Don't ask me why, but I actually had fun playing this game.
Graphically, Moonwalker isn’t the best Genesis game. The levels are simply detailed and few variety in the enemy characters. The animation of Michael Jackson is actually pretty good and his repertoire of dance moves comes off pretty good on the Genesis hardware. Sound contains digitized versions of various Jackson songs (my favorite is Smooth Criminal). If you don’t mind his music, you will be impressed on how well the songs translated into video game muzak. Though it adds more to the hilarity of the game, Jackson’s various “hee hee” and “Owww!” are also digitized well. The game play really isn’t radically different from conventional video games. It is more of the presentation that makes this game unique. Considering this game came out before all the scandals, the premise of Michael Jackson rescuing young children was more amusing than disturbing back then. I doubt anyone today would have anything to do with this game. Those players used to dispatching their enemies with swords, guns, ect. will just laugh at the idea of doing a Michael Jackson dance kick with magic stars flying out and having the unfortunate enemy fly off the screen. Despite all the reservations towards the subject matter, the game is actually put together well. It does provide enough challenge to keep most players busy.
Moonwalker definitely falls into the part of my collection of cult like games. Since I do own some rather out there titles, it fits in well. I have even noticed on EBay that does go for more than I paid for it used, which was around $10. I have become a little more open minded about what video games I will play since I was first exposed to this game. If Moonwalker wasn’t a decently produced game, I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.