Sonic the Hedgehog 3

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Sonic the Hedgehog 3
General Information
Developer(s)	Sega Technical Institute
Publisher(s)	Sega
Director(s)	Hirokazu Yasuhara
Producer(s)	Yuji Naka
Designer(s)	Hirokazu Yasuhara Hisayoshi Yoshida Takashi Iizuka
Programmer(s)	Masanobu Yamamoto Hisayoshi Yoshida Yuji Naka
Artist(s)	Takashi Yuda Satoshi Yokokawa
Composer(s)	Brad Buxer Michael Jackson (uncredited) Sega Sound Team
Series	Sonic the Hedgehog
Platform(s)	Sega Genesis Windows
Released	February 2, 1994
Genre(s)	Platform game
Mode(s)	Single-player Multiplayer

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a video game released by Sega on February 2, 1994, for the Sega Genesis console (also known as the Mega Drive in Europe, Australia, and Japan). Although uncredited, American singer-songwriter Michael Jackson worked on the game's soundtrack, alongside his keyboardist, Brad Buxer.

Jackson’s contributions were merely speculation for 15 years up until a December 2009 interview between Buxer and the French Black & White magazine, where the producer confirmed Jackson’s involvement.

Relation to Jackson

Music development

Michael Jackson with Sonic the Hedgehog

Works on the game began in 1993. Around the spring of that year, Jackson had a meeting with members of the Sega Technical Institute, which granted him the opportunity to compose music for Sonic 3. He had previously worked with Sega's division, AM-5, in December 1992 on Michael Jackson in Scramble Training.

Main article: Stranger in Moscow#Production

According to Buxer, Jackson "wasn't up to doing a whole lot". He's presumed to have had input in at least the "Hydrocity Zone" (Acts 1 & 2) cues (according to C. Cirocco Jones' website), but he especially had worked on what would become the "Staff Roll" theme. Buxer and Jackson crafted the entire composition in only an hour and a half, later being re-used for the single "Stranger in Moscow", released in 1996.

Other tracks were created by Buxer at Jackson's request. "Knuckles' theme" and "Carnival Night Zone" (Acts 1 & 2) are famously among those to feature work put in by the keyboardist. Some of them even sample Jackson's older work (e.g., "Knuckles' theme" - "Blood on the Dance Floor").

Decline

Jackson's soundtrack soon replaced the initial one crafted by Jun Senoue and other members of Sega's sound team. However, according to Buxer, after Jackson got to hear how the compositions sounded like with Sega Genesis' compressed and bitcrushed sound chip, he was so dissatisfied, that it was to the point where he left the project, wanting his name taken out of the credits. He apparently did this to not be "associated with a product that devalued his music".

In a 2005 interview with HXC, the executive coordinator for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and the general manager of the SEGA Technical Institute, Roger Hector stated that it was actually Jackson's scandals over accusations of child sexual abuse that caused Sega to fire him.

“	Sonic 3 (also called Sonic 3 & Knuckles) was a lot of fun, but it was also very difficult. Michael Jackson was originally brought in to compose all the music for the game, but at the very end, his work was dropped after his scandals became public. This caused a lot of problems and required a lot of reworking. But the game turned out great in the end.	”
–Roger Hector, HXC, August 2005

At the point of Jackson leaving, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was so late in development that his and Buxer's soundtrack was kept implemented. Composer Howard Drossin was brought in near the end of the game's development to clean up the music before release. Jackson went on to be completely uncredited, but Buxer got the opposite treatment.

Legal issues

Due to legal issues with the Michael Jackson Estate, if re-released, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 would feature re-creations of Jun Senoue's demo cues. The examples can be heard in 1996' Sonic & Knuckles Collection for PC (which used stock MIDI instruments) and the 2022 compilation, Sonic Origins. However, some other ports do feature the original soundtrack, including those featured on compilations like Sonic Mega Collection (2002) and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (2009) (Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection in PAL regions). It has also been largely speculated that the infamous mobile port of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 didn't make it past development stages due to legal reasons regarding music.

Discovery

Michael Jackson's Sonic 3

Due to Jackson staying uncredited, his input in composing any of the music initially started only as a rumor. The fan-investigation into the soundtrack's development famously began through a YouTube video by Qjimbo, Michael Jackson's Sonic 3, uploaded in 2006. The video went viral, gaining over a million views by Summer 2006, barely a year after the website was created. It helped the mystery attract the attention of both the Sonic and Jackson forums.

As it was discovered, not only did many of the tracks share similarities with Jackson's songs, but nearly all of the credited music composers have at some point worked with Jackson or Buxer. One of them, C. Cirocco Jones, happened to credit the two on his website for the song, "The Water", meant for Sonic the Hedgehog, with the track also seemingly referring to "Hydrocity Zone". The website was updated in 2008 to have the track's name removed. Rick Desilets, the director of the YouTube channel The D-Pad, got in contact with Jones to ask him about his involvement with both Jackson and the soundtrack itself. Less than an hour later, Ciorocco gave him an answer, confirming the questions and stating he owns recordings of Jackson humming through phone calls, messages, and ideas Jackson would send to Record One.

In December 2009, Buxer participated in an interview with the French Michael Jackson-themed magazine, Black & White, where after many years of speculation, the producer confirmed Jackson's involvement.

“	I've never played and I do not know what the developers have kept the tracks on which Michael and I have worked, but we did compose the music playing Michael called me at the time for give him a helping hand on this project, and that's what I did. And if he is not credited for composing the music, because he was not happy with the result sound coming out of the console. At the time, game consoles did not allow an optimal sound reproduction, and Michael found it frustrating. He did not want to be associated with a product that devalued and his music ...	”
–Brad Buxer, Black & White magazine, December 2009

In 2013, Game Trailers released a video Pop Fiction: Season 4: Episode 39: Sonic 3: Michael Jackson on YouTube, with The D-Pad himself releasing A Brief History of Michael Jackson's Sonic the Hedgehog 3 three years later.

On November 16, 2019, a prototype of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was leaked online. This included Jun Senoue's original soundtrack, created before Jackson joined the project.

Yuji Naka's confirmation

In June 2022, the compilation game Sonic Origins was released, which features the first four Sonic the Hedgehog games originally released for Sega Genesis, including Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The remaster features newly made re-creations of Jun Senoue's soundtrack instead of the demo cues, or Buxer and Jackson's music. The decision brought controversy and disappointment to the fans, including the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog himself, who left Sega in March 2006.

Yuji Naka on X (June 23, 2022)

On June 23, 2022, the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, Yuji Naka, revealed his concern over Jackson's music not being featured, even though Sega used "Billie Jean" in a promo video only days prior. To fans, this served as the closest to an official confirmation for Jackson's involvement in the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 soundtrack.

Trivia

• The theme for "IceCap Zone" used to be heavily speculated to have been inspired by Jackson's songs "Smooth Criminal" or "Who Is It". However, it was discovered that the track re-used then-unreleased 1982 song "Hard Times" by Buxer's former band, The Jetzons. Jackson had no involvement in composing it, and the original track itself was released in 2008.
• Howard Drossin thought he’d be working with Jackson himself, but ended up only becoming the "cleanup guy".