The $10 t-shirt deal of the day over at RIPT Apparel today is the U.S. Flag-themed Super Mario Bros.-inspired shirt called “Stars & Stripes & Bricks” by artist Ghost of Starscream.

The shirt went on sale at RIPT today, Monday, October 31, 2011, at midnight CST, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore.

Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America
By Jeff Ryan
Hardcover | Kindle
Portfolio/Penguin
Release date: August 4, 2011

In Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America, author Jeff Ryan gives an insightful and thorough look at the history of the Nintendo corporation through their many successes and failures. The book chronicles three important generations of Nintendo: The Joystick, The D-Pad, and Motion.

I’ve been a Nintendo fan for all of my life. I’ve owned almost every version of the Nintendo gaming console, except for the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube. The images of Mario and his brother Luigi have always been a staple of my gaming history. Born in the early 80s, I’ve had a fondness for the plumber brothers and the many adventures that they have taken.

Nintendo took the wraps off the Wii U, their next generation gaming console, previously dubbed Project Cafe. Ever since the launch of the original Wii in 2006, and despite its groundbreaking and influential Wiimote game controllers, one of the Wii’s major criticisms is that it was graphically weak in comparison to the Xbox 360 and the PS3. With the high definition capabilities of the Wii U, Nintendo finally has the opportunity to even those odds, as well as introduce a new controller. So will the Wii U finally satisfy “true gamer” naysayers? Let’s take a look.

First let’s look at the Wii U controller itself. It’s significantly larger than handhelds like the PSP, but much smaller than an iPad. It boasts a 6.2 inch 16:9 single-touch screen (which is NOT an HD display), accelerometer/gyroscope, and front-facing camera. According to Nintendo, it is not intended to be used away from the console like a mobile handheld, but always an extension of it. Surrounding the screen on either side is the standard dual stick/d-pad/action button/trigger button configuration that adorns the PS3 and XBox controllers.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is Nintendo’s next installment in the Legend of Zelda series for the Wii, and the successor to Twilight Princess. Gameplay will feel very familiar to any fans of the franchise since Ocarina of Time, and to its credit, Nintendo wants gameplay to be intuitive. There are some slight new wrinkles, such as a radial weapons selection system and the ability to remote pilot certain launched weapons.

Gameplay on display included dungeon exploration and a bird flying experience. Environments (and graphics in general) really betray the age of the Wii console, and don’t seem to push its limits at all. What wasn’t apparent in this early demo however was the overall plotline that would send Link on his journey, and that could make the difference in what might seem like a mediocre entry in the series.

Super Mario (titled just like that), for the 3DS feels strikingly similar to New Super Mario Bros. for the 1st gen DS, albeit from a top-down perspective. The 3D effect, for the most part, felt arbitrary, although the game gets its highest marks when it uses it as part of a puzzle. A good example of this is when a block appears to be part of an isometric pyramid, but when the 3D is enabled, perspective reveals it to be isolated.