second, featuring a Brütal Legend Zaulia riding a Fire Beast, is all 70s metal fantasy, sex and hellfire, courtesy of Daniel Mumford, known for his work with Black Dahlia Murder.

Keep watch for opportunities—right here on Kotaku, for example—to get your hands on these tees. They won't be for sale, folks, so watch this space and the official Brutal Legend Twitter for updates.

Right now, however, if you've not already invested in a copy of Brutal Legend, Mishka's Bloglin is giving away a quartet of copies, two for the PlayStation 3, two for the Xbox 360. We're not sure if Mishka's inbox is ready for it, but if you e-mail brutal@mishkanyc.com, with either Xbox or PS3 in the subject line, you may score a copy by November 20th. Good luck!

And I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time.

Looking back, the timing of founding Meat Bun, our video game-themed t-shirt line, makes sense. It started in Tokyo, following an afternoon pounding the pavement in Harajuku, a fashionable slice of Tokyo nestled between Shinjuku and Shibuya. The area attracts the fashion conscious, from outlandish cosplayers to street fashion freaks.

Harajuku is also home to one of our biggest influences, Beams T, a Japanese label that somehow manages to make the stereotypically uncool—including video games, anime and manga—cool. It was after shopping at Beams T, where I purchased an Every Extend Extra t-shirt, lamenting that we'd missed out the label's Dragon Quest anniversary line of tees and bemoaning the fact that shirts from The King of Games were hard to get in the U.S. that the idea of making our own clothes, video game-themed ones, started to gel.

It was just days before the Tokyo Game Show. Wedged between the t-shirt shopping and the promise of playing dozens of unreleased video games, the whole thing seemed like a good idea.

Our goal? To tap into the hard to define culture of video games, a medium which we had been passionate about for decades, and create something that was better than what we were being offered. And we weren't the only ones with that idea. Similarly passionate video game fans, those raised on 8- and 16-bit games were doing the same thing, like the people behind Panic, J!NX, Attract Mode, Starmen.net and its spin-off Fangamer and many others.

So, after foolishly deciding on the name Meat Bun—inspired by a life-giving pick up from Capcom's unpopular side-scrolling arcade beat 'em up Warriors of Fate—we set off to clothe gamers.

My partner in clothing is Scott Spatola, a lifelong gamer who originally introduced himself to me after learning that I'd brought a SNES and a copy of Street Fighter II to college, against my parents wishes. The aforementioned arm-twister, Scott has always been the motivator, a rabid fan of Spy Hunter, Ninja Warriors and Darkstalkers, and the other half of this full-time-feeling side project dubbed Meat Bun.

It always helps to have a friend like Scott, one who's organized enough to undertake the business side of the business—setting up the bank accounts, applying for federal tax IDs, legally incorporating the company. There are just shy of a million little things that crop up in the process of starting to run one's own business, from the minor—like running out of envelopes with 200 orders waiting to be fulfilled—to scary legal threats. What seems like a fun little lark isn't often as easy as originally planned.

"I always said that if anyone ever asked, I'd tell them that starting your own business is F-ing hard, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise," says Sean "Jinx" Gailey, the creative overlord at clothier and accessory maker J!NX. "Real blood, sweat and tears (also real) have gone into this business."

But J!NX has turned those hard-lost fluids into a successful brand and, perhaps more importantly, a full-time gig for its founders.

"Frankly, the biggest challenge was getting over the 'hump,' making that transition from working your day job to solely working on your own business," Gailey says. "Anyone who's working on their own business can relate to that. We didn't take a paycheck from J!NX for 5 years of business, during the 'this is our side business' days. That was rough."

J!NX has been in business since 1999, when Gailey started the company "as a three page website with six designs" running the label from his bedroom. We met Gailey at last year's Spike TV Video Game Awards, bending his ear about the J!NX empire, which, while different from what we had set out to do with Meat Bun, reflected a similar passion for video games and general nerdiness, coated with a cooler shell.

"I wanted to make clothing inspired by our lifestyle, one of video games, pen and paper gaming, geek culture, giant robots, comics and dragons," Gailey says of the origins of J!NX. The clothing company has grown from a bedroom doubling as headquarters to an operation employing 21 people, occupying 18,000 square feet of office and warehouse space and making merchandise for hugely popular games like World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, StarCraft, Aion and EVE Online.

And while not quite understated, for the most part, what J!NX does is offer something to the fan of, say, World of Warcraft that's designed with more of a wink and a nod.

From the barely referential designs from Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy t-shirt maker Panic to the Earthbound obsessed crew at Fangamer—borne of Starmen.net—the subtle approach appears to be a common tactic. For our own part, ultra vague references to The House of the Dead, Ikaruga and Spy Hunter, seemed sometimes lost on the Meat Bun customer.

Reid Young of Fangamer says his company draws much of its inspiration from the Super Nintendo's role-playing game heyday for its similarly obscure designs.

"EarthBound and other SNES RPG's have definitely been our main inspiration," Young says, a fact reflected in the clothing label's EarthBound-heavy catalog. "1996 was pretty much the best summer ever — Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, and Super Mario RPG from morning to midnight. It's fun to relive those days and, hopefully, inspire new and old fans to do the same."

While the Fangamer store—"Something we hoped would bring in enough money to keep the lights on" over at Fangamer's community-driven side—is now the "main business focus," according to Young, employing three full-time Starmen.net veterans, running a clothing and merchandise label exceeded the EarthBound fan's expectations.

"I never anticipated the amount of work which goes into a single piece of merchandise," says Young. "It sounds easy to slap a design on a shirt, but the amount of time, money, and care that goes into the process is staggering."

Fan response, Young says, makes the grind of shipping thousands of Mother 3-inspired handbooks and t-shirts all worth it.

"Releasing a product, going to sleep, and waking up to find that everybody is as pumped about it as I am. It brings a little tear to my eye," he says.

That may be the most exhilarating part of trying to appeal to a gamer's fashion sense, finding something that people will buy and wear in public, unafraid to wear their love of video games on their sleeve, sometimes literally.

One person who's taking a different approach to the sometimes hazy cloud of "culture" that surrounds video games is Adam Robezzoli, founder of "video game culture shop" Attract Mode. It's an endeavor four years in the planning, one that includes fashion, art, print magazines and more.

Attract Mode's online store opened earlier this year, an effort that allows Robezzoli to "curate and produce unique art/goods related to video games, but also a way to fund pet projects like the artxgame collabs and the DATA BEEZ chip music concert." It also sells t-shirts, giving gamers more wearable options.

The online store offers a broader set of merchandise, however, from video game inspired t-shirts to zines from writer Matt "Fort90" Hawkins to Pac-Man oven mitts to CDs from chiptunes superstars YMCK, Anamanaguchi, Covox, et al.

Personally, when we started doing our own thing with Meat Bun, it was simply an extension of our gaming-related lives, much like what the founders of J!NX, Fangamer, Attract Mode and others have done—turned their passions into something tangible. And, yes, it's sometimes F-ing hard. But you have to wear something, right?

The J!NX Aion line follows the company's recent journeys into the universe of EVE Online, and while those shirts are certainly attractive enough, they make me think of mining ore and falling asleep at my desk. The Aion shirts, on the other hand, make me want to give up my habit of wearing a button-up shirt over a t-shirt in order to show off my plumage. I have always wanted plumage.

Check out the full J!NX Aion line at the company's website, and be sure to check out the Dungeons & Dragons page as well, because there is nothing as beautiful as a t-shirt that says "Rock Me Asmodeus."

Head on over to the Meat Bun online store to grab whatever it is we have left and do it posthaste, because some items are in short supply and some sizes are already sold out. The savings end at 11:59 PM Pacific time on Monday, so if you need some fancy new tees, don't hesitate.

If you've ever commented "I never pay more than $12 for a t-shirt," now's the time to show everyone you mean business.

Meat Bun [Official Site]

This shirt is based on the upcoming DS game Tingle's Love Balloon Trip, the sequel to 2006's never-released-in-America Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland.

Not much more to add to that, really. You either agree that The Love Is Mightier Than The Sword, or you don't.

[Tingle @ King of Games]

Just take a look at Ecko's new range of Halo shirts, featuring six designs that you would expect to see adorning an unlicensed beach towel in a South-East Asian marketplace. You certainly wouldn't expect to see them on a t-shirt that costs $32. Or $38, even, which is the ludicrous price two of them are listed at.

Ecko Halo [Ecko, via Giant Bomb]

There's six shirts in the line, some heavy on the Pokemon, others heavier on a freaky, Pokemonised version of the trademark Ape. No word on a release or pricing, but since the last Nintendo/Bape shirts ran to $175, don't expect to see them for $15 at Hot Topic.

Bape x Pokemon [World Famous Design Junkies, via Pink Tentacle]

The four shirts are pretty hit and miss, but man, that Balrog shirt is a hit. Apparently these are still waiting on final approval from Cave Story creator Pixel, but it'd be a coldhearted man to turn down a shirt giving us a look inside one of the greatest square robots of all time.

[Tiny Cartridge]

Well, it is. And while we thought we'd seen every gag you could manage out of the Street Fighter universe, we must admit, this one's good for a chuckle. Or maybe even a chortle!

The Ultimate Combo [Threadless, via Tiny Cartridge]

This shirt ("American Dream") is by label Gatsby. It could be more subtle, yes, but it does get the point across. Plus, they get bonus points for not only managing to barely escape copyright infringement claims from Rockstar, but from Wu-Tang as well.

You can get "American Dream" from Digital Gravel at the link below, it's going for $31.

'American Dream' t-shirt by Gatsby [Digital Gravel]

On March 16, Pac-Man, Bomberman, Dig Dug, Arkanoid, Galaxian, Mappy, Ape Escape and Resident Evil shirts go on sale.

On April 6, Rally-X, Phoenix Wright and Densha de Go! shirts go on sale.

On April 20, Monster Hunter, Xevious, Street Fighter II, Mega Man, Sonic The Hedgehog, Namco's Family Tennis, Tekken and Puyo Pop! go on sale.

On April 27, Hot Shot's Golf, The Tower of Druaga, and PaRappa The Rapper shirts go on sale.

In March, LittleBigPlanet, Doko Demo Issyo and Ghosts'n Goblins shirts go on sale. The exact date has not been announced yet.

In June, Ridge, Virtua Fighter, Momotaro Densetsu and Momotaro Dentetsu shirts go on sale. The exact date has not been announced yet.

All in all, a very impressive variety of games. The UNIQLO Japanese site have English descriptions of all the games. Read up on the titles you're not familiar with.

UTxJapan Game [UNIQLO Thanks, Pikadrew!]

Designed by giant ape specialists X-Large, the t-shirts will be available only at select Hong Kong stores between February 16 and March 15. Those lucky few who are interested in such a deal will be able to buy a bundle that includes the game, a t-shirt and a 2GB USB stick for around USD$80. Those just in it for one of the two shirts, they'll be going for around $40.

As you'll see in the gallery below, the stuff is actually quite presentable, and the big, UNSC supply case-looking plastic box the bundle comes in is a nice touch.

[thanks Thomas!]

There are 8 shirts available, and Panic tell us they'll be ready to ship in around three weeks (though you can order them now if you like).

Each shirt is $24.95, and you can check out the full range at Panic's store.

Noby Noby Boy [Panic, thanks Cabel!]

Well, I suppose you could get away with wearing the Alderney, Algonquin, Bohan, Broker & Dukes. shirt to the local chapter of the resident one percenters club.

The collaboration rolls out this March in Japan. Fifteen dollar shirts for everyone!

UTxJapan Game [UNIQLO Thanks DT!]

Not necessarily for the print itself, but because it captures the spirit of the game. You get a cityscape, boxing gloves and game logo on the front, with a quote on the back, but the kicker is hidden in some sidepockets.

They're knitted warm-up gloves, so you can get your get your man on a bike, hit the lake and get ready for the fight in style.

PUNCH-OUT FIGHTING SPIRIT [King of Games]

You can drape your upper torso in style with one of the new designs — Halo of the Bun, Street Fighter Club, M64 and Shooting For Vengeance. That last one's for the shmup fan in your life. It even has longer than normal sleeves, perfect for casual Fridays at work. And grab yourself one of those snazzy Capcom-approved Fight Night tees while you're at it, now in a new "blood" color scheme.

Go on, punish our very own Mike McWhertor — Meat Bun co-owner — with another week's worth of shipping. Get 'em before they're gone!

Meat Bun Store [Meat Bun]