This Designer from London has Made a Retro 8-Bit Video Game to Celebrate 30 Years of Air Max

If Super Mario was a sneakerhead.

alice stewart game
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

alice stewart game

This is what the world would have been like if Super Mario was a sneakerhead.

As part of the activity for Air Max Week at Nike’s London: ON AIR, designer Alice Stewart has created a retro-style 8-bit video game that charts the history of Air Max.

The side-scroller is inspired by platform games from the late 1980s, and the protagonist is a sneakerhead that hunts for floating Air Max 1s to restore health.

Explaining the idea, Alice Stewart said:


"I was inspired by the NES version of ‘Prince of Persia’, which came out at around the same time as Air Max 1. The game is 8-bit style so it seemed like the most relevant way to tell the story of a shoe that made its debut in the 80s."

Alice unveiled the game at London: ON AIR – a collaborative space in the heart of London – where she was delivering a workshop to the next generation of innovators.

Young creatives were tasked with building a stitched controller for the game that was connected via USB and visually inspired by the Nike Air VaporMax.

Alice explained how the unique controllers respond to touch instead of a button press:


"We’ve used conductive thread to stitch our image and those conductive parts became the buttons. We’re using something called a Makey Makey, which is essentially a tiny computer that you can plug into your laptop and it registers touch as a button press."

This looks incredible.

Work created at London: ON AIR – The Studio is inspired by Nike’s latest innovation the Nike Air VaporMax, which is available on Sunday March 26. Find more details here.