Moonwalker – MJ’s gone but his video game lives on

Posted By: R.James

Having grown up listening to the music of Michael Jackson, I can say that I was saddened by the news that the pop legend passed away earlier today.  Say what you will about the implosion of his career (almost certainly by his own hand), but the man was a force to be reckoned with in the music industry for more than 30 years.  Since this is a video game blog it would be in bad taste to make any kind of tribute to the man without some sort of video game tie-in.  Luckily for us, there’s that god awful game “Moonwalker” for us to remember him by.

Yeah, this game is a pretty lousy tribute to the man (and a pretty poor excuse for the game), but as games based on musicians go, they’ve all been pretty bad (and yes, that includes the Aerosmith light-gun game). But just think, every time the smooth criminal song starts up we can watch him shoot strange fairy dust from his hands and feet, save little boys in skirts as he sends them off on awkward blue streaks of light, and dance his enemies into submission simply by screaming eeeeee-heeeea! And if you think about it, that’s pretty much what he did in life.

(And if you were wondering, yes, I expect tons of hate mail from Michael fans for that last one).

Moonwalker was developed and published by SEGA. It was released in 1990 as an arcade unit as well as a cartridge for the Master System and the Mega Drive (Genesis). Michael Jackson passed away yesterday, June 25th, 2009 due to cardiac arrest. He was 50 years old.