Sonic 3 - Hydrocity

Sonic 3 was developed and published by Sega in 1994 for the Sega Genesis, originally intended to be released as a single game with Sonic and Knuckles. The eventual Windows release did properly combine the two games. Its soundtrack was composed/created by a giant list people: The Sega Sound Team, as well as Brad Buxer, Bobby Brooks, Darryl Ross, Geoff Grace, Doug Grigsby III, Cirocco Jones, and Michael Jackson.

Ok, that bit about Michael Jackson remains a point of contention. We know for a fact that Jackson did work on the game's music at least at one point, but he remains uncredited and it took until last year for a Sega dev (in this case, producer Yuji Naka) to officially confirm that this happened. As far as I can tell the rest of Sega now maintains that none of his work made it into the game... but not everyone agrees.

Sega's official story (firstly that he did not work on it, then that his work was removed) has not stopped a surprisingly large community of avid listeners dedicated to "proving" Jackson's work remains in the game, starting since a long time before official confirmation. They claim to do this by listening to the tracks and finding similarities between them and Michael Jackson's music. Setting aside how much of a stretch these comparisons can be (in some cases, wholly unconvincing to my ear), even the most obvious similarities can at best be considered circumstantial, not actual proof.

In my mind, it's a weak argument compared to simply recognizing the reality of a game's development cycle and short turnaround times. Not to mention, it's hard to say how much anyone outside the composers themselves and maybe a few sound designers would even be able to recognize any of the music as Jackson's work. Some of those composers argue his music is still in the game too.

So... did Michael Jackson's music make it in? I don't know, and neither do you, but I think it's more likely than not.

Now that this arrangement is done, I'm looking forward to finally getting to listen to the 8-bit big bands version and seeing how they, with an actual composer/arranger capable of real writing, handled it all.

#brass #percussion #sonicthehedgehog
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