Michael Jackson was one of the most interesting popular dancers of the modern era, which makes him the perfect focus for a dancing video game. That game, Michael Jackson The Experience, is coming out this winter. Ubisoft dropped by my office to show it off to me.
The game follows the same basic gameplay as Ubisoft’s wildly successful Just Dance, in which you emulate the movements on an onscreen avatar, in this case Michael himself. Michael dances center screen while on the left an indicator shows how you are supposed to move your arms. You can dance either as Michael or as his background dancers, whose choreography is less complex. One of you can dance as Michael while the rest do background dancing or you can all do Michael, or whatever you like.
The choreography is very typical of Michael Jackson, and is apparently a mix of what he actually did in videos with moves that are Jacksonesque but perhaps easier for the typical living room dancer. The animated Michael himself looks terrific, with his one gloved hand shining to show you where the Wii remote should be.
Ubisoft’s PR team included a seemingly inexhaustible dancer, and as she danced along she did all the little head bops and leg movements that Michael did, even though the game only scores you based on the movement of the Wii remote. I thought she was just showing off, but when I tried the game out for myself, I found you really had to do all those other movements to get the timing right. The result is I really felt like I was dancing.
I saw three songs, Billie Jean, Beat It and Working Day & Night, an older song in which Michael has an afro and looks like he’s on the set of 1980s-era Soul Train. Later at New York’s Comic Con I saw a bunch of people doing Smooth Criminal, and I hope I didn’t look as terrible as they all did (I probably did). The full track list hasn’t been announced yet, but will hopefully include Thriller, since I already sort of know the choreography for that one.
Based on the dancing I did, I have high hopes for the Michael Jackson game, which seems a step or two up in fun from Just Dance. While the ultimate version of the game should be the Kinect version for the Xbox 360 that comes out next year, in which you both dance and sing, the Wii version comes out first, in late November, and I expect it will be a huge hit.
