The “Rivalry Series” project from Adidas uses the perfectly named Adidas Rivalry model first released in 1986–a shoe originally designed for basketball, but went on to find much wider casual appeal.
Researchers discovered that less complex light sources can actually outperform lasers in specific AI applications.
The SNES look offers a super color scheme that also pays tribute to a legendary console.
The design inspiration for the shoes comes from the team’s interest in gaming and hip-hop music. Tang adds: “We all shared similar stories of going to our local game stores to window shop for the latest game, and the graphics they would use for the covers.
Over time, a lot of these games got sold back to the stores and had blemishes such as adhesive residues or fades from sun damage. We took all those nostalgic feelings and incorporated them into the shoes, focusing on wearability and storytelling.
On both pairs of shoes, the Nice Kicks brand has been visualized in the style of each console’s typeface on the right tongue tags, while “Rivalry Series” adorns the left.
Most impressively, the SNES pair appears to lean into the U.S. NTSC-U console’s sunbleached look, turning it darker and more yellow with age.
Still, in sneakers as in life, the Genesis shoes are my personal pick, especially with the single-sided red stripes–but then again, the design of the U.S. SNES, however iconic, isn’t quite as beautiful or colorful as the one we got outside of North America.
It’s not the first time the Sega Genesis has been celebrated in the sneaker world, but it’s definitely more attractive than Lavair’s $275 Mega Drive shoes from 2021, which offered a much sportier profile and a color scheme you simply couldn’t miss, for better and worse.
