Killer7 SINdicate

Bruno de Figueiredo wrote:At the age of 50, Michael Jackson death was made public only a few hours ago. The legendary musician, to whom many have called the King of Pop, has passed away victim of a cardiac arrest. While the last years of his career were marred by matters of his personal life, I wish to remember this icon from the videogame player’s perspective: not only as a character in several videogames, but as a myth whose rise to greatness was parallel to the evolution of the game’s industry and whose music most arcade game players used to listen and dance to in the same place or at the same time they'd drop quarters on their favorite arcade.

In the year 1990, SEGA of America was desperately seeking new advantages with which to claim its share of the market. Seeing that the superior hardware – in comparison with Nintendo’s 8-Bit console – wasn’t enough to take over the market, the company decided to get in touch with top celebrities from the world of music and sports. The image of these superstars would indeed provide SEGA with the needed help, increasing sales of hardware and software dramatically. In this same year, SEGA contacted Michael Jackson for a game adaptation of the 1988 movie Moonwalker, leading to a series of games that spanned from the arcades to home and portable consoles. While a game by the same name was first created by U.S. Gold in 89, SEGA’s version, actually called “Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker” is generally acknowledged as the superior and official version.

I remember playing this arcade version when I was younger, when the game was installed for a few weeks in an upright cabinet in some local club: the sound was so high that one could hear the repeated presentation (or insert coin screen) from a mile away. When the coin entered the slot, I distinctly remember hearing a loud voice saying “MOONWALKER”. The little story would be displayed on screen with the help of a few comic vignettes at the sound of a very nicely digitized version of “Bad”. The isometric perspective made the game quite appealing: between battling monsters and rescuing little children, I enjoyed the power-up which allowed Michael to turn into a robot. I think me and my brother played mostly for the fun of listening to the music being processed in real time by the arcade sound chip. Still it is one of the arcade games I best remember from those days…

I never owned the Mega Drive cartridge, but I borrowed it from a friend for a while. I had seen brief flashes of this game in the television ad for Mega Drive and always felt like giving it a go. By the time I got to try it, the game wasn’t as much of a novelty… still the chip versions of Michael’s tunes kept me going – I often showed them to friends and family via sound test in the options menu – as well as Michael’s animation: being able to press and hold B then the D-pad in the contrary direction resulted in Michael performing his fabled “Moonwalker” step. Apart from that there were many other dancing steps that weren’t exactly functional: their inclusion, however, allowed every player to create his own stylish combo of fighting and dancing moves. The game was also ported to Master System and Game Gear, whose versions of MJ’s tunes were pretty accurate, considering the extreme limitations of those sound processors.

Of all the collaborations between SEGA and Michael, Sonic 3 is undoubtedly the most intriguing. Although fans had roused some suspicions by the time of its launch, it was only years later that fans gathered evidence pointing towards an ineffectual joint venture for the creation of the game’s soundtrack. Or was it? As demonstrated in this and other fan-made documents, this third episode of the blue hedgehog’s adventures featured a series of themes that resemble some of Michael’s greatest hits. Some claim that SEGA cancelled the deal because of all the controversy surrounding the celebrity, hiring Howard Drossin to compose the remaining themes; others still believe that Michael’s music production machine created the soundtrack but wished to remain anonymous.

Not too many years ago, just as I was exploring my newly acquired Dreamcast, I sat down to play a very unique game named Space Channel 5. Created by UGA (an internal division of SEGA led by the prodigal Tetsuya Mizuguchi) this rhythm-based game about a dancing news reporter has an interesting cameo of Michael Jackson named Space Michael and he is described as a singer who is worshiped across the galaxy. Kidnapped by the aliens (in Part 1) and later by the Robots (in Part 2) Space Michael was actually voiced by none other than MJ himself. This interesting cameo not only tells of an enduring relationship between SEGA and this artist, but also of an intrinsic admiration of the game’s creators towards this icon (at the time of the game’s release, Michael’s image was already becoming tainted).

As a conclusion to this improvised post I would like to stress how important it is that Michael Jackson should be remembered for his creations. Personally I am not a fan of his works and the last years of my life I've grown to admire music from a completely different angle. I'm not grieving his death as if it was personal to me. Truth be told, I never owned a record of his and I never even felt like placing a poster of him on the wall: but I would be lying if I said his music and exceptional dancing skills didn’t influence most of us in 1980s and 90s. As it happens with so many celebrities, we should not be as pretentious as to affirm to know the person or to be in a position to scrutinize his personal life. Let us take pleasure in his tunes, his classic hits, his dancing steps and even in his games - why not?

"So this is sort of a cool story," Trump Jr. said. "Michael Jackson used to come up and he was our neighbor at Trump Tower.

"So I was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Michael Jackson! You know, this is in the early 90s—maybe even in the late 80s. Peak Michael.

"We're playing Nintendo and Michael really likes the game. So my dad walks in and says 'well why don't you take the game Michael?'

"And so I'm sitting there like—," he said, before making an expression of disbelief.

"My parents made us work for the things that we wanted and it was one of the great things they did for us," he continued.

"So that took me whatever it was time to earn it — I'm pretty sure Michael could've called Nintendo and said I want one of those. It wouldn't have been a big deal, but he just took it.

"I was like, 'What's going on here?'"