Now that's something we haven't thought of before, and could help massively. I wouldn't know where to begin, but someone else must. I'm still waiting for the day that Yuji Naka comes out and speaks about the MJ issue. He did say "one day", but when? When Michael Jackson's money grabbing estate is dead? All this stuff about AEG Concerts and Dr Murray being sued and blamed for his death among various other things is enough to put anyone off breathing an unfavourable word.
I remembered this video and just found it again. it's a news report about the Moonwalker Genesis game. They interview the Director of Marketing at Sega of America and talk about what MJ's involvement in the game was. Looks like he did have input into the game's development.
Loudness Warning! I nearly bursted my eardrum with the headphones. Stupid Soundcloud is too loud. It's almost as if Michael Jackson did left some parts of songs behind, and the artists simply reworked and modified them so as to perserve his work. He didn't want to be credited, so really, the other composers credited themselves as according to Michael Jackson's wish.
eeeehhh I don't think Michael Jackson was really involved with the Mega Drive (or Master System) Moonwalker. It would go some ways into explaining the sound chip dillemma, anyway. No I think Michael Jackson worked exclusively on the arcade version of Moonwalker. He's known to have enjoyed arcade games and he gets all the sound credit for its production... as opposed to the Mega Drive version who has four Sega-staffed sound people presumably filling in the blanks after the conversion to weaker hardware.
My problem with that idea is that I don't feel like Arcade Moonwalker sounds all that much better or worse than the Genesis one.
Keep in mind between the release of Moonwalker on Genesis and System 18 and the release of Sonic 3, the SNES, Sega CD, TurboGrafx CD, and the 3DO were released. There were soundchips capable of better sound samples and Redbook Audio. The Genesis at the time was a step backward.
I have a ground breaking explanation for why MJ thought the sound in Moonwalker was OK but not in Sonic 3. He changed his mind.
Not to mention how much more money he got for endorsing a game licensing his music and likeness as opposed to just a composing credit.
It's a real shame they didn't discuss this from the get go and arranged for a Mega CD version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Hell, a Sonic game with MJ's name on the box may have actually shifted some Mega CDs, but I guess by that point the system was already considered too big of a risk to release such a high caliber title on. Still, another one of those 'what could have been' things..
Maybe they could have gone the Pier Solar way and made the CD-quality soundtrack purely optional. I wonder if they were aware of the techniques used by Jesper Kyd and if they could have helped for better cartridge music quality.
The difference may also have had to do with the fact that Moonwalker was 16bit renditions of songs he had already released, whereas he was making new material for Sonic 3. As a musician myself, I can attest working on subpar hardware is very frustrating when you are trying to be a perfectionist in the writing process. Its not totally unreasonable that he went in with higher expectations than what was actually possible for the hardware.
I think the idea here is that he was composing music with Sonic 3 in mind, as opposed to Moonwalker where the tracks already existed, just converted to arcade/console hardware. Also Jackson's style of the early 90s was far more complicated than stuff he was doing a few years prior Still, I can't see Michael Jackson weighing in on three separate versions of Moonwalker. He was a busy man!
Keep in mind those were demakes. The Sonic 3 soundtrack was going to be his original works. I could easily see why he would have issues with introducing that music into his brand as it stood. Back then, people didn't have the appreciation for chiptunes that they do today. Edit: Also entirely possible it was less the chiptune factor and more the fact sound samples sound... rough, on the Genesis/MD, and sound samples were clearly used. I do wonder why they were so quick to trust this anonymous source, though. It must have been someone more directly involved in the decision making process.
Someone with as much authority as someone like Yuji Naka? I wonder if they considered speaking to Sonic 3 Sound Project Coordinator Hisaki Nimiya...
Pretty off-topic. I don't know if this is relevant at this point. I follow the discussion on MJ's involvement since 2006 and so far I never seen any of these infos mentioned: From Sonic 10th Anniversary CD -> http://vgmdb.net/album/2072 It's little to no information but is at least some clues. Knowing that Drossin joined the team only on Sonic & Knuckles, probably the remaining soundtrack (except the MJ songs) were done by Sawada and Kashima. This next one is not exactly relevant, but I always found interesting. From Sonic 3D Blast wiki page on Music Tracklist: Could this bonus stage be "Gumball Machine"? Plus, after years of observation and listening, paired with the informations the community gathered over the years, I think that is pretty obvious to me that the MJ tracks on Sonic 3 are the following and nothing more than this:
You're reinventing the wheel, you know? This is already on Sega Retro. Jun Senoue probably also did the Title Screen from Sonic 3 as the '1-Up' and 'Act Clear' are his too (he's the only one credited on Sonic 4, that uses those songs) (this is also on Sega Retro). And also Baloon Park as track 24 from Generations OST is marked as composed by' Jun Senoue and Sega' but there's only baloon park there (it's not the one with the Sonic Heroes part).
I don't think so. Never said I was inventing something or made some discovery. Just adding another perspective which is, obviously, based on everything that already exists about this. I know there's nothing new on what I said. If you could, please, show me where is this information on Sonic Retro (not the Jun Senoue credits, the other guys Sawada and Kashima, mainly). Because I've never really seen it in any discussion.
In fact what you stated is the 'common sense' we already have as all the songs mentioned were the ones that got replaced in S&K collection. Look at the Song credits section on these pages: Tonomori Sawada Yoshiaki Kashima I believe the guy who brought this up on the forums was dissident93 but I could be wrong.
