adidas has raided its early-’00s tech vault and come back with the sci-fi coded chrome Mega Ghostride.

At a glance, the adidas Mega Ghostride sneaker, with its smoked-chrome overlays sweeping across a black open-mesh upper, looks like an exoskeleton that catches light like liquid metal.

Underfoot, the ring-pod midsole nods to adidas’ Y2K-era maximal cushioning experiments, stacking glossy chambers along the sidewall for a visibly springy look and feel. When the shoe first debuted in 2004, that bouncy tooling helped it make a serious splash.

adidas has always got some fresh cutting-edge tech in the pipeline. The brand’s 3D-printed Climacool project, for instance, is evolving from an experimental slip-on into a wider rollout (and even a laced update), literal cutting-edge tech repackaged for everyday wear. 

However, the adidas Mega Ghostride takes an antiquated adidas innovation, its extreme early-2000s cushioning, and reframes it into a chunky retro sneaker. Just as its 3D-printed shoes look wildly sci-fi today, that bouncy sole unit looked like something from the future when it was first released in the mid-2000s. 

Today? This is a shoe that slots neatly into the category of retrofuturistic. 

The adidas Mega Ghostride is available now on adidas’ website for $160.

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