Bare Knuckles: Don't forget Jackson's serious link to gaming

Although plans for his memorial service are still pending, maybe you have hit Michael Jackson overload by the time you read this. He is all over the place, and while we savor his music, it hasn't taken long for the post-mourning sordidness to surface.

But there is one more thing we should consider in this column - MJ was a serious gamer.

Legend has it that he was so enamored with Mortal Kombat that he would take it on tour with him. Not the console version, mind you, but the arcade cabinet!

And who can forget about the 1990 release of Moonwalker on the Sega Genesis? A side-scrolling button-masher, co-produced by Jackson, where dance moves replaced the kicking and punching of other games. The object of the game was to rescue little girls from the onscreen nemesis Mr. Big.

The best part was MJ's "super-move," where he could make the onscreen thugs dance in unison (think of his Thriller video zombies) and perish at the end of the routine. It's hilarious to view now, but it was pretty thrilling back then.

There have been rumors that Sega will re-release the game by download, but nothing has been confirmed as of yet.

Stories also are circulating that MJ was considering the release of a new collection of songs as some sort of video game first, and then releasing the album. Who knows how far that had gone before his passing June 25, but it would have been an interesting exercise.

Look, I think most people believe Michael Jackson was probably a bit too much about fun and games and less about the reality of adulthood. That doesn't mean his contributions to pop culture should be diminished any, even when it comes to video games.

The entertainment tracking company NPD Group released its Game Augmentation 2009 report this week. One of the tidbits that stuck out was a pretty substantial jump in the number of female gamers for last year in the United States.

According to the report, the percentage of female gamers increased from 23 percent in 2008 to about 29 percent this year. The company points to the Wii as fueling the upsurge, and that seems about right. I am just glad that it is more about a different way to play games rather than developers' making games about cooking and the like in order to make inroads with girls and women. In other words, we really can increase the female gaming population without reinforcing stereotypes. Imagine that.