How Michael Jackson wanted to appear in Space Channel 5

Siliconera.com has recently interviewed one of the developers of the Japanese company Sega’s Shibuya, Jake Kazdal, who contributed to the development of games such as Space Channel 5, which is famous for having a version of Michael Jackson in it, dubbed Space Michael.

Kazdal talked about how Michael Jackson wanted to get involved in the game.

"We were in the middle of production of Space Channel 5, in 1998 or 1999. I got a call from the U.S. from my partner - the executive producer of Space Channel 5 - and he said, 'Oh, Michael wants to act in Space Channel 5.' I said, 'Who's Michael?' 'Who is Michael Jackson?' he said, 'The Michael Jackson - the real Michael Jackson'

My partner had shown him the 60-to-70 percent complete version, when it was almost at the end of the game. We had one month to finalize. But Michael wanted to do something, so we suggested that if he was OK with it, we could program the people in the game to do the Michael Jackson dance when taken over by aliens. he said 'yeah.' We initially had five aliens who danced. One of them became Michael Jackson."

“So, this is a funny story. We were late in development and there was no Space Michael,” Kazdal began, after we brought the subject up. “And we were laaaaaate, like almost beta, I want to say? And one day, [Shuji] Utsumi-san, who was the head of Sega’s development at the time in Japan — who is now the president of Q-Entertainment with [Tetsuya] Mizuguchi-san — came into our office.”

“We were in a remote office, we were not down at Haneda’s main corporate office. We were up in Shibuya, we had our own office up there with a couple smaller teams like AM1 and CSK. And we had sort of an impromptu meeting, and he’s like, ‘So, umm… I just got back from the states, and…’”

Kazdal continued, adding a little background on Utsumi: “He’d helped launch the PlayStation. He’s oldschool, he’d been around forever, he’s done a lot of cool stuff. He said, ‘I had a meeting, and umm…it turns out Michael wants to be in the game.’ And everyone was like, ‘What? Michael? What are you talking about?’”

“And he was like, ‘Yeah. Michael Jackson. He saw the game and he loves it and he really, really wants to be in it.’ And we had like a month left. And we were like, ‘What the hell. Let’s do it.’ So we buckled up and we just made it happen, and yeah, it was super-awesome.”

“Of course, obviously, we were super-stoked,” Kazdal recalls. “They’d worked with him before on Moonwalker, so there was a relationship there and I forget how we got the data in there. I want to say we used the Moonwalker stuff, but I can’t confirm that. I don’t remember the details. But yeah, it was exciting. It was like a complete rush, like slam, and we got it done and we were stoked that we got to include him in the game.”

Space Michael was based on and voiced by Michael Jackson. After being rescued by Ulala from the Rhythm Rogues, Michael uses his singing skills against a singing robot and joins her to fight against Purge. First appearing as a cameo in Part 1, he had a more prominent role in Space Channel 5: Part 2 where he became the new head of Space Channel 5. While Ulala is distracted by a fake scoop, the headquarters are attacked and Space Michael is kidnapped by Purge and the Rhythm Rogues and has to be rescued by Ulala in a level featuring several of Michael's trademark dance moves. He then joins Ulala in facing up against Purge.

In both versions of the game, Michael speaks in English, which is subtitled into Japanese in the Japanese version.