Genesis Retrospective: Zoe Quinn, um I mean Michael Jackson's Moonwalker!

So you may have heard of this Zoe Quinn malarkey? I have. While I have my views on it, both sides have acted like idiots (as they always fucking do, omg I don’t even know why I’m surprised) so I’m extremely tired of it. Therefore I’m doing another of my Retrospectives. It lives!


Yo dawg, I'm, like, alive and shit. Whatevs man. Radical.

Anyway, the game we’ll take down memory lane today is Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. Thinking about this game makes me laugh in many, many different way. First let’s talk about the premise.

You play as Michael Jackson and go through 5 stages which are split into 3 parts each. The goal of the game is too rescue children. Wait, what? Yep, rescue children, specifically Katie from the Moonwalker movie which the game is based on.

Now the game was released in 1990, before the charges of abuse were brought up. But still, it’s quite hard to look at the game in the same way in retrospect. I played the game in 1998 (I think, probably, sure lets go with that) and I was thinking ‘am I seriously playing this game?’ As a kid, I believed MJ was guilty as hell. Now, not so much. The point is, those events paint the game in a different light.


I love the guy but damn his personal life was messed up.

But moving past that, the gameplay consisted of MJ doing his thang, walking around, pulling some sweet ass dance moves and shooting sparkly projectiles from his hand. Because he’s the king of pop! Geddit? Nor do I. The levels are multi-layered and MJ usually works his way around, beating up gangsters in spiffing blue suits and some ‘ladies of the night’, I assume. His attacks include his signature hand flying out to the side, his wobbly leg thing that was cool for some reason and those aforementioned sparkly sparkles of death. And pop.

The goal is to open doors, where multiple Katies (again, I don’t know) are being held. One of the most annoying things in the game was that EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU SAVED KATIE, SHE WOULD SAY ’MICHAEL!’ AND IT GOT OLD REALLY FAST. Especially with the Genesis soundchip, which made her voice sound like Maleficent talking through a kitchen roll. Not pleasant. Eventually you’ll save all of Katie’s clones and then a money with a gun will appear, jump on your shoulder and guide you to where you have to go.
I’m not even going to comment on this, there really is no need.


Monkey's fucking wrecking shit, getting his hoes back from da man yo!

Once you reach the area that Monkey wants, he’ll fuck off and then a minority in a trench coat will say ‘HAHA! YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME!’ He will then run away, while MJ stands by like an idiot and a flood of enemies invade the screen. This is where you can use the best, most awesome thing in the game. Pressing down a button makes MJ spin like a Beyblade spun by Super Saiyan level 4 Goku. It drains health but you’ll not need it. If held for more than 2 seconds, the enemies will awkwardly jiggle themselves into position and perform a dance number! Seriously! It’s pretty rad, they do that leaning crazily to one side thing and then everyone except MJ dies, usually. Too much fabulous, not enough time.


So, so, so much kawaii desu.

It’s pretty much this for the entire game. Each stage has its own theme (club, street, woods, cavern and hideout in that order) and own enemy types, including thugs in hawt leather jackets, zombies that love jumping and generic military laser gun men in blue and green varieties. But it’s the final fight that settles this game as a masterpiece (slight hyperbole there). After doing that you’ve done the entire game, you’ll face minority in trench coat one more time. And…he fucks off again! No fight against him, no sir. Instead about 100 enemies will flood the screen. But wait, why is MJ flashing? What’s this cut-scene? What’s on MJ’s face? IS HE TURNING WHITE? Oh shit, he’s turned into a…robot?


KELLLLLLLLLL! I'M SCARRRRRREEEEEEDDDDDDD!

This game guys and gals. This game. So MJ is now a robot that can shoot laser out of his eyes. Time to wreck shit! After killing way too many enemies, it’s done, a message screen commends you for killing all the bad guys, evading all the traps and ‘saving’ the kids. They will love their new home at GajKnight’s Brothel™. Not really. It’s not called GajKnight’s Brothel.

But wait, there’s more! It’s seems, wait, it’s time to fight Mr Big (really, that’s his name. Yeah.) So off we go to space in our spaceship in pursuit. Wait, wait a minute, wait. WHAT?!!!


Literally my reaction.

So after killing bad guys by making them fall over, following the directions of a monkey and turning into a mecha, the only logical conclusion is a space battle, amirite? I can dig it. The actual battle itself is from a cockpit view and has you lining up shots to take out Mr Big and various ships. It’s pretty crude honestly, not the hype as hell ending I expected. But you are playing as Mecha Jackson in space. That’s still pretty hype, all things considered. Beating Mr Big rewards you with a cut-scene of Mecha Jackson flying off to god knows where, probably Uranus to rescue the indigenous people from the plague of Justin Beiber or something, I dunno. Then the credits roll and MJ is shown dancing. With a random black kid because why not?


Just had to put this here. Great tune!

Honestly, I’ve never seen Moonwalker so I don’t know if all these things are part of the movie. But judging the game on its own, it’s just batshit insane. It has no context, no reasoning for anything (who da fuck is dat monkey though?!) and it’s just plain weird to see people being killed by dancing. Though I’ve definitely hurt many people with my sick moves (read: literally, they make people sick), I’ve never killed anyone. Intentionally.

I couldn't talk about this game without mentioning the controversy around its soundtrack. Apparently MJ himself worked on the music, something which he denied afterwards, yet Sega insist he did. I don’t know and frankly I don’t care because I love the soundtrack. Trying to get MJ’s music to run on the Genesis and still keep that soul and tone of the original is not an enviable task by any means. Fun, exciting, maybe. But you probably don’t want to mess that up. Thankfully all the tracks are well done and keep the music intact while playing to the Genesis’s strengths: sick bass and thumping good tunes.



The bass is so nice in these tracks. Just sitting there in the background giving a nice ambience to everything. The punchy tunes are classic Genesis sounds and mesh well with MJ’s music. These versions are very close to the originals I found. Unique enough to stand on their own but similar enough to invoke that nostalgia value.








Well that’s another soundtrack done and dusted. As always, download links for the tracks are below in various formats. So what do you think? Does the game pique your interest? How’s the music? Is Mecha Jackson the most awesome thing ever concocted?! Sound off below. Thanks for reading nerds!

Download Links.
http://www.16bitaudiophileproject.org/michael-jacksons-moonwalker/
FLAC, MP3, you get the drill.

- lol ur mum

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