Michael’s a pretty capable game protagonist, with the ability to throw out some sort of magic dust with every kick and punch. With a small energy sacrifice, players can also use Michael’s fedora as a projectile weapon. Even weirder is Michael’s ability to slide down a stair railing while yelling “Hoo!” to take down any enemies in his path. The most memorable part of Michael’s offensive arsenal is the dance attack. Hold down the spin button and Michael will hypnotise several on-screen baddies into dancing at him (including the dogs on the second level), effectively killing them when the number is over. Each dance attack fits in with the choreographed dance associated with each stage’s background music, which is pretty cool.

Moonwalker keeps the weirdness coming at a steady pace. There are frequent cameo appearances from Bubbles, Michael’s pet chimp, who guides players to the end of stage fight after the girls are rescued on each stage. Michael can also transform into a mecha version of himself if a comet is collected after rescuing a specific girl on each level. The final portion of the game departs from the platforming genre and becomes something that better resembles Wing Commander, with players controlling Michael, who has now transformed into a space ship to chase Mr Big down. It’s freaky, but also pretty damn funny. Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker was one of the Mega Drive’s early hits, helping the console to establish a small foothold before a certain hedgehog showed up to draw more players in. Copies of the game can be found for next to nothing.

Sega’s other Moonwalker game was developed for the System 18 arcade board, premiering roughly around the same time as the home game. The arcade version is completely different at first glance, being a ¾ isometric perspective beat ‘em up for up to three players (who wear different coloured versions of Michael’s gangster suit), but it actually shares quite a few similarities with the home version. Thematically, each game is the same, with Michael rescuing kidnapped children (both boys and girls, this time) from Mr Big. Some of the stage concepts are also highly similar, though they are presented in a different way. The higher resolution and colour palette of the System 18 board make it look much richer than the home versions, and allow for more enemies to be on screen at any one time.

Michael’s attack repertoire is expanded to include some lightning attacks, dance attacks don’t consume health, and mecha transformations are easier to come by, now directly triggered by finding Bubbles in each level. The end of the game is totally crazy again, though not as much of a bizarre shift as the home game. Michael has to travel to the moon to fight Mr Big, who is piloting a giant mechanical spider that would make Jon Peters proud. Moonwalker for the arcades was successful, but not quite as easily found outside of the United States and Japan. Getting a working copy of the arcade board proves to become more troublesome with each coming year due to a widely spread defect in the System 18 architecture.

The final Moonwalker game was developed for the popular 8 and 16-bit home computers of the era, independently of Sega and without Michael Jackson’s involvement. Instead, publishing giant U.S. Gold put the game on shelves, with development duties shared between Emerald Software and Keypunch Software. The game again featured five levels, but each one featured totally different gameplay to the others. One level would have players flying down a highway on a motorcycle collecting tokens while trying to avoid crazed fans, while others involved side scrolling shooting action, firing range action and maze style gameplay. The game was nowhere near as good as the other versions – so much so that its existence is often forgotten about.

Michael Jackson has been involved in some other video game works since Moonwalker, and apparently still remains a fan of video gaming, evidenced by the extremely large collection of arcade machines he recently sold at auction. It’s suggested that Jackson was originally intended to contribute to the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 soundtrack before his legal troubles caused his dismissal – nobody’s ever proven it to be true, but samples of his famous “Woo!” can be heard in the game. He made a cameo appearance in each of Sega’s obscure Space Channel 5 games as “Space Michael”, a friend of main character Ulala. In the first game, he is a prisoner of the Rhythm Rogues, but plays a more active role in the second game, having been promoted to the head of the titular station. He also features as a playable fighter in the second of Midway’s popular Ready 2 Rumble boxing games. We’ve not seen anything from Michael Jackson in the gaming sphere since 2002, apart from a few of his famous tracks having been licensed for games such as Grand Theft Auto and Guitar Hero. Whether the King of Pop will return to video games again is unknown, but unlikely.