Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (Genesis)

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
Also known as: Moonwalker (BR box art) Developer: Sega R&D2 Publishers: Sega (US/JP/EU), Tec Toy (BR) Platform: Genesis Released in JP: August 25, 1990 Released in US: September 1990 Released in EU: February 1991 Released in BR: 1991 This game has a hidden level select. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article

A platformer starring the titular much-influential singer and dancer, based on the 1988 anthology film Moonwalker.

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Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Level Select

Hold Up + Left + A on Controller 2 upon starting the game, then hold Start on Controller 2 when the Sega logo appears. Once the title screen appears, hold Up + Left + A on Controller 1 and press Start. Lastly, choose the number of players to be taken to this screen.

Revisional Differences

Music

Level Used In	Sound ID	Revision 0	Revision 1
Woods, Round 3-1	$95
Woods, Round 3-2	$96
Woods, Round 3-3	$97

In Revision 0, renditions of the song "Thriller" are heard as the music snippets when doing the Dance Attack in Rounds 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, and 5-3. In Revision 1, these snippets were changed to have another Michael Jackson song, "Another Part of Me", though curiously the one for Round 3-3 got replaced in the actual game by a reused "Billie Jean" snippet and is instead unused despite having been changed like the other two.
The reason the music was different is that, as seen in a prototype of the game, originally "Thriller" fittingly was the stage music of the graveyard-themed Round 3. According to the game's composer Hiroshi Kubota, this was an early instance of altering a video game soundtrack due to music licensing issues. As their deadline approached, the developers were informed that only songs written by Jackson himself were available to be used (which "Thriller" wasn't, having been penned by Rod Temperton). This was changed at the last minute but with the unchanged Dance Attack snippets still making it to the initial release.

Platform Bug

In Revisions 0 and 1, a bug allows the player to fall through multiple platforms without stopping by attacking mid-fall. Notably, this can save time in Round 4-2 if used correctly. This was fixed in Revision 2.

Round 6

Please elaborate. Having more detail is always a good thing. Specifically: How so?

The difficulty of Round 6 was reduced in Revision 2.