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Custom SSX Tricky Nike Dunks by KyozoKicks.
Would you like to own these shoes? I’m giving them away! Find out more by clicking here.
SSX Tricky is a perfect game. Now I know, stating anything as a perfect game on the internet is grounds for a physical altercation, but hear me out. As far as what SSX Tricky intends to be, a fun, fast, easy to use / hard to master snowboarding game it is a perfect title, it did it bigger and better than any snowboarding title that preceded it and still my snowboard game of choice over a decade on. In the research of the custom SSX Tricky Nike Dunks I gladly replayed through the entire campaign once again and any imperfections that begin to cloud a game 12 years on from its release quickly quickly fade as the count down begins before your first race, suddenly your hurling down a mountain with a real sense of speed, the environments are filled with colour and detail, your opponents are alive, animated and a challenge, you carve out turns and fly through the air with rhythm, perfect.
Carrying on from my ongoing project of designing a custom pair of Nike Dunks and accompanying T-shirt around my favourite games from the late 80′s till present day (beginning with the Uncharted : Drake’s Deception Nike Dunks) It is with fond memories that I turn my attention to SSX Tricky. I knew this would be an opportunity to go crazy with the colour palette. My previous pair were dark, with various shades of brown and I wanted do a total reversal of that here. SSX Tricky is over the top, in your face and fun. To make the shoes anything but would be an insult.
For those of you unsure of what goes into a custom pair of Nike Dunks and how durable they are let me quickly bring you up to speed. I begin by stripping the paint from the store bought shoe in its entirety down to the bare leather, this is a long, uneventful task but a necessary one. Next the design is hand painted using an acrylic paint especially made to bond to leather. The outcome is a custom, one off piece of footwear unlike anything you are likely to see on store shelves. They can be worn like any other shoe too. You can wear them in the rain, kick footballs in them, jump in puddles, I highly recommend doing all these activities in them in fact.
Thanks for checking out the shoes guys, check back in a couple of weeks for a new pair of custom shoes!
A clue for the next Custom Nike Dunk and T-shirt? Put this on your stereo.
Tokyo Megaplex T-Shirt from KyozoKicks available now!
You can buy the T-shirt from the KyozoKicks store HERE.
Every purchase made before 05/18/2012 will go into a draw to win the custom SSX Tricky Nike Dunks. The Nike Dunks will be delivered with your order free of charge. Orders will begin shipping on the 05/18/2012. If you would like your T-shirt ASAP and do not want to enter the competition, just let me know in the comments section of your order. Each T-shirt bought counts as one entry into the draw. Winner chosen via random draw. I regret that I cannot deliver the shoes to a PO BOX address.
To accompany the custom Nike Dunks celebrating the fantastic SSX Tricky I’ve designed a T-shirt based on one of the games most fondly remembered circuits. SSX Tricky’s Tokyo Megaplex did away with the idea that a snowboarding game had to take place down the side of a mountain. Instead we were treated to sensory overload, where we screamed down impossibly long candy cane rails, flung through the sky on columns of air and cursed seemingly impossible obstacles. Although 12 years on from its release I still encounter enthusiasm for SSX Tricky among gamers. Deservedly so.
My intention is for this to be a quality product with care and consideration being put into each step. The T-shirts themselves are 100% preshrunk cotton with the screen printing itself being handled by the artisans at Mission Print who have almost two decades in the business. I hate inflated shipping costs as a consumer so on my store there are no shipping costs, worldwide.
I hope you all enjoy the T-shirt!
Check back next month for another T-Shirt as well as another pair of custom Nike Dunks to accompany it.
Buy your ’25 Years of Naughty Dog’ T-Shirt by KyozoKicks now!
You can buy the T-shirt from the KyozoKicks store HERE.
Designed by KyozoKicks to celebrate one of, if not the, finest 3 consecutive game franchises released by a single developer. Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter and most recently, the adventures of Nathan Drake in Uncharted. I have played and loved each game (a timeline of games which now spans over 15 years).
My intention is for this to be a quality product with care and consideration being put into each step. The T-shirts themselves are 100% preshrunk cotton with the screen printing itself being handled by the artisans at Mission Print who have almost two decades in the business.
I hope you all enjoy the T-shirt!
Check back next month for another T-Shirt as well as another pair of custom Nike Dunks to accompany it.
Custom Uncharted 3 : Drake’s Deception Nike Dunks by KyozoKicks.
What praise can be put upon Naughty Dog and the Uncharted franchise that we haven’t heard before. Almost universally praised by fans and the media as well as dozens of industry awards (including 4 BAFTA awards for Uncharted 2 : Among Thieves). What I won’t hesitate to say is that I’m really happy these guys are in the business of making games. I don’t say that flippantly, as a fan of Naughty Dog since Crash Bandicoot and of hearing Richard Lemarchand (one of the lead designers on the last 2 Uncharted games) discuss Naughty Dogs approach to what video games are and what they could be at last years GameCity festival, I truly believe nobody else could have made Uncharted but Naughty Dog. Naughty Dog appear to march to a different beat creatively, as their own Neil Druckmann put it, they’re out to “Change the f***king industry”.
Awesomenauts Eurogamer Preview.
Let it be said, Enthusiasm is nothing if not infectious. Try as you might, you’ll be hard pressed to find more of it than among the Indie game development community right now. Before I even interact with Awesomenauts, an upcoming downloadable title from Dutch based developers Ronimo, I get a sense of that enthusiasm among the team. Focused in the right places, enthusiasm can make wonderful things happen.
But enthusiasm is for nothing without a competent execution. To assess how well Awesomenauts does as a game, we have to understand what it is. Described as a MOBA (an acronym of Multi-player Online Battle Arena) Players are, at the beginning of each round split into two teams of three players and set against each other, battling it out to destroy opponents turrets (whilst defending their own) to gain control of the map and ultimately, overthrow the opposing team. The familiarity to players of PC games such as League of Legends or DOTA should be immediate. Indeed this is no mistake on Ronimos part, the intention is to bring that very experience over the console. Here, the tried and tested game formula has been tweaked, streamlined and wrapped in personality.
Joe Danger : The Movie Preview
Joe Danger : The Movie feels great to play. No wait, scratch that. Joe Danger makes me feel great when I play it. Even stood amongst 60,000 jostling gamers at this years Gamescom I Immediately find myself swept up in its charm and I come away struck by the balance developers Hello Games have near perfected with their next downloadable title. Realise that in Joe Danger you might win some challenges, you’ll loose plenty too. But you’ll never feel like you’re failing.
Strip down the game to its core elements you’re presented with an arcade style racing game, where we are challenged with simply getting our protagonist Joe (seen above), safely from point A to point B on his chosen mode of transport, avoiding various obstacles as you go. Where that great feeling I mentioned comes from is the imagination and flamboyance Hello Games wraps that simple premise in.
Custom Minecraft Vans by KyozoKicks.
Over time it has become a belief of mine that Minecraft, now an Indie game tsunami from Swedish outfit Mojang, has the power to manipulate the very fabric of time. What I conceive to be minutes of playtime in a world of cubes somehow turns out to be hours. On occasion I fail to perceive the change from day to night in the real world (or more worryingly, the opposite occurs).
Minecraft has no real narrative in place nor is one strictly necessary. It does however have a wild and popular a cast of characters which populate the world, to build your own story upon if you see fit. A fan favourite among the cast, an online icon, The Creeper. The dead eyed, camouflaged, Kamikaze creature has become an unofficial mascot for the game. After only spending a short amount of time with Minecraft I knew I wanted to create a pair of shoes influenced by it. My experience, of running scared after late night run-ins meant I knew they had to be Creeper inspired.
KyozoKicks in Official Playstation Magazine UK
The amusement and interest in my on going work here at KyozoKicks continues among the gaming press, this time in ever so permanent print. Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe made a comment some months ago on his excitement in reference to his new game appearing on the cover of a magazine and, even with people touting and end to traditional print media how novel it was to have something so tangible reference your work and effort and the pride that came with it. KyozoKicks didn’t quite make the front cover, but it might as well have.
A piece on KyozoKicks can be found in the June issue of The Official Playstation Magazine UK under the Culture section. Thank you to everyone at the magazine, especially Joel. Everyones enthusiasm, from tweets to magazine articles on KyozoKicks continues to be the best motivation I have ever found. More shoes inbound this month!
Custom Mirrors Edge Converse by KyozoKicks.
Conflict resolution in video games generally comes down to who has the bigger gun. Whether the game is a first person shooter like Call of Duty or a one on one brawler like Street Fighter you are tasked with physically dominating the opposition, to kill or be killed. That works very well in video games, neutralizing those characters we perceive to be a threat is an extremely gratifying experience. Where Mirrors Edge earned a special place with me is that when conflict arises our natural fight-or-flight response kicks in, even when playing a game. Here for the first time I was encouraged to run.
Okay, for the most part I was encouraged to run, the game stumbles often in its execution. At a few points during the game I am presented with, what feels uncharacteristic for our protagonist Faith, a weapon with which to dispatch the bad guys. The weapons feel like an after thought and only serves to intrude on the enjoyment that comes from stringing together a line of perfect free running.
So yes, Mirrors Edge is far from perfect but so are all my other favorite games. A sequel would have no doubt ironed out these flaws but with EA’s E3 press conference coming to a close for 2011 with no mention it might be time to let go of Mirrors Edge. What better way to do it then with custom Mirrors Edge Converse.
Custom Portal Converse by KyozoKicks.
Now available to purchase on the KyozoKicks store.
Portal, the little game that could. As of writing the recently released sequel to the 2007 original sits atop the Amazon.com bestseller list across all available platforms. A week passed release and I think we can safely call this one a hit. Tracing the timeline of Portal up to this point is nothing short of remarkable. The idea for a game involving portals came from DigiPen students, who created the game Narbacular Drop before being ushered into the Valve family where, over the course of two years Portal was quietly crafted.
When the game was finally released it became part of ‘The Orange Box’, a collection of games from already well established Valve titles like Half Life and Team Fortress. Deemed an experiment by Valve, Portal quickly garnered an overwhelming positive reception from critics and fans alike. Soon it would become a stand alone release and spawn a full-fledged sequel. Fans of the series embraced all aspects of the game and as a result we have seen plush Companion Cubes, countless PC case mods, scale replicas of the Portal gun and now Custom Portal Converse.