Know your roots

I bought this as an impulse purchase.
My mom and I were walking though Target or JCPenny or someplace like that where your parents buy you clothes. I figured if I'm going to get clothes I might as well get some that I am going to enjoy.
Normally, I stay away from buying shirts like this. White shirts with designs on them inherently look cheap and gimmicky. Under usual circumstances I wouldn't pick this up, but the fact that I wasn't paying for it, and that I really thought this saying was very poignant sealed the deal. I just think white shirts are dangerous overall because they are really hard to keep foodstuffs and liquids off of. Because I was able to try the shirt on with my other clothes on that trip I know this medium fits me well.
This shirt only has a few different parts to its design. There is nothing on the back so all we have to talk about is the front. It has a pretty good depiction of a Nintendo Entertainment System controller. The A and B buttons even have drop shadows and the colors match the real thing almost perfectly. The words below say "Know Your ROOTS". The designer chose a "street" style font to put the saying in, but I don't quite understand why you would choose that kind of font for a geek shirt. It is supposed to elevate the shirt from a nerd pride shirt into something that you could wear in a cooler setting.
I wouldn't have a problem with this shirt if it were way nerdier (like the cover of an NES or Famicom cartridge.) It doesn't really matter though, it's the quote that I want people to connect with. For a long time I have been an advocate for retro games. Could you imagine a world where a kid's first game was Halo or some awful web-based flash game? There are people who are going to grow up without knowing 8-bit classics like Battletoads, Excitebike, and the originals like Mario, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda and Kirby. It makes me depressed when I think that people would let amazing games like this rot by the wayside and play crappy remakes and shovel-ware. I wear this shirt as an ego boost, because it makes me feel superior to these noobs. But at the same time it informs and educates the masses -at least that is the plan in my head-.

Many long summer afternoons were spent with my friends on the couch in front of old CRTs playing the NES. Back in northern California my friends and I dragged all of my consoles and two TVs into the attic. It was a secluded area where we could hide from the adults and play as many games as we wanted. We put down futons and sleeping bags and would hole up there for hours and stay up there for the night. We had some of the best gaming marathons in that tiny attic. And they they weren't all 8-bit adventures, we had Nintendo 64 tournaments and even Atari 2600 discoveries. At its peak we even drew up plans to succeed and become our own country with our own flag and everything. The ultimate man-cave for a 10 year old, right above your head this whole time. And of course, no girls allowed!