New Nike Shoes Have Serious Donkey Kong Country Vibes

New Nike Shoes Have Serious Donkey Kong Country Vibes



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A new pair of limited Nike sneakers appears to be designed to evoke Nintendo’s classic Donkey Kong Country series, based on its looks. These Nike shoes with the Donkey Kong Country theme don’t have a firm release date but are expected to launch sometime in mid-2025.

Over the last few years, Nike has made major strides in tying its brand appeal to gaming culture. Not only is the shoe company releasing limited sneakers based on popular game series, but it’s also putting real-life shoes inside games themselves. Late 2024 saw the launch of Fortnite Nike skins, as well as Nike Fortnite Kicks, a cosmetic upgrade that allowed players to buy in-game replicas of real-life Nike shoes for their characters.

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Now, based on a reveal published by Hypebeast, Nike has unveiled a new shoe variant it’s calling “Big Head Origins.” Though indirect, the naming and design of the shoe appear to be referencing classic SNES-era platformer Donkey Kong Country. The shoe itself is based on the Nike Air Max 1 that appeared in Fortnite as part of a collaboration event. The shoes are expected to debut in the spring or summer of 2025 and cost roughly $150 USD at launch, though Nike has not officially confirmed or listed the shoes yet.

Nike Shoes Seemingly Reference Donkey Kong Country

The Nike sneakers were designed in line with the “Low Poly” aesthetic unveiled by legendary Twitch streamer Kai Cenat in 2024 and feature a similar polygonal-looking Nike swoosh logo on the sides. The design features a mix of tones designed to evoke the look of fur, with the mudguards colored in chocolate brown. The soles are colored bright yellow, the same yellow as Donkey Kong Country‘s ubiquitous bananas. The interiors of the shoes even contain Donkey Kong references, with “DS coins” on the insides that are made up to look like the DK coin collectibles of Donkey Kong Country 2.

Reaction to the reveal of the shoes online was positive, with longtime Donkey Kong fans happy to see an old favorite referenced. Some players were puzzled by the use of the name “Big Head Origins” for the shoe, considering that none of the Rare-developed Donkey Kong Country titles have a “big head” mode or cheat. Some speculated that it could be a reference not to Donkey Kong directly but to Rare, which labeled the big head mode in Goldeneye 007 “DK Mode,” as triggering it gave characters the same proportions as Donkey Kong.

The design of Nike’s new Donkey Kong shoes underscores the lengths the company will seemingly go to appeal to fans of classic games. If it proves successful, more fun references and attractive designs based on fan-favorite series could make their way to stores and shoe racks in the future.

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Donkey Kong Country

Released over just a two-year period between 1994 and 1996, many consider the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy to be among the finest side-scrolling platformers ever made. After a long hiatus, the series returned in 2010, with another game then being released for the Wii U some four years later.

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