Have you ever gone around collecting bananas? donkey kong country on the SNES and thought to myself, “I wish I could play this game on my shoes.” Well the designers set out to turn this dream into reality. To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Super Nintendo’s launch in Japan, Bonzanini has created the Air SNES, a vintage custom pair of Nike Air Max 90 sneakers that also serves as a fully functional SNES console.
“The idea came after seeing collaborations between sneaker brands and video games. I always asked myself: Wouldn’t it be cool if these shoes that look like video games actually functioned as a console?” Bonzanini said in a press release shared with Engadget.
The shoe was created using a Raspberry Pi Zero W running the RetroPie emulator, which Bonzanini adapted to fit inside the sneaker’s tongue. The shoe has a battery capacity for up to 30 minutes of gameplay and has an integrated HDMI port.
For those nostalgic for old-school display connectors, the shoe also has a small analog converter for RCA connectors. As for controllers, the shoe is compatible with the original SNES gamepad, but you can also use the 8BitDo mod kit that connects to the Raspberry Pi wirelessly over Bluetooth.
Bonzanini said, “This art project was my way of both celebrating and pushing the idea of what could become when sneaker culture and technology merged.” Unfortunately for all of us who would pick up a pair of these in a heartbeat, the AIR SNES is just a one-off creation to celebrate 35 years of one of the first ever made.
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