“It turns out Michael wants to be in the game.”
That’s how Jake Kazdal, who worked on the game at Sega in 1999, remembers the moment the news reached his team. They were working in Sega’s office in Tokyo, Japan, on a brand-new game for the company’s Dreamcast console. It was almost finished. Kazdal says they had about a month left.
Then one of Sega’s top bosses came back from a trip to America and called the team together.
He told them Michael had seen the game. “He loves it,” Kazdal recalls him saying, “and he really, really wants to be in it.”
The game was called “Space Channel 5.” It’s a bright, silly, happy thing. You play Ulala, a TV reporter from the future with pink hair and an orange outfit. Little aliens invade, and Ulala fights back the only way she knows how. She dances. They make a move, she copies it to the beat and the crowd at home watches the ratings climb.
It isn’t hard to see why Michael liked it.
He’d been a Sega fan for years. Back in 1990, Sega had even made an arcade game starring Michael, called “Moonwalker,” where he uses his dance moves against the bad guys. So the company already knew him well.
Still, adding the biggest star on Earth to a game that’s nearly done is a lot to ask. The game’s creator reportedly wanted to say no at first. He worried there wasn’t time, and he wasn’t sure Michael would like what they could pull together.
The team saw it differently. Kazdal says they decided to “buckle up” and make it happen.
Here’s a TV ad for the game Michael fell for.
A TV ad for the game Michael loved
So what did Sega give him?
The team took one of the dancing characters in the game and turned it into Michael. They called him “Space Michael.” He wears a silver space suit, he dances with his own famous moves and he speaks in his own voice. Michael recorded the lines himself.
Michael approved. Guinness World Records says it was the first time a celebrity ever showed up in a music and rhythm game.
And it didn’t end there. When Sega made “Space Channel 5: Part 2” in 2002, Michael came back with a much bigger part. In the sequel he reportedly gets a promotion and becomes the new boss of the space TV station. This time, players could even make him dance.
Here’s Sega’s promo video for Space Michael in the sequel.
Michael’s bigger part in the sequel
The first game came out in Japan in December 1999 and reached America in June 2000. Even in the Japanese version, Space Michael speaks English in Michael’s own voice, with Japanese words along the bottom of the screen so players can follow along.