Trivia / Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

• Dummied Out: There's 3 extra Dance Magic tracks that don't get used in the Arcade game for unknown reasons.
• Executive Meddling: The graveyard stages with zombie foes practically cry out for the song "Thriller" to be in the game's soundtrack, but due to licensing issues (read: the devs were only allowed to use songs written by Michael, and "Thriller" was not), only the original revision of the game actually has it, and only when using a Dance Attack. Later copies instead use "Another Part of Me" for everything.
• Killer App: The first Genesis game to be a real hit in its own right — Altered Beast (1988) was the first one to gain any level of popularity, but was included with most consoles — which was almost certainly due primarily to Michael Jackson's involvement, but proved to Sega that they weren't going to get anywhere by trying to compete with Nintendo head-on, and that they needed to target an older audience for the console.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Like many other games featuring Jackson (excluding Space Channel 5), licensing issues has made sure this game has stayed out of print for nearly thirty years.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A 1993 sequel was planned, but was axed due to the child molestation accusations against Jackson at the time. He was also rumoured to have been rebooting the game in 2009 for seventh-generation consoles, but his death caused the game to be shelved. It was replaced by the Rhythm Game Michael Jackson: The Experience.
  • Moonwalker received a PEGI rating for the Wii Virtual Console 4 months after Jackson's death, but it was never released on the service, presumably due to licensing issues between Sega, Jackson's estate, and Nintendo.
  • In 2018 a beta version of the game surfaced, revealing that a full version of "Thriller" actually was coded into the game for the graveyard stages, but deleted from the final version.

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