Michael Jackson's role in Sonic 3 confirmed! Options

[Skaarg]

Pardon me for going off topic, but if Jacko wasn't a pedophile, why the hell would he invite kids to his private theme park?

Go hug a powerline or something. Your statement was so retarded that it made wetflame commit suicide.

Thank you for responding with that.

Anyways Midway, what do you mean PCs couldn't playback the same quality of sound as the Genesis versions? Is the Genesis a much more powerful system than my P1 133MHz system with it's AZTEC sound card? I think not... The PC versions were released in 1997, SEGA very easily could have used .wav or something similar recordings or recreated the Genesis music for PC back then. My guess is it was another case of SEGA got lazy and just threw in some random crap.

This post has been edited by Skaarg: Apr 10 2008, 12:40 PM

[muteKi]

Well, the only thing is that implementing looping on the music would have taken a bit more effort with a WAV file to prevent any breaks or pauses in the audio. Didn't stop them with Sonic CD (PC) Past music, though -- or Sonic Adventure (again, PC Version). Both had such a problem.

[evilhamwizard]

Sonic CD's (PC) past music didn't use WAV, it used Red Book. And about the PC version not using the sound engine, you have to remember that both games were ported from Assembly to C. So probably the reason why both ports didn't use the original sound engines is that they couldn't port it to C (they just simply couldn't or they ran out of time, take a pick), so that's why it was either recorded for Red Book or rearranged for MIDI. Of course, I'm not a programming master, so if you can tell me otherwise - that's fine.

And I'm going to ask this again since it's better for this topic, does anyone know who even made those replacement MIDIs? If they were created just so they could be used for the PC version, isn't there a credits screen with all the programmers for this port? If there isn't any mention of who could've rearranged/made the material, then the only thing I could imagine is that they were created by the SEGA Sound Team/Composers, next to something more logical - that the person wasn't even credited to begin with. It just boggles my mind how you can replace the Competition Menu music with something completely different than what was in the original game.

Not to mention that in the PC version, there are a couple random MIDI tunes that aren't even used at all in the game.

I feel like I'm going to get ass raped by Tweaker for posting this. I don't know why, I just do. :P

This post has been edited by evilhamwizard: Apr 10 2008, 03:06 PM

[Overlord]

But it still doesn't *quite* answer the question of how Sonic Jam comes along only a few months after S&K collection and the original music is still in the game.

If the game just emulated Sonic 3 I would understand. But it doesn't; like S&K collection, a lot of it is ported. Some of the music in the other games, in fact, is easily accessible in audio files in an easily playable format right on the disc, like the 2-P zones in Sonic 2.

Because for S&K Collection, all the music had to be rearranged. On Sonic Jam, they just recorded the music straight from the Mega Drive. It's possible that they didn't have permission to rearrange the music.

Not only that, but many of the PCs at the time did not have the proper synthesizers to run the original music, which explains inferior sound quality in the levels, which used music just like the original. The reason they used original music for CNZ, ICZ, and LBZ when they could have just redone the instrumentation is because even though it is legal to use the original work, like by porting it to Saturn, it may have been illegal to rearrange Jackson's work.

This may not be the case, as Weird Al Yankovic does not even need permission to take songs, like Bad and redo the instrumentation a little and then make his own lyrics. The lyrics might be the only reason it is legal though, so feel free to debate on my statement.

Weird Al does parody, which is protected under Fair Use and established precedants for parody. This wouldn't.

[MK]

Not only that, but many of the PCs at the time did not have the proper synthesizers to run the original music, which explains inferior sound quality in the levels, which used music just like the original. The reason they used original music for CNZ, ICZ, and LBZ when they could have just redone the instrumentation is because even though it is legal to use the original work, like by porting it to Saturn, it may have been illegal to rearrange Jackson's work.

This may not be the case, as Weird Al Yankovic does not even need permission to take songs, like Bad and redo the instrumentation a little and then make his own lyrics. The lyrics might be the only reason it is legal though, so feel free to debate on my statement.

Ok, so I was writing this post in agreement with you just now when something extremely odd hit me:

The theory that the music was altered on S&KC for legal, while it sounds good, is completely false. Some people actually do still believe this, and think the sound card limitations back then were a coincidence. However, evidence shows that that is simply not the case. Why?

The original Sonic 3 / Knuckles soundtrack is on the Sonic & Knuckles Collection disk, in its entirety, as part of the Sonic Screen Saver.

After that line I was going to post a relative link to the Carnival Night song, so I got out my disk and browsed to the folder.

disk\SONICSS\SOUND\S3_S&K\BGM

I know Carnival Night was track 07 in S3K, but 7 in this folder was Flying Battery. I figured they reordered everything so I played them all in order. Note that these are original WAVE dumps from the Mega Drive game.

S3&K_01.WAV = AIZ1, S3&K_02.WAV = AIZ2
S3&K_03.WAV = HCZ1, S3&K_04.WAV = HCZ2
S3&K_05.WAV = MGZ1, S3&K_06.WAV = MGZ2
S3&K_07.WAV = FBZ1, S3&K_08.WAV = FBZ2
S3&K_09.WAV = MHZ1, S3&K_0A.WAV = MHZ2
S3&K_0B.WAV = SPZ1, S3&K_0C.WAV = SPZ1 (yeah, I used SP for Sandopolis)
S3&K_0D.WAV = LRZ1, S3&K_0E.WAV = LRZ2
S3&K_0F.WAV = SSZ,
S3&K_10.WAV = DEZ1, S3&K_11.WAV = DEZ2
S3&K_12.WAV = MiniBoss, S3&K_13.WAV = MiniBoss (duplicate)
S3&K_14.WAV = Boss, S3&K_15.WAV = Doomsday
etc.etc.etc.

Why are the tracks that were edited removed? They clearly had the go-ahead to use the tracks from the MD version, but why did they exclude those? Because they were different? I doubt they took that into consideration, as in Japan the Screen Saver was released seperately. And, they didn't put any filler, they simply did not put the files.

I intended this post to be an "aha duh" stating that because of the Screensaver, there was no basis for the legal arguement, but now this has confused me all over again.

This post has been edited by MK: Apr 10 2008, 11:26 PM

[muteKi]

See, that's the thing. If they could re-record it for Jam, why not for the Screen Saver?

[Vlcice]

Is the Japanese standalone screensaver missing the same files? Maybe they were only removed from the version packed in with S&K Collection because of the altered songs.

[MK]

Someone needs to find it. Some info here:

http://sega.jp/pc/sonicsc/

Release date: August 9, 1996
Suggested retail price: 3,800 yen (3,990 yen tax included)
OS Support: Japanese version of Windows 3.1/95
Media: One pair of CD-ROM
Model number: HCJ-0102
JAN code: 497436520102-9

Apparently it uses 2 disks?

Hopefully by some stroke of luck someone here already owns it, or can find it.

[hxc]

Something I forgot to post yet have repeatedly referenced, an email from Roger Hector describing the situation. As I repeat, despite what some people seem to think, MJ did not put his own music in the game; that was never planned

Jordan,
I'm quite sure that all of Michael Jackson's music was dropped, which was sad as it was all quite good. It never actually made it into the game even through it was totally finished. I personally turned over the only audio cassette copy of it to Mr. Suzuki of Sega of Japan who returned it to the company lawyers. I'm not sure what happened to it after that.
Oh well....

Roger

[Tweaker]

Yeah, but we're challenging that. I'm sure that if MJ's music being in the game uncredited was publically confirmed by a former SEGA employee, massive shitstorms would ensue.

The fact that multiple samples of Michael Jackson's music, in addition to stories such as Shade's about MJ calling Cirocco during the night and singing him the theme to Hydrocity, leads severe credence towards MJ having much more of an active role than Hector seems to imply he did. That much is for sure.

[Qjimbo]

The fact that multiple samples of Michael Jackson's music, in addition to stories such as Shade's about MJ calling Cirocco during the night and singing him the theme to Hydrocity, leads severe credence towards MJ having much more of an active role than Hector seems to imply he did. That much is for sure.

Here's what Cirocco actually said:

hmmm, I actually have "ALL" of the tracks... 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 w/o permission. Anyway, you can call if you like.


Take care, respectfully yours,
Cirocco & The Music Powers Team

I still need to call this guy at some point.

This post has been edited by Qjimbo: Apr 17 2008, 05:44 PM

[hxc]

I still only hear the Jam vs CNZ one. Honest to god, the others don't sound remotely similer to me.

If any of MJs work is in the game I seriously don't believe it was what he intended. As I have to regurgitate again and again he composed ORIGINAL music for the game, not addaptations of the old work. If it's int here, the sound team did it.

Also why the fuck has this ciccoro emails not been posted publically when they are of major relevance?

This post has been edited by hxc: Apr 17 2008, 05:51 PM

[Tweaker]

I still only hear the Jam vs CNZ one. Honest to god, the others don't sound remotely similer to me.

This may change your mind, then.

[hxc]

I just listened to all that on high quality (talking $1000+) audio equipment, and I really really can't hear it. The speed difference is far far too great to allow any real comparison, and the drum structure and timing is waaay out from what I can hear.

If someone could produce samples where they are being played at the same tempo, rather than at radically different ones, then perhaps the comparison would be easier to spot.

As I said, I'd like somoene to perform spot checks on people uninterested in sonic to see if they hear a similarity.

This post has been edited by hxc: Apr 17 2008, 06:01 PM

[Qjimbo]

Also why the fuck has this ciccoro emails not been posted publically when they are of major relevance?

At the time, Wite was trying to contact Cirroco over the phone, so we kept it quiet.

He never rang Cirroco, and a couple of months later I was completely swamped with stuff and just totally forgot I even had the emails till the other day.

I'm going to try contacting him again for a proper interview, so don't flood him with emails plz.

This post has been edited by Qjimbo: Apr 17 2008, 06:04 PM