The King of Pop’s legendary Sega Genesis adventure is coming to Wii, says the European game ratings board.
The Pan European Game Information website has listed Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker as an upcoming game for the Wii’s Virtual Console download service. Moonwalker was one of the better licensed games of the 16-bit era, featuring chiptune versions of many of Jackson’s songs and hot* *”Smooth Criminal” pixelized dance moves, as illustrated.
I’d assumed that this game would never be seen again, given that Sega would actually need to secure the rights to MJ’s image, songs, etc. all over again, and the revenues from a downloadable Wii game might not be enough to cover that. But it seems to have worked out.
Sega has not made any official announcement of the game, and the ESRB has not rated it for America.
In other Virtual Console news, as of late:
- Nintendo said today that, no, there are not yet enough duplicates of Wonder Boy games on the Virtual Console, and that to fill this gaping hole Sega has released the Master System version of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap today. This is basically identical to the TurboGrafx game Dragon’s Curse, already available on the service. I have updated the Wonder Boy page accordingly.
- Konami said that it would bring a variety of its classic games for the MSX computer to Japan, including the first two Metal Gear games. The first five games — Yie Ar Kung Fu 2, Space Mambo, Metal Gear, Road Fighter, and Penguin Adventure — will be released in November, with more games to follow, including Solid Snake and Contra.
- Another classic system that hasn’t gotten much love on Virtual Console is the Neo Geo. After over a year of inactivity, more SNK games are appearing on the service. On November 4, D4 Enterprise released Fatal Fury Special. And even more interestingly, later this month it will release Choutetsu Brikinger, a very rare shooter that was only released in limited quantities on the Neo Geo CD system.
- Square Enix is releasing Romancing SaGa on Virtual Console in Japan, which I imagine will be followed by the rest of the Super Famicom’s SaGa games. More Square Enix classics that we can’t have. How about something that actually shipped in the U.S., for once? I liked Illusion of Gaia, for instance.
- Still no Earthbound.