Louis Vuitton have released an 1980s-style video game called Endless Runner, inspired by Virgil Abloh’s Autumn Winter 2019 show for the brand.
That collection showcased the artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear’s love of cartoon art, Dayglo colour palates and retro block graphics, among other influences. The show's set, meanwhile, saw the fashion designer, entrepreneur and DJ return to the streetscapes of 1980s New York, with its DON’T WALK signs, graffiti and carpet of leaves.
Endless Runner, which is playable in full and for free on the Louis Vuitton website, is a classic third-person scrolling arcade game, featuring the player dodging objects such as traffic cones, phone boxes and dented metal bins – in the time-honoured infinite scrolling manner of Super Mario Bros or Sonic The Hedgehog – while collecting Louis Vuitton monograms as 'coins' to increase their score. It coincides with the arrival of the Autumn Winter collections into Louis Vuitton stores this week.
With Nintendo releasing its NES Classic Edition and Super NES Classic Edition mini consoles and PlayStation following suit with its palm-sized PlayStation Classic console, preloaded with such hall of fame classics as Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil, not to say Netflix announcing it will release a free Stranger Things video game next year (the 1980s-set series featuring, of course, its own video game arcade, The Palace), our appetite for blocky 16-bit action and bleepy-bleep chiptune soundtracks shows little sign of dwindling.
