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Captain Ew By: Josh Adachi Can a video game scar you for life? Josh Adachi explores. That my father can consider me with anything other than embarrassment astounds me. Watching his first-born son openly weep because my Karate lessons caused me to miss DuckTales, probably wasn't one of the father-son activities he was looking forward to. Yet, as slappable as my desire to quit Karate was, my parents gave into my demands pretty quickly, and I remember the day that I sat in front of the TV screen watching Ducktales through tear-stained vision. One thing that my parents, and especially my father, seemed oddly reluctant to do, however, was to rent the Michael Jackson Moonwalker film for me. I was, at the time, addicted to the video game of the same title, and wanted the full Moonwalker experience. Thankfully, when he finally did cave in and allow me the exposure to the pedophile propaganda that it is, Gundam saved my masculinity. Let me explain. In Sega Genesis' Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, it is your job, as Michael Jackson, to fight or dodge your way through a slew of men in suits, men in hazmat suits, and zombies in order to save children from drugs. That's right, apparently adults (and zombies) are kidnapping children and forcing them to take drugs, and only Michael Jackson, and his monkey are standing in their way. From a technical standpoint, I'm not sure how you would classify Sega Genesis' Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (which is true of many good games that don't end up defining a genre). It's kind of a beat-em-up in that dudes are rushing at you, and you have to put them away, but it's kind of a shooter, because you have to flick these little fairy sparkles out of your feet and hands to do it. It's also a platformer since you have to jump around onto different landings, and occasionally your timing on these jumps will be important. The gameplay is as smooth and groovy as the the game's soundtrack, which includes a handful of Michael Jackson tunes arranged for the Genesis sound card and oh yeah, your supermove is making enemies dance with you. While Michael is responsive to every push of a button, the game necessitates that you develop a patient rhythm with your moves, as a second sprinkle kick will remove any sprinkles that remain from a previous kick, limiting your range. The rhythm and foresight needed to play through this limitation, actually makes the gameplay interesting, as the game coaxes you to move Michael Jackson in a dream-like dance. In terms of difficulty, the game is comfortably beatable. While the bosses are pretty lame (they mostly consist of the game spamming you with large amount of the level's enemies), this isn't a third party experience that uses cheap tricks to artificially amp up the difficulty. There are no zen-timing jumps, and no billion-hit bosses. In fact, I would argue that Michael Jackson wants you to beat this game. He WANTS you to save the children, which sort of means he wants to save you.
The last point is one where the game's philosophy peaks through and, grouped with the rest of the game, creates a rather worrying experience. As you may recall, Michael Jacksons' persona in the late 80's through early 90's was focussed heavily on the idea of children: saving them, loving them, singing to them, whatever. He built an amusement park at his house, complete with elephants and cotton candy, and began to entertain children under the guise of his campaign to "heal the world," while still showing up at public performances in gold bikini bottoms over his pants and grabbing himself in every way imaginable. Interestingly, all of these frightening aspects of Michael Jackson's character- all the warning signs that something was amiss, are on full-display in this video game. The game is rife with the counterbalancing of sexual come-ons and disarming asexuality that Michael Jackson had used throughout his successful career as a publicly visible child-abuser. Take the sole female enemy in the first zone. She does not outright attack Michael so much as hit on him. Yes, you will get attacked if you let her hold you up for too long, but shouldn't that be worth it? No, it is your job to whip-kick these fly-honeys out of your way, which doesn't kill them as it does with the other enemies. Oddly, it just leaves them freaked out to the point that they can't bear to look at you. What exactly does Michael do to these girls that leaves them so traumatized? The animation is vague and unique to this moment in the game, but here we have a strange interaction that can be read as a moral (read: repressed Christian boy) refusal of women, or as a startling revelation about Michael Jackson's genitalia.
When Michael Jackson's health meter decreases to the red zone, he loses his sparkle attacks and the difficulty approaches RE2's Tofu. His regular attack becomes a short kung-fu chop and his special attack button triggers an utterly useless crotch grab; a crotch grab which the player inevitably spams in the moments before his death. Here Jackson seems to be implying, "If I can't save the children, I will masturbate furiously in public."
I remember the afternoon several of the neighborhood kids stood in my bedroom, waiting to see the game in action. I powered it on, and drew gales of laughter from the disgusting pre-level animation of Michael Jackson "YOW"ing. I proceeded to purposely lose enough energy to commence the crotch grab, prompting more guffaws from my peers. This sort of thing is humorous in a group setting, but what happens when the young player is alone and trying to beat the game... when it is just an impressionable Sega fan and Michael. A boy of strong constitution, affluent in the martial arts, may have been wise enough to remove the game cartridge and just beat Altered Beast again, maybe on the "hard" setting; however, a stupider kid (me) may attempt to understand- to relate to- the Michael Jackson breed of person, if only in the name of Sega.
The arcade game of the same name was good and safe fun, and downright campy, due in part, perhaps to the fact that it was only played in public. I have memories of surly, unshaved 20-somethings, popping quarters into the machine with an expression of smug glee that I did not understand at the time: ironic detachment. Blessedly, and perhaps unintentionally, the Genesis title does offer the camp aesthetic as well. Although as a young boy in the ethnic suburbs of West Covina, I did not yet have the cultural tools to enjoy things ironically, zone 3, in which Michael Jackson sends zombies bouncing across the screen with sparkly kicks, is simply too ridiculous to take with any level of seriousness. Moonwalker would, in fact become my prototypal experience of this sort of comic distance that I would later attach to guilty pleasures like B-Movies and the occasional Yugi-Oh! episode. But, ironic detachment, I did not yet fully have, and thus I was still half-willing to follow Michael Jackson to the end. What I found there was thankfully so lame that it served to destroy the appeal of Michael Jackson-brand coolness. In the last level of the Genesis game, and in the last scene of the Moonwalker film, Michael Jackson transforms into a semi-giant robot. In the game, this makes the last level obscenely easy (in the movie, it provides a ridiculously convenient plot resolution), but what is most important about this robot is how lame it looks to anybody who's ever even thought of Japan.
I don't remember which I saw first, the MJ robot from the movie or from the game, but I do remember seeing a light out of the tunnel. Philosopher John Locke argues that people are not born with innate knowledge, that our thoughts are comprised of phenomena we've observed and our processing of that information. The Michael Jackson robot proves the contrary- that there are things that we know and have always known; you knew Michael Jackson was gay before you even knew what gay was.* Michael Jackson's persona in the early 90's was that of a powerful and talented musician who would take the time to get to know stupid little kids like me. The strange reality of it was that this wasn't a persona at all; Michael Jackson probably WOULD have made an effort to hang out with me. And even a crying, Karate-hating, Huey-lover like me would have been pretty weirded out by that. As such, this is the only game that makes me feel molested. But, it's possible that I'm being too hard on ole' Mike. Maybe the reason Michael Jackson remains a household name is because it's perfectly normal for pre-pubescent boys to relate to a hyper-horny yet sexually undefined character like Michael Jackson. My only remaining worry, then, would be for those who were never able to detach themselves from the Michael Jackson's aggressively erotic pity seeking- for all of us who never smirked at the zombies bouncing across the screen. -josh *Sorry, Fernando.
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