E3 viewers were charmed this summer by Ikumi Nakamura, the creative director at Tango Gameworks who has had a hand in shaping games like Okami, Bayonetta, and The Evil Within. As it turns out, she’s also a Rainbow Six Siege fan, and she’s got a soft spot for the most meme-worthy operator of them all, Tachanka.
Early Sunday, Nakamura posted a video to her Twitter account that shows her next to Tachanka cosplayer @karetakoe. They’re on a busy street, each with their own replica of Tachanka’s deployable mounted RP-46 Degtyaryov machine gun. And, gloriously, they are doing the Tachanka Dance.
If you’re unfamiliar with old Siege memes, Tachanka was one of Siege’s first operators, and one who struggled to find a place in the meta. His special ability required him to sit behind his stationary mounted machine gun and generally get killed by the attacking team in short order. As a perpetual underdog, he was ironically lifted to the status of ‘Lord’ in the Siege community, and the Tachanka Dance is a riff on that.
Here’s the tweet:
Tachanka Dance with @karetakoe -san тача́нка Танец! I dreamed of dancing this dance! It came true today. Arigatou 🙏😄@ubiday_JP @Rainbow6JP @Rainbow6Game @Ubisoft #Tachanka pic.twitter.com/zySX2oNNzA
— Ikumi Nakamura (@nakamura193) October 6, 2019
As in the original Tachanka Dance video, this one is set to the famous instrumental solo played by the SunStroke Project’s saxophonist Sergey Stepanov, more commonly known on the internet as Epic Sax Guy.
The dance, as you can see above, involves Tachanka grabbing his machine gun’s grips and squatting in time with the music.
“I dreamed of dancing this dance,” Nakamura writes. “It came true today.”
Nakamura recently announced she was leaving Tango Gameworks to strike out on her own. We’re keen on finding out what she’ll be working on next, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for any delightfully cheerful Tachankas while you’re playing Siege. They just might be a legendary game director.