While searching for some old videogame manuals on Google the other day I discovered that Nike had released a tennis shoe in honor of one of my favorite old arcade games. This seemed a little odd to me, so I did a little research and here is what I found.
Nike Dunks were born in 1985, retired, and were reborn in 1998. Dunks are known for their bright colors and unique patterns. Nike also makes an offshoot of the Dunk called an SB (“skateboard”) Dunk. There are literally hundreds of different SB/Dunk color combinations, most of which have cute color combinations with matching names and pop culture references. The “Shrek” model is gray on gray with lime green laces. The Boba Fett dunks are olive green, black, red and white. Michaelangelo Dunks (named for the Ninja Turtle, not the artist) are green, light yellow and red. The Mork and Mindy model (I’m not kidding) are red and silver.
The two seminal skateboarding games of the 1980s were Atari’s 720, and Electronic Arts’ Skate or Die. And now, thanks to Nike, both games have been immortalized with their own SB Dunks. There’s only one minor problem: both shoes are pretty darn ugly.
Here is the 720 shoe. In the picture I made above you can see where they got the colors from (Atari’s 720 logo), but that doesn’t make the shoe any less ugly. I can’t think of a single piece of clothing I own that would match orange, pink, cyan, black, white and gray shoes.
The Skate or Die shoes are, in my opinion, even worse. Again the colors were taken direct from the classic game’s cover, but I just don’t feel like blue, cyan, yellow, orange and black sneakers is a look I can pull off. They even incorporated the little 80s “squiggles” on these.
While browsing through pictures of over a hundred different SB dunks I found a lot of them that I liked better. Even though I like the idea of 720 or Skate or Die themed shoes, I kind of wish they had the game’s name on the side of them — without that, I suspect (should I purchase them) I’ll end up spending a lot of time answering the question, “Why’d you buy those ugly shoes?”
clowns shoes.