Since its original release in 1997, Rare's GoldenEye 007 has gone on to be widely regarded as one of the N64's finest, inspiring countless Making Of articles, as well as books and documentaries.
One thing we didn't expect to see, however, was for the game to serve as the inspiration for Nike's latest sneaker, but that appears to be exactly what has happened.
Recently, as reported by the website Footwear News, Nike revealed the Nike Air Max 1 Low Poly “Big Head Mode”, which is designed to be an unofficial homage to the classic N64 first-person shooter as well as its iconic DK Mode.
As Footwear News notes, this is the third video game-inspired design the footwear company has revealed since the announcement of the Nike Air Max 1 Low Poly back in September of last year, with Nike also having previously announced designs based on Donkey Kong and Tomb Raider last month.
Out of all of these, the Donkey Kong variant clearly took the most inspiration from the source material, featuring an "extra-hairy Light Chocolate brown suede with Hemp accents" to mimic Donkey Kong's fur as well as the iconic red and yellow from the game's logo. In comparison, meanwhile, the Tomb Raider and GoldenEye 007-inspired designs are far more subtle, requiring further explanation before you can really see the connection.
According to Footwear News, for instance, the GoldenEye 007-inspired design is meant as a loose adaptation of the Bond's character model in the game with the greyscale being a stand-in for Bond’s tux while the gold invoking the game’s fabled Golden Gun.
The Nike Air Max 1 Low Poly “Big Head Mode” is expected to launch sometime this Summer and is expected to be priced at $160.