This Week in Retro: Michael Jackson's Moonwalker [1990] (Patreon)

August 24, 1990: Children Are In Danger and Their Only Hope is... Michael? 

by Diamond Feit

This is not going to be easy.

Writing about old video games is straightforward for me. I remember a lot of them, I can read about or watch the rest, and I can offer people context to set the stage for what that game meant at the time. Writing about people, though—complicated people—that's another story. I remember a lot of them, too, and I can offer context for what that person meant to me, but the fact is people are, well, people. There's never an easy way to sum up a human being.

30 years ago this week, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker was released for the Sega Genesis, a very famous video game starring the most recognizable person in the entire world at the time. The game was Michael's idea (he is credited with "game concept and design"): He is both the main character and the driving force behind its existence. He was hugely popular my entire life up to that point, so much so that I idolized him. I wasn't alone.

Perhaps I should explain, because 30 years is a long time, and no matter how famous a person is, history will render us all unknown eventually. But if you were alive in the 1980s, you knew that there was no one else on Earth who could do what Michael Jackson could do. Yes, he was a singer and a dancer, but his music, his performances, and his personality were larger than life. His albums didn't just go platinum, they went diamond—Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, and no one will ever break that record. Lots of artists made music videos, but Michael made a 13-minute short film that is now in the Library of Congress, and it remains instantly recognizable and meme-able almost 40 years later. Michael Jackson was so famous in the 1980s that even a parody of Michael's music propelled a man to international stardom.

In 1988, as part of a promotion for his album Bad, Michael Jackson co-wrote an anthology movie titled Moonwalker. The film is a loose collection of shorts, including concert footage and animation, but the longest segment is a dramatic tale of Michael Jackson battling an evil drug dealer named Mr. Big (played by a pre-Goodfellas, pre-Home Alone Joe Pesci) and his army of stormtroopers. A small section of this sequence became the "Smooth Criminal" music video and the biggest hit of the Bad album.

Two years later, in the summer of 1990, this segment of the film would serve as the inspiration for two contrasting Sega video games, both called Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. The arcade edition of Moonwalker was an isometric beat-em-up where up to three people can play as Michael to blast Mr. Big and his army while rescuing children. The game's one unique hook: Each Michael has a limited stock of "dance magic" which, when triggered, forces all on-screen enemies to dance... and explode. It's a real quarter-muncher; enemies swarm the screen, Mr. Big owns a surprising number of sturdy robots, and the dance magic is rather limited in its usefulness.

It was the 16-bit home edition of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker that was the best of the licensed adaptations, as having the King of Pop on the Sega Genesis was certainly a celebrity-get that Ninten-didn't. Instead of a linear beat-em-up, this version is a 2D platformer where the captured kids are hidden throughout each stage. Players must find all the hostages on each level to make Mr. Big appear;  he'll will then laugh and send a wave of enemies after Michael. In a curious design decision, Mr. Big only appears in a specific spot on each level, so after rescuing the last kid Michael's pet chimp Bubbles will appear to guide him to the correct location by... pointing in cardinal directions.

Both adaptations draw scenery from the movie, but the home conversion of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker strives to make the journey feel special. There's an inevitable graphical downgrade from the arcade, but each area gets its own background and a different musical theme (based on Michael's own music, naturally). Enemy types change as well: The opening stage, which is based closely on the "Club 30's" from "Smooth Criminal," is populated with besuited gangsters, while the streets have punks and dogs and the caves have giant spider webs (but decidedly non-giant spiders). By the time Michael reaches Mr. Big's fortress (or is a lab?) full of armed stormtroopers, players can see and feel the difference compared to the game's initial stages.

One quick soundtrack shout-out: while Hiroshi Kubota's 16-bit FM-synth renditions of Michael's most famous songs are all faithful, there is one original composition of note which is Mr. Big's theme song. It's heard every time he appears, but only for a few seconds before he walks away. For the final encounter—which takes place in outer space in a first-person shooter segment—the music can be heard in full, and it is a genuine Hot Jam.

The hard part of discussing Michael Jackson's Moonwalker is right there in the title: This game features and celebrates Michael Jackson, actual human being. Today, 11 years after his untimely death, he's still incredibly famous and beloved, but he was also accused of sexually molesting multiple children over many years. Michael was never legally convicted of any crimes—a 1993 lawsuit was settled out of court and a 2005 trial returned a "not guilty" verdict—but that didn't stop victims from coming forward. I believe them.

Reconciling on-screen images and fond video game memories with the people who made them is becoming an increasingly challenging task. In 2009 it was a small controversy when Shadow Complex contained a narrative which had ties to the work of Orson Scott Card; Card did not work on the game, but his political views (particularly his opposition to same-sex marriage) made buying the game feel like a vote in favor of Card's beliefs. More directly, whenever we talk about Earthworm Jim we must also acknowledge that creator Doug TenNapel is a bigot who hates... seemingly everybody, but especially gay and transgender people, and investing money in Earthworm Jim directly benefits TenNapel.

In the case of Michael Jackson, things are even less clear. We'll never know if he actually did what he was accused of doing; he is long deceased, and these games are no longer sold on any platforms anyway. But if any of the stories are true, then starring in his own movie and subsequent video games were undoubtedly part of building Michael's mythos as a children's hero. That's the key issue here: Michael Jackson's Moonwalker isn't just a video game starring a celebrity, it's a video game starring a celebrity as a magical version of himself who rescues children from every other adult in the game. As former/current showrunner of The Simpsons Al Jean said when he agreed to pull Michael Jackson's famed episode from the show's streaming lineup, "if you watch the documentary [Leaving Neverland] and then you watch that episode, something’s amiss."

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker exists. It can never un-exist. The same goes for all of Michael Jackson's millions of records. I cannot pass judgment on him any more than I can pass judgment on you. In order to write this, I needed to revisit the game as well as the movie Moonwalker along with rewatching the "Thriller" music video, which led me to watch several more videos after that. Michael Jackson remains an idol in my heart. I cannot see him perform and not feel an emotional attachment to the man I believed he was. However, that version cannot coexist with the potential Michael Jackson who committed heinous crimes against his own underage fans. It is that incongruity which prevents me from heralding Michael Jackson's Moonwalker as a fun video game worth revisiting, because for me, there's no fun to be found here any longer.