Same. This would literally be a day one purchase for me if it weren’t for denuvo. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled here for reviews... but not from from folks with gaming PCs. From folks who have mid-tier PCs and laptops.
Yes: Note that this is US-only, so Public Domain can arrive sooner (or later, or never) in other countries.
I doubt Sega is interested enough to buy the rights back from Cirocco's estate or whoever else has the rights, especially if MJ's estate would have to get involved. While I love to entertain the possibility of the master cues being released on an album someday, that has about as much a chance of happening as the theatrical versions of the original Star Wars trilogy seeing the light of day.
I'd say it's worse, no? Because as far as I'm aware the theatrical OT cuts aren't mired in licensing disputes, Lucasfilm just doesn't really feel like putting them out.
Also, who knows how much it would cost. Perhaps SEGA don’t even know. If what we think is true, it would seem that they’ve dodged pay-outs for nearly 30 years, if they were to approach now and query buying the rights, it would open the doors to all who are due royalties for the past few decades. That’s not a business decision worth it for a few measly songs in a video game. This post is, of course, based on assumptions so should not be taken as fact.
Then I'll tell you my experience as soon as I run it, because I had no real issue with Denuvo-ed Mania even on my now 13-years old laptop, but if the fancy menus and the latest denuvo are such a heavy load, I might not be that lucky this time (for reference, the "bedroom" emulator on Steam gives more trouble to my computer than Mania on release).
Off-topic but MAN I hate what the Disney Corporation did to Copyright with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns
Do we know what the Sonic 3 replacement tracks sound like yet? (Carnival Night, Ice Cap, Launch Base)
Th only excepion will be Knuckles's theme. But I'm pretty sure Competition Mode menu will be repalced as well.
This is going into fanwank territory but I wonder if this is actually true? The prototype tracks sound distinctly not...done. Like I can see that when MJ decided to get involved they handed him these 3 zonea to make into his own because they knew the must was of a lesser quality and were planning on replacing them anyways. Ideally if that's the case hopefully the new songs aren't just fixed up versions of the prototypes but new versions that do the zones justice. I can dream right?
All we know is Jun Senoue is using "original tape recordings" to help him get the gist of the intended songs, and this is a guy who's saved the original MIDI keyboard demo versions of various old Sonic songs on old tapes and CDs as part of his hobby, and then he's reapproaching them himself to get them as remastered for Sonic 3 & Knuckles as he can make them, presumably using supplied FM info to recreate the sounds necessary if he didn't keep those as well from his work on the game 28 years ago. They're not going to sound the same as the Prototype, and they're more like what the Complete team tried to do with the S&K Collection versions of the songs by turning them into Genesis music, but in this case coming from a man that's worked with the series as long as these songs were probably a thing. Whether they'll sound more complete or suffer Sonic 4-itis with Genesis sounds, we're a week and a day away from finding out roughly unless Sega does some media blowout stuff ahead of time.
Does Jun actually know anything about how to make these sound like real accurate Genesis music? Like, yes, he did compose for Sonic 3, but I always assumed he did MIDI demos and someone else actually converted them to the soundchip. How do we know these conversions won't sound hideously out-of-place?
Jun has ears. He's an experienced composer with 30+ years of time working with the sound of Sonic titles far more than anyone since the Genesis days. If several dozens of youtuber retro fans can figure out the genesis synths and figure out how to create era accurate remixes of almost... well... any song, he can handle doing it for 10-11 of them, some of which it's possible he even worked on during the original development. As I said earlier in the thread, if you go back, only his Sonic 4 Episode 1 compositions sounded off, and that was because he didn't have the right equipment at the time. His Episode II compositions were far better, and that was over a decade ago.
Right, ValleyBell and I (and possibly other people) made SMPS versions of the MIDIs from the Sonic & Knuckles collection, but someone (talking about Knuckles' sprites for Sonic CD) already said that Sega doesn't want to use things made by fans. I wonder if Jun was at least aware of those versions, though, and at least used them for inspiration or as a reference.
