Michael Jackson has had his fair share of financial troubles, so it wasn’t surprising that thousands of his personal effects were to be auctioned off in order to pay down some debt.
Maybe Mr. Jackson has made some savvy money moves of late, but for whatever reason, the auction was canceled two days ago as part of a legal settlement. All of the items will be returned to him.
But among those items were 87 arcade games that Mr. Jackson had accumulated over the last couple of decades. The machines, made between 1979 and 2001, offer a rare glimpse at the man who for so many years has tried to regain his lost childhood. And as an old-school video game fan myself, I wanted to know how his collection would be regarded by some serious arcade-game enthusiasts.
“He’s clearly a total nerd,” says John Sellers, author of “Arcade Fever: The Fan’s Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games”, and one of three arcade experts I talked to about Jackson’s collection. “He’s probably the ultimate geek because he never grew up. Most geeks eventually realize it’s time to move on a little bit.”
As with many of his personal possessions, Mr. Jackson seems to have acquired things somewhat indiscriminately. It’s also unclear if he ever played the majority of these games.
“One of the things that stands out is the condition of these machines,” says Steven Kent, author of “The Ultimate History of Video Games”. “These machines are all pristine. Usually when you see a private collection, when machines are used, you see cigarette burns in the marquee.”
What was originally put up for auction was not Mr. Jackson’s entire video game collection; he naturally kept his four “Moonwalker” cabinets.
I asked John Sellers, Steven Kent and Keith Feinstein, a video game historian and analyst, to appraise the Gloved One’s collection. Their comments (made when the items were still for sale, hence some of the comments about price) accompany the images in the slideshow.
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