The King of Games – A Look at an Icon

With our pastime, we are often presented with fantastical worlds and incredible characters capable of almost anything. But surely few gaming characters have ever been so unique, and unusual, as the one I’m going to look at today. As unrealistic as Bub ‘n’ Bob, as crazy as Parodius; it’s a sad thing indeed that Space Michael (or M. Jackson as he’s sometimes known) is unlikely to appear in any more games.

Since first appearing in the classic Moonwalker games; MJ has endeared himself to fans with his superhuman antics and his surreal world (not to mention that killer soundtrack). What other character has ever lived in a world so strange? Where touching a chimpanzee results in being transformed into a death-dealing, laser-firing, body-popping robot? Or the way his dance of death (literally) defied gravity, physics and the limits of the human body. He landed in arcades and on home consoles like a traveller from Mars, and set feet and trigger-fingers tapping to the beat. A true icon of gaming had arrived.

Other good things followed too; his increasingly outlandish appearance, and increasingly unbelievable physical moves, saw him appear as a Special Guest character in the Space Channel 5 and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing franchises. Both series were a good fit as he moved with impossible speed and grace, and spun and tilted in ways no mere human could hope to achieve.

So why didn’t the character go on to spawn more franchises and cross-over games? Was there no room for a Space Michael Kart Racer on shop shelves? Well, I can’t help but wonder if it was around this time that developers started to lose a grip on their creation. As developers looked to improve on past successes, design choices seemed to get stranger and stranger – leaving the partly-real world of early games far behind. A number of stylistic redesigns saw him end up looking like a goth/vampire character from Japanese anime; very far from the more regular appearance of his early sprites that had helped to cement his popularity. Sound design too was poor, with MJ apparently speaking an alien language of woops and hollers understandable only to him. Plus his constant queries as to “Who is bad?”, never seemed to be met with a satisfactory answer.

Game design and production were generally excellent, but there was one early, and now infamous, glitch in his games which resulted in the character moving backwards while the sprite’s animation was clearly walking forwards. Game designers claimed the glitch to be an intentional piece of design, but almost no-one was convinced.

And perhaps worst of all, were the plotlines. A convoluted and bizarre backstory was allowed to grow around the character. We were told that he lived in a fantasyland, that he acquired great wealth only to lose it again, and that he married Elvis Presley’s daughter of all people! But this only served to distract gamers from the great games that had made his name in the first place.

Whatever critics might say about the eccentric appearance and the strange goings on in the plotlines, it can’t be denied that Michael Jackson has left a significant and enduring legacy to gamers. With fun at their heart and a sense of the performer throughout, he leaves fans with a collection of memories as unique as he was. But is that the end?

Almost as quickly as we heard the character was no more, Dave Perry (formerly of Shiny Entertainment) announced that he had been developing a new game around the character. Like Duke Nukem before him, I suppose this offers a ray of hope to those fans who wish to believe their hero may rise again. That funding and a brave developer could be found to revive the project. But whatever the future brings, there’s always that back catalogue to delve into. To reminisce, to revel in the good times, and to pay respects to this truly great entertainer.