Play Iron Maiden’s Addictive ‘Speed of Life’ 8-Bit Video Game
Two weeks after Iron Maiden unleashed the arcade-inspired music video for their new single “Speed of Light,” the long-running heavy metal act have now transformed that “homage” to video games into an 8-bit adventure. Speed of Light, playable now on Iron Maiden’s official site, transports fans to a Donkey Kong-inspired world where the band’s mascot Eddie is forced to climb a building in order to save a damsel-in-distress from the neighborhood heavy.
The video game first appeared at the 50-second mark of the “Speed of Light” video, the first single off the band’s upcoming double LP The Book of Souls, and now fans can kill time and suffer “keyboard cramp” without pumping in an endless stream of quarters. Each stage of Speed of Light makes Eddie’s mission more difficult as the number of levels Iron Maiden‘s talisman needs to climb increases, as does the difficulty and frequency of projectiles the bad guy throws in Eddie’s direction.
The Book of Souls will arrive September 4th. In a statement, Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson said of the band’s 16th studio album, “We’re really excited about The Book Of Souls and had a fantastic time creating it. We started working on the album in late summer 2014 and recorded it at Guillame Tell Studios in Paris, where we’d done the Brave New World album back in 2000, so the studio holds special memories for all of us. We were delighted to discover the same magical vibe is still alive and very much kicking there… By the time we’d finished we all agreed that each track was such an integral part of the whole body of work that if it needed to be a double album, then double it’s going to be!”
With Dickinson given the “all clear” following a cancer scare earlier this year, Iron Maiden say they plan on touring their new LP in 2016.