Michael Jackson worked on Sonic 3?

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!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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

There's nowhere I can't reach.