The King of Pop exhibits the true power of dance.

Michael!

Though Moonwalker stands as the first, last, and only game to feature Michael Jackson's name on the front of the box, it's not the last time the King of Pop would get involved in the interactive entertainment biz. In 2000, he made a cameo as himself in Sega's fabulously stylish rhythm action game Space Channel 5, which is a role that he would reprise in the 2002 sequel, Space Channel 5 Part 2. Michael would make his second appearance in 2000 on the Dreamcast in Midway's over-the-top boxing game Ready 2 Rumble Round 2, where he was included as a hidden character. Most recently, Michael Jackson's classic cuts "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Billie Jean," from the seminal Thriller album, both appeared on the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, though Michael himself was nowhere to be seen.

When MJ starts dancing, everyone follows suit.

In 1990, three years after the release of Michael Jackson's Bad and a little over a year and a half after the launch of the Sega Genesis in the US, Sega partnered with the pop icon to create Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Sega's surprisingly excellent side-scroller was loosely based on a film of the same name, which was kind of about Michael saving a trio of moppets from the evil, black-clad drug dealer Mr. Big (played with an appropriate amount of bravado by Joe Pesci). Mostly though, the movie served as a vehicle for several of Michael's Bad-era music videos. The film was a pretty insane fantasy yarn, and though watching Michael Jackson transform into a flying car and a giant robot may have been too much for movie audiences to handle, it turned out to be perfect fodder for a video game.

The premise of the game was simple. You had to save the children from Mr. Big and his seemingly endless army of zoot-suited pool hall thugs, bandana-wearing street toughs, dogs, jackbooted security guards, and zombies. Each level would include a specific number of children who were hidden in closets, behind bushes, inside the trunks of cars, and in other places where children generally shouldn't be. You had to snoop around the levels, find the kids, and fend off bad guys. Of course, Michael Jackson wasn't your typical side-scrolling action hero, so instead of using conventional weapons, he would best his foes by using the power of dance. Hitting the attack button would cause Michael to throw out his arm or toss his foot in the air, thus sending out a little sparkle of magic. If an enemy was touched by the magic of Michael's dance, he would ricochet violently off the screen.

And when the chips were down and the odds were against him, Michael had a special magic attack that he could call upon that, when used to its full potential, would cause all of the enemies onscreen to break into choreographed dance alongside Michael. Then they would collapse to the ground, presumably from exhaustion. Until you've seen a pack of Doberman pinschers dancing to "Beat It," you haven't lived. Adding to the Moonwalker experience was Michael's pet chimpanzee Bubbles, who would show up after you had found all of the kids in the level and would then point you toward the level boss. Also, a shooting star would show up in a few levels that, if caught, would inexplicably turn Michael Jackson into a totally sweet, gigantic robot.

Part of what made Moonwalker so amazing was how well it captured the essence of Michael Jackson the Pop Star. The soundtrack consisted solely of digitized MIDI versions of classic Michael Jackson songs, including "Smooth Criminal," "Beat It," and "Thriller," and at the time, it was as close to the real thing as you could possibly get. Some digitized trademark Michael Jackson voice samples helped to round out the sound design nicely. Despite being a pretty pixelated 2D sprite, Michael's animations, which deftly mimicked many of his most recognizable dance moves, left no question that you were Michael Jackson. Sega also released an arcade game around the same time, called Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, which was viewed from a three-quarters isometric perspective and shared many of the same basic concepts found in the Genesis game. It was a fine game in its own right, but it felt a little bit too much like a generic arcade beat-'em-up and didn't have quite the same level of personality as the Genesis version.

Thanks to the never-ending menagerie of highly publicized scandals and the ongoing bizarre behavior of the game's star, it's pretty easy to poke fun at Michael Jackson's Moonwalker these days. But if you can get past this disenchanted mind-set and remember that this genuinely enjoyable title was released back when Michael Jackson was the "King of Pop"--and not the center of a sad media sideshow--you'll see why we've named it one of the greatest games of all time.

I enjoyed this game for several reasons. First of all, the girls would shriek Michael's name when he rescued them. Then there were the MIDI renditions of several classic Jacko hit songs. And, of course, there was the dancing. Oh, the dancing. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker had no right being as totally awesome as it was, really. If you never played it, you're probably thinking that it was just another piece of licensed garbage that was shoveled out during the 16-bit era. However, the team behind Moonwalker made sure that it not only accurately portrayed the factual events of Moonwalker the movie, which was a hard-hitting documentary about Michael Jackson's ability to save children from Joe "Mr. Big" Pesci, but is also allowed you to turn into that giant robot after you caught a shooting star. It was completely bananas. I love Moonwalker!