Michael Jackson worked on Sonic 3?
 

http://gonintendo.com/?p=1667

All I can say is, "Wow."

For those that can't or don't want to watch this movie. It's believed that such tracks as "Ice Cap Zone", "Carnival Night Zone", "Launch Base Zone", and the credits theme were all composed by Michael Jackson, and there's some compelling evidence to back this up.

Intriguing, but entirely circumstancial. Perhaps it's true, but to me, it's just an amusing theory.

That was just a tad bit surreal. Thanks for inability to never again being able to disassociate.

Well, the timing of the compositions and melodies are comparable to his involvement with Sega and Moonwalker. I don't have anything against Jacko personally, as he's never caused me anguish, so it wouldn't bother me if he had actually contributed.

Just the same, I do feel as though some people are grasping at straws when they superimpose these tracks and compare them note-for-note. Even if Jackson had written them, what would it effectively change?

Oh wait, Jackson would be a bona fide VGM composer!

For my next SotW nomination, I choose:

Track: Billie Jean
Artist: Michael Jackson
Album: Thriller
Year: 1982
Track #: 6
Catalog Number: QE-38112 (vinyl)/EK-38112 (compact disc)

DO I SMELL GOLD MEDAL, HMM?

Licenced from Grand Theft Auto, sorry, ineligible.

Actually, one would have to look no further than rule #2 to prove its ineligibility. ;)

Double Post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:So...les_Collection

After reading the part about the composers who are credited for Sonic 3's music (see the post by 71.71.241.224 and below), I would have to say this whole thing is very believable.

This is all very interesting, but not surprising, since Jackson had close involvement with Sega until his 1993 scandal broke loose. It's no secret that music stars from Japan have worked on Sonic music in the past, so why not have the "King of Pop" on Sonic 3? After all, Sonic sold much better in the US than Japan; up until 1993, Jackson was still a very desired commodity.

Sonic 3 just actually became cooler for me.

Yeah, I'd believe he had some involvement. There's a lot of evidence that points to this now. However, is all of the music in the game his or a derivative of his work, or just a few tracks?

This explains, in a stroke, my irrational dislike for this and most Sonic music.

Seriously though, who *is* credited with the Sonic 3 music?

Launch Base is too good for Michael Jackson :(

Hoo boy, this is surprising. I was looking up Sonic 3 composer info on GameFAQs just two days ago and never saw his name on there...

Out of those four, Ice Cap Zone is the best. Carnival Night is the worst, IMO.

Bring back the glory days of Sonic Team. Bring back Michael. Revive it with the King of Pop.

I wonder why he wasn't credited originally if that was his music. Maybe some Japanese composer was a big fan of Jackson's and ripped off the chord progressions.

Brad Buxer, Bobby Brooks, Darryl Ross, Geoff Grace, Doug Grigsby III, Cirocco (credited as "Scirocco")

All of which have worked with Micheal Jackson on his music at one point or another.

It's quite likely that Jackson never physically worked on the Sonic 3 music himself, but Jackson's "people" did, which is why the similarity exists. However, it would take Jackson to bring all of these people to Sega, so he is somewhat responsible for the music, at the very least.

I swear, Michael Jackson has a hand in everything.
Everything. >_>
He just owns little bits of so many things, like those Beatles songs (which I don't know if he has anymore or not...I think he might have sold them). And now, even video games. I'm going to have to go back and play my old Genesis now....

Quite intriguing! The evidences are all pointing into that direction, but it reminds me of some surreal theories like the Bigfoot & such; the way things are presented, it can trick some people's mind. But still, there's no proof Michael didn't do that music.

Have anyone tried to contact Jackson's representants and ask about this? Maybe they'd deny it though, if indeed Sega cut the deal when his scandal came up.

I dunno. It would hardly have been negative publicity for Jackson to have been associated with Sonic 3 back in the day, when he was still the King of Pop. It's unimaginable to me that, had Jackson really had a hand in composing for Sonic 3, he would go completely uncredited and Sega wouldn't have used his name in any capacity. They certainly weren't shy about touting Dreams Come True as the composers for Sonic 1, so why wouldn't they have Michael Jackson plastered all over the Sonic 3 ads?

aHeeHee, Boing!
 

I agree with Watts & Arkhangelsk, i.e. the bits about the japanese composer just re-hashing the chords in his own way for the game, and about having a hankering to play sonic 3 again! but my hats off to Qjimbo and Kaleb G. for making/finding this...I had my brother and sisters around when watching this not only were we laughing in awe...but man that mix of Ice cap + MJ's Who is it...simply uncanny!

As a musician, I find it awfully difficult to buy into this.

For the similarities between Carnival Night Zone and whatever Jackson's version was, the creator of the video has a point. The little fragmented melody at the end of the loop for CNZ is the same as the fragment in Jackson's song. Of course, it's also a two-note pattern going upwards in a scale.

The chord progression between Ice Cap Zone and whatever the other one is by far the most ... strange evidence to me. I'm not quite sure what the writer is saying that G Minor is the relative minor of EFlat Major. That's just ...outright...wrong. While he's right, there is only one note different (EFlat Major is Eflat, G, Bflat, G minor is G, Bflat, D), the relative minor of EFlat Major should be C Minor. And the chord progression between "Ice Cap Zone" and "Who Is It" holds no similarities aside form starting on the same chord. There are reasons that chord progression fits with Ice Cap, but, that's not really worth explaining. I'll attest it off to us being very used to hearing things in a jazz style, things like Dominant 9th, Dominant 11th, and even Dominant 13ths, along with minor versions... there's a whole plethora of a mess that I can get into describing these chords. And there are a lot of chords that are similar, which makes sense: in a certain key (especially in pop music) you're going to use a lot of the same chords over and over. But it's the *order* of these chords which matters. Not the sheer usage of them.

Also, I believe the composer(s) for the sonic games has always been written as "Sonic Team" - never one composer, or composers. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one.

Bling.Bling.Bling.BlingityBling! Sha-moan-A!
 

tetre , I see what you're trying to say , however there are other references thats leading us to believe this whole MJ/sonic 3 ...er..scandal? primarily:

1) The wikipedia discussion detailing who the people in the credits were
(especially the fact that "Michael Jackson brought the team to Sega, not
vice-versa")

2) Other songs especially `Stranger in Moscow' and the final credits tune go
pretty well together (why Jackson/his music people would decide to steal
back a song they decided for a video game years ago is anyone's guess)
Give this mix a listen though: http://cinos.gunsha.com/s3_credits_mj.mp3

3) Last I read the original lot who made the documentary have actually gotten
hold of one of the musicians and are aiming to clear this up...all the
theories evidence etc seem positive (the original authors forum is: http://www.sws2b.com/forums/index.ph...opic=6683&st=0

I'll tell you this though...this is definitely a strange form of VG Drama!

That, and if you go to Cirocco's homepage, it even says:
Obviously they mean "Sonic the Hedgehog 3", but you get the idea.

From what one of the former game devs wrote to us, Michael Jackson was SUPPOSED to do the music for Sonic 3 - but this got public, and they canned the whole thing and rewrote all of the music. That's pretty much all we know about the issue so far, although its true that many of the people in the Sonic 3 music credits did formerly work with Jackson.

Perhaps we may find out more about the deal soon though.

(and I can't believe that that video made it to youtube)

Boy, I feel as if my copy of sonic three was just molested.

Innocent, until convicted. :biggrin:

*edit* Uhh I mean't as far as Jackson is concerned... not me!

Aw c'mon, 90s Michael Jackson was cool, before he had that fatal accident and had to be replaced with a child-molesting soundalike.

You better be quiet or he'll send his legions of Thriller Zombies to touch you in inappropriate places while you sleep.

For those interested, the non-tubed original, hi-res video is up at the sonic cult.

http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.ph...bid=3&artid=16

hopefully some of the people who worked on the game can be contacted soon for addittional info, as this MJ thing is pretty much speculation so far.

Wow now that's funny! :lol:

I always thought that some tracks could have been composed by Michael Jackson (especially Launch Base) and it seems they have really been composed by him. Anyway, It doesnt change the fact that all the Sonic The Hedgehog soundtracks rocked at their time.

:edgarrock:

i think the reason they switched the music for ice cap, launch base, carnival night, and the 1st boss theme (which they left off for the video) for the pc version was that all of those songs used some weird samples or sounds from the fm synth that midi couldn't properly reproduce.

boss song: most of this is samples. it would sound terrible as midi.
ice cap: wouldn't sound too bad, but the kick drum would sound really weak, and there would be no samples during the song otherwise.
launch base: the "whistle" effect they have going with the squares would sound worse, and again, no samples.
carnival night: lots of samples - kick drum, a lot of snares, and the music sounded shitty to me anyway, so i'm glad they changed it (same with the boss, really).

they also changed the music for the competition menu and the credits, which wouldn't have been too hard to change to midi. it's possible that jackson directly worked on this game, but i'd guess that his people did, not him directly.

by the way, the replacements for ice cap and launch base 2 aren't nearly as good as the originals (launch base 1 is pretty decent, and anything is better than the original carnival night to me). they replaced the sonic 3 stage 1 boss theme with the one from sonic and knuckles, which, to me, is an improvement too!

All of the tracks were proven to be possible to do in MIDI. It would've needed heavy editing put its possible.

That would be work, though, and no company in existence has ever put work into a port.

Jokes aside, I don't understand why rather than port a song, they would compose an entirely new one.

Also, couldn't they have just omitted the samples and kept the original compositions otherwise intact?

Odds are, it was faster and cheaper to just replace the tracks. The two likeliest scenarios are that it was decided it would take the resequencer too long to fix the tracks, so they got a composer to quickly hammer out a few tracks for them. Or, it proved cheaper to bring in a composer than it would be to bring on someone with the expertise to fix the busted MIDIs.

There's a good chance the port was done with just a handful of programmers and a FM-to-MIDI program, since companies don't allocate a whole lot of resources to these projects, and they didn't even have someone knowledgable about the MIDI format on hand.

It's interesting to note that the PC version of S&K Collection had a screensaver which had every music track from the Megadrive games - but the original Icecap, Carnival, etc (the levels they midi'd up) megadrive tunes were not present.

i'm not saying that replacing them with midi would have been impossible... i'm just saying that it wouldn't have sounded as close as the other songs. the kick sample in ice cap would be reduced to a weak kick in midi, and the boss song would be almost entirely gone :)

Michael did alright in this work. Carnival Night Zone's music was about the biggest Sonic music hit.

I've always enjoyed the ending Credits for Sonic 3 and now I know why.

Saaayga! HeeHee!
 

well I think this thread may be coming to close, if so then here's something to put the final nail in the coffin,the tune to go with the scandal!

http://machinesmith.googlepages.com/home

yeah yeah I know, `clean-up' was not on the list of things to do with it but it's a start! Whaddaya think?

Cool remix.

Very interesting theory indeed. I'm no musician, so I really don't know what all this chord progression stuff is about, but I do want to point something out that sort of throws a shoe at this theory.

If the tracks in question were removed in the release for the PC for "legal reasons," how come they aren't removed in the Sonic Mega Collection for Gamecube?

Well, obviously, it must be because of technical reasons, because when I load Mega Collection, it says "Compiled under the supervision of Sonic Team." If there were legal reasons for the removal of the tracks for the PC version, you'd think they'd still apply to the Gamecube release and those tracks would be removed.

That was fairly interesting. The similarities are very probable. Pretty cool. :)

Thanks Joe, as to the whole `Mega collection' stance I'm of the opinion that while Sonic for the pc was ported from its original form (i.e. Genesis/MegaDrive ROM cart thing had to be taken apart and reassembled for the PC) the console version benefitted from a `console specific emulator' (I use the term loosely) that ran the actual ROM images (Nintendo/Sony etc just paid to have the rights to bundle the image on their discs)

So technically you have the original cartridge on disc, and theres no need to re-issues liscenses (from musicians and what have you) to re-produce the material

the original forum where this whole thing was documented discusses this whole issue in detail, check it: http://www.sws2b.com/forums/index.ph...0jackson&st=30

on a seperate note: I'm banned? What'd I do? Is this coz of the track I'll clean it up man! honest!

You're not banned. It's April Fools today; lots of crazy stuff going on here.

Also, thanks for that remix. It's well done.