Moonwalker review - Sega Megadrive

When Moonwalker first came into the office, it proved to be extremely popular - just for the comedy value alone. Cameo screens with an animated Michael asking "Who's Bad?" give this game a comic aspect unrivalled by any other Megadrive game. The formation dancing is great as well - even the dogs and spiders join in! However, as with the Master System version, the limited gameplay may put a lot of hardened gamesters off. Highly recommended to Jackson fans (are their any left?) who like rescuing kids.

Similar in many respects to the Master System version, but with better defined graphics and some great tunes and sampled speech (all the "aaows" and "ooohs" you could possibly want, and even a "who's bad?" thrown in for good measure), this platform game offers a load of laughs. There are some great touches, my favourite being the formation-dancing dogs when you use your magic at the end of level two - they're hilarious. Like the Master System version, Moonwalker isn't a particularly tough game, and good players might find themselves completing it all too quickly. And even though there's plenty of fun to be had doing it, that might not be enough for some.

Jackson's career is pretty much in tatters today, so it's easy to forget that not so long ago he was the biggest star on the face of the Earth. Moonwalker the movie may have come at a time when he was just starting his slippery slide into loonsville, but Sega still did well to secure his support in the 16-bit console war. Moonwalker the game is a side-scrolling platform affair (the arcade game was an isometric action title - shame Sega didn't convert it as it's brilliant) and as such provides little in the way of surprises. The 'save the kids' concept is straight out of Shinobi, for example. The only original touch is the idea of 'dancing' your enemies to death, and these animations never get dull. The representations of Jackson's music are decent enough considering the limitations of the Megadrive's sound chip. All in all, there's not a great deal here to keep you interested, but that's not to say it's a terrible game.