Staff Blog: Woo! - Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

Woo! - Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

On 08/02/2020 at 07:51 AM by Matt Snee

Long before Pop King Michael Jackson fell into a downward spiral of drug abuse and child molestation, there was the Sega Genesis game "Michael Jackson's Moonwalker." It is not a very good game, but it has its charms, and I beat it (pun intended) back in the day. It's mostly a sidescrolling action game, where Michael has to rescue children () from the evil Mr. Big on a variety of levels including a club and a cemetery.

Michael dances, moonwalks, and sprays his magic to take out enemies. His super move of course is a dance performance that makes all the enemies on screen dance with you, eventually killing them.

The music of the game is actually pretty good, and is mostly versions of Michael's songs played through the Genesis's FM sound chip. There are also low-bit voice samples of Michael saying things like "Woo!" and "Who's bad?"

Things were simpler back in 1990, when this game was released.

Cary Woodham

08/02/2020 at 08:31 AM

I didn't really play the Genesis version much since I didn't have one, but the arcade game was very weird. You could even turn into a robot!

Matt Snee Staff Writer

08/02/2020 at 06:19 PM

I forgot about the robot! Yeah, that's in this one too.

KnightDriver

08/02/2020 at 04:36 PM

I totally want to moonwalk and slide down stairway railings in like any other game. And was that Bubbles that jumps on his back?

08/02/2020 at 06:20 PM

Yeah I remember everyone was doing the moonwalk back in the day. Even me.

08/03/2020 at 09:20 PM

I did it just the other day. Woo!

Super Step Contributing Writer

08/02/2020 at 05:04 PM

Woo.

Who's bad?

SanAndreas

08/02/2020 at 10:29 PM

John Jay Smith sure was all in on the Genesis. There are apparently licensing issues with his estate over Sonic 3 because of his involvement in composing its soundtrack. I guess he either liked Sonic the Hedgehog or the Genny's sound chip.

08/03/2020 at 10:02 AM

maybe it's because I grew up with it, but I love the Genesis FM chip. I think it sounds great. I've even used software based FM synth apps on my ipad. I love that sound.

Somewhere I've got an archive of almost every Genesis song available, but it needs winamp to play it. That's how long I've had it.

08/03/2020 at 01:29 PM

My cousin had a Genesis connected to his stereo back in the day. He mostly played Mortal Kombat on it, which had a unique soundtrack on the Genesis. That thing would really make the speakers thump.

I was a SNES boy myself, and I loved the soundtracks for Zelda, Metroid, and Final Fantasy. I had my SNES hooked up to a stereo as well. Even third party games like Zombies Ate My Neighbors did really good on the Sony sound chip for the SNES. It sounded better than the PC Soundblaster cards did.

08/03/2020 at 04:07 PM

Oh man, those old PC soundcards sounded like shit.

I do respect the SNES's sound though I never owned the console myself. I'm particularly fond of Super Mario World's soundtrack, and of course, the Final Fantasy games and Chronotrigger.

goaztecs

08/03/2020 at 12:40 PM

There were a handful of celebrity games that were not really good during this time. MJ, and the other MJ, Michael Jordan had that side scroller where you threw basketballs at bad guys. I didn't play much of this one because I figured what could the king of pop do other than make noises and dance.

08/03/2020 at 04:06 PM

Yeah, this one wasn't so good. But I played it enough to beat it, so it wasn't that terrible.

I have never even heard of the Jordan game.

PixlBit

Woo! - Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

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