Personally gonna struggle through the whole collection in story mode just to try to appreciate Sonic 3's remaster at the tail end all the more. Can't exactly plan to get all the Emeralds though, I basically have never done that except the Time Stones in CD and the base Emeralds in 3, very few Super Emeralds in &K.
I can't even remember all the MJ/Buxer controversy details at this point. All I remember is that MJ left the project, Buxer appropriated some work and music that he probably shouldn't have, it got added into the game despite there being other songs that should've been there mere months prior, and then around the time of MJ's passing the Jackson Estate jumped Sega for the matter. But there's so many articles, so many things, so many pages upon pages that there's probably a dedicated thread a few pages back about it all that can explain it with much more clarity and proper details than I ever could. With about as much clarity as we can get for a fairly weird legal clusterbomb, at least. It's less about "no compensation", although no payments for all those years is probably a part of the drama, and more "one day the lawyers attacked". The whole thing settled out of court ages ago anyway, so we're just finally seeing Sega actually do something post-settlement about it rather than try to not acknowledge the problem whatsoever.
Your post reminds me of how I think Star Wars viewers of the last 20 or so years have only had access to heavily altered versions of the film. Guess the new songs will be the Sonic 3 soundtrack going forward to new generations.
I genuinely think we will never know the full story on what happened with this music Sega has successfully ignored the elephant in the room until it died and decayed and the by-chance prototype leak gave them a shovel to bury it with. Stealth here doesn’t know any more than any of us do and he worked on the damn thing
I don't think we know the full details beyond a few sentences said by collaborators, none of which mentioned the MJ Estate. I have reason to believe the MJ Estate isn't spending 10 years in court to get some royalty payments for a game, they have way better uses of their time that can produce more money. There are many situations where a large company has not properly compensated the people that worked on a project. If this is the case, I don't blame the composers. Just like we support our Sonic developers, I love the Sonic 3 soundtrack and we should support the composers. The composers should be paid for their work. Do we have evidence of this being settled? Maybe I'm missing some information.
Oh yeah, I really hope the "unused theme" finds its way into the game even if it's just in the museum. Maybe Senoue or Iizuka can also tell us what its intended use was too.
I genuinely believed, and still believe, the original statement was too ambiguous to be interpreted as "the original soundtrack of Sonic 3 prior to MJ's involvement, which means the Prototype/PC port music", but seeing someone officially step in and state it specifically: there it is.
I think what made it not seem very ambiguous to me was the "from 1993" — I don't think there's a reason to say that if you weren't meaning the tracks from before the final version released in 1994. Anyway, this was honestly exactly what I was most hoping for, and I'm glad to hear it's what's happening. I'm excited for more people to be introduced to the absolute best version of these songs.
I am eating my words rn. But you know what? I'm totally ok with it- I'm just happy the 100% truth is fully known now. Thanks Stealth for everything you've done to help bring the definitive version of Sonic 3 to millions of people!!
That's true, nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution. I think the confirmation we ended up getting was a step further than what Katie felt she was allowed to say anyhow. And yeah, seconding the above post, regardless of how the statement is interpreted the game's soundtrack would've been done before 1994. That's kind of a moot point. For real though, the more information we get about this game the more I just wanna play through the whole dang story and 100% all these games again. Def gonna stream this as well, the new content will surely make it a good conversation piece.
I mean you could look at the names in the Sonic 3 credits and look at the Dangerous album credits and see these producers all worked with MJ. I don't see that post as giving away any information. As a hired developer I don't think Stealth would be privy to every detail involving the legal matters of Sega.
They won't be! To me, it's clear they said this just so they can showcase more of the game without drama. Up until now the game's trailers, live streams, and posts were flooded with questions about this. Now they can stop avoiding Carnival Night/Ice Cap/Launch Base and the competition menus and I'm sure we'll get a sneak peek of Jun's work before release.
If it wasn't for the discovery and release of the S3 prototype containing the Proto tracks back in 2019 by @drx (I think), then for all we know this new release of 3K may never have happened. Thanks Drx!
I'll be honest. Im really disappointed. No idea if SEGA could have done something to secure the rights to the music but I'm really bummed out that they don't have the original OST. That said, a finished version of the Sonic 3 Proto tracks is pretty cool. I'm glad they are actually putting effort in and not just slapping the proto tracks in.
Good to have confirmation on the music situation - I think we all expected that this was a likely outcome. Nice to hear that the tracks are receiving further polish from Jun Senoue - hoping not too much changes in Carnival Night from the proto versions as those were pretty sound as-is, though an increase in tempo for Act 1 to somewhere between the proto and PC versions wouldn't go amiss. It'll be interesting to compare and contrast all the new 2022 versions with their unfinished 1993 and MIDI 1997 counterparts. That's a whopping three official versions of each track, even if the earliest ones were never technically meant to be publicly heard in that state...!
