It may seem strange at first to make an anime adaptation of a game that was released over 25 years ago, but it makes a lot more sense with context. Spelunker on the Famicom is a very notorious game in Japan for how easy it is to die. You literally cannot drop 2 feet without dying mid-air, à la Action 52. How do you make an anime with a weak protagonist like that? Make him a scrawny teacher, of course! Spelunker Sensei is reminiscent of classic web animation with its sense of humor and pacing. Me putting it that way could lead you to believe thatit's going to be nothing but a bunch of amateurishly-made slapstick shorts which would only be funny to people who have played the game. However, that is absolutely not the case. Spelunker Sensei takes the concept of having a super weak protagonist and goes all out with it, creating several creative scenarios that will defy your expectations and have you laughing out loud. I was actually taken by surprise just how smart the setups were and how well the punchlines were handled.

With that being said, can you watch it and still get some enjoyment out of it if you haven't played the game or know of its infamous status? Well, you can definitely get a chuckle or two if you know the context, but being more familiar with it is what I think will really sell this OVA to fans of Spelunker and hardcore retro gamers as a whole. Otherwise it's a solid 30 minutes of fun for everybody else.

But for those who are deeper into gaming culture, you may associate bad games with angry nerds and irate gamers, which were all the rage in the late 2000s with their fruity language and high tempers. Meanwhile in Japan a lot of these bad games, or "kusoge", are actually quite celebrated for numerous reasons. The is that seeing people get angry over games is funny, but why would you wanna be the one behind the controller yourself? Playing bad games doesn't sound like fun, does it? Not necessarily in the traditional sense, however, there definitely is a level of passion behind getting the most out of the flawed. There's something other-worldly about getting that AAA experience out of a piece of media. Contrasting that on the other side of the coin, there's also something very human about the more niche and indie stuff. Watching Spelunker Sensei, I could tell that everybody who worked on it loved Spelunker and had a blast putting this OVA together. It's is a love letter to anybody who can feel that very human energy out of media. Maybe it doesn't have the greatest and most professional production out there, but I wouldn't have it any other way.