Everyone has heard around the world that the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, has passed away. Besides his great contribution to music throughout his life, he also was very big into video games. Long before Guitar Hero ruled the music gaming realm, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker did. Back in 1990 I was both an MJ fan and a gamer, so I spent lots of time and quarters playing the famous Moonwalker games.

One of the best parts of the arcade version was that 3 people could play at once. No longer would one buddy in your mall trio have sit on the sidelines while you and your best friend plunked tokens down like mad in Aladdin's Castle. Now this is the year 1990, and all of the allegations of child molestation are years away, so while you and your buddies battled gangsters and a digitized Joe Pesci, none of us never thought twice about out MJ clones freeing little children. All we cared about was hitting baddies and turning into the awesome Michael Jackson robot, raining hellfire and choreographed dance moves down upon your enemies to your favorite Jackson hits. The arcade version of Moonwalker was 5 levels of quarter eating fun. This is a must play now if you have MAME chilling on your computer or if by some stroke of genius is released for download on the consoles. 

After being a #1 arcade hit, all of us kids waited impatiently for the home version of the Moonwalker adventure. SEGA came through with the 16-bit version of the game for the SEGA Genesis. The first thing you felt when loading up the game was disappointment. Gone was the 1/3 overhead view from the arcade, no more multiplayer at all, and it was a sidescrolling Shinobi-ish clone. Still, it was alot better than most of the stuff out there. You still got to do your special musical dance attacks, kick and punch glitter at bad guys, chase after an even more revolting Joe Pesci, and zap everything in your Jackon robot form. I played this game for hours on end, over and over again. I swear I "Beat It" 8 times in one week. It was so cool to make all the bad guys on the screen do the unassisted lean while digitized "Smooth Crimal" blared from your TV set. You sat in awkward bewilderment as as Bubbles the monkey skittered across the screen to escort saved children to safety. Nothing felt more satisfying that glitter kicking gangsters in the crotch to progress through the game.

Moonwalker produced two really fun games filled with lots of memorable moments. It also did what other games based on music artists didn't do, be incredibly successful. If you can't track down actual copies, I urge you to find the ROMS of these immediately and enjoy some awesome retro music gaming.