If you're a fan of the old Genesis Sonic games, you might have heard rumours over the years about Michael Jackson's supposed involvement in writing some of the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. And if you hadn't, then now you do.
Anyway, people have been researching this for years and especially folks from the
Sonic Retro website. To sum up the situation, here's what Wikipedia has to say about the whole thing:
Michael Jackson's involvement
According to STI director Roger Hector, Michael Jackson was initially brought in during development to compose music for the game, even though no mention of his involvement was included in any of the game's credits. This was supposedly due to the scandals that arose around Jackson at the time. His involvement was removed from the title, and much reworking, including all the started music, had to be done. These claims are dubious, however, and various interviews have made it clear that any involvement Jackson may have had was done without the knowledge of Sega's executives or marketing staff, and no contracts or formal agreements had ever been made. James Hansen, of Sonic Stuff Research Group, retorts that Cirocco (credited as "Scirocco" in Sonic 3) still has possession of presumably a demo version of fabled soundtrack. "I actually have "ALL" of the tracks...," he writes, "from the original humming of Michael calling in the middle of the night leaving messages, to his ideas at Record One with Matt and Bruce. - BUT, I don't think I can let any of that out to the public without permission." In December 2009, Michael Jackson's composer Bradley Buxer (credited in Sonic 3 as Brad Buxer) told French magazine Black & White that Jackson was actually involved with some of Sonic 3's compositions, supposedly not being credited because he wasn't happy with how they sounded, due to the lack of optimal sound reproduction on the Genesis. Buxer also claimed that the ending music of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 later became the basis for Jackson's single Stranger in Moscow. Recently, it has been revealed that the music for Ice Cap Zone shares the same chord progressions and instruments with "Hard Times", a previously unreleased track by The Jetzons, of which Buxer was its keyboardist and songwriter.
In October 2013, GameTrailers dedicated an episode of its Pop Fiction mini-series to discerning Michael Jackson's involvement. Roger Hector, who previously stated in a 2005 interview that Jackson's involvement in the game was dropped due to scandals surrounding the artists coming to light, reaffirmed his stance, stating any similarities to Jackson's music in the final game was not by design on Sega's part. Whilst GameTrailers were unable to interview Buxer to confirm his stance, and was about to close their investigation they were able to find and speak to an anonymous source who was directly involved with the games development. They echoed Buxer's statements that Jackson left the project due to his displeasure with the sound quality and that tracks that he had worked on before he left the project, which was before the scandals concerning him were made public, remained in the game unaltered with Jackson choosing to remain uncredited. Carnival Night Zone was specifically mentioned as one of the tracks he composed.
If you want to see for yourself the two examples emboldened above, follow the following links.
(Does anyone know how to embed a YouTube video in this forum?)
Compare
Sonic 3 - Ending Theme with
"Stranger in Moscow" by Michael Jackson (the first part until 1:02).
And even more obvious, compare
Sonic 3 - Ice Cap Zone with
"Hard Times" by the Jetzons.
