Iron Maiden‘s newest single “Speed of Light“, off their upcoming album “Book of Souls” has a video game centric music video which was just released, that pays homage to several notable video games, with some slight twists to them.

Throughout the video viewers watch Eddie, Iron Maiden‘s mascot, traveling between each game, as well as taking part in each one. The first is a play on the arcade classic Donkey Kong, as Eddie ascends a building to rescue a woman held on the rooftop, while dispatching the ruffian and obtaining a heart. Eddie then travels to the next game, which can be interrupted as a play on Robocop vs The Terminator, or a similar side scrolling shooter of the 8 or 16 bit era. After decimating a plethora of mindless enemies and felling a spaceship, Eddie proceeds to enter a room to obtain a second heart and once again travel to the next game.

Eddie’s third video game is an obvious take of Mortal Kombat, from the HUD displayed above the combatants, to the exclamation of “FINISH HIM” pastured on screen when Eddie defeats his rival, The Beast. Eddie obeys the request and pulls off the head of The Beast, proudly displays it towards the camera, the proceeds to insert his arm into the gaping wound of The Beast and remove its heart, moving forward to his final destination.

The final game Eddie lands in is a first person shooter that looks like a mix between Doom, The Elder Scrolls and Turok. After some melee combat with a skeleton, Eddie takes control of an assault rifle and goes to town on two more skeleton adversaries, then obtaining some sort of one shot explosive goo launcher and felling a Tyrannosaurus Rex. With the final battle completed, we witness Eddie sprinting up a set of stairs towards an altar of sorts. Three hearts are placed down, but the fourth seems to be missing. This is when Eddie plunges his hand into his chest, á la Kano from the first Mortal Kombat would to his defeated opponent, extracts his own heart, glances towards it and the finally smashing it into its place on the altar.

With all four hearts in place, Eddie’s surroundings begin to glitch out, as if the game was about to crash. A high score table pops up, with the top score going to our protagonist at 666,666 points. The camera pulls back further to reveal what we all had expected — this was all a game being played; an arcade game at that. With a myriad of displays adorning the arcade machine indicating that Eddie has beaten the game, the monitor displays an error message that is informing him that this game needs a reboot. After jiggling the arcade stick a bit, he kicks the machine in anger and storms off, leaving the arcade and ending this surprisingly entertaining music video.

If you would like to view the titular video (the song its self is quite catchy, engaging and very much worth the listen), check the very bottom of this report. “The Book of Souls” will be the sixteenth studio album from the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden, their first in five years, and will be released on September 4th, 2015. Were you a fan of this video, the song or perhaps both? Let us know in the comments below!