Paul “OtaKing” Johnson put together a spiffy animation based on the classic R-Type arcade game. The side-scrolling action-arcade title gained popularity way back in the day with its release on the PC Engine and at arcades, and then eventually it found an audience on the 16-bit consoles and later the higher-end consoles produced by Sony.

I was personally never much of a fan of R-Type, but much like the buffet of other high-quality Japanese outings for arcades and the PC Engine, it was impossible not to respect the high-quality animations, storytelling and animated sequences that helped shape the franchise back in the late 1980s and throughout the early 1990s.

Paul “OtaKing” Johnson decided to pay homage to the yesteryears of the arcade shooter with a six minute anime creation that’s well worth a watch. The animation style is reminiscent of the Western-style rotoscoping techniques featured in classics like The Creep Show. You can check out the video below from OtaKing’s YouTube channel.

Thevideo is based on the first level of the game, with the climaxing being the main boss. The lead hero does quite well at first but then ends up getting knocked down and put out by the Lovecraftian xeno.

Typical of most of today’s media, a pink-haired chick comes to the main character’s rescue to lend him and hand and make a snarky comment about him dying to the first boss.

After beating the level, the two are ejected out of the arcade machine where they wonder if any other arcade titles allow them to experience that kind of Ready Player One nostalgia.

OtaKing did a darn fine job with the six minute clip. The plot was absurdly cheesy, and having the typically sarcastic female come to the rescue is a [current year] trope that never seems to die, but it seems to be a decent follow-up to his Tie-Fighter short film from several years ago.

If you’re interested in supporting OtaKing you can do so by hitting up his Patreon page. It’s a shame more people like him aren’t working at the larger studios as animation directors, but then again I can’t imagine them putting him to proper work when so many projects these days are low effort, lazy, or pushing for poorly devised sociopolitical messages.