2E plays the music that went unused in the PC version. Just checked the final game and that's the slot assigned to the MJ Act 1 boss music. Guess that mystery remains unsolved!
Seriously if I could hug everyone involved in this release to the point of suffocation, I would. THIS IS THE HAPPIEST I HAVE BEEN IN YEARS FOR FUCKS SAKE THIS IS GODDAMN AMAZING I CANNOT STOP FLIPPING OUT
I think we know a bit more than this. We at least know that the final Genesis Ice Cap Zone music came from Brad Buxer, who was working with Michael Jackson (see The Jetzons' "Hard Times"). I also think the final Sonic 3 credits music is undeniably from Jackson and his team.
It seems to me that the 2P mode largely went untouched between this and the final apart from some minor differences. Sonic has no visible insta-shield (not that he would need it anyway) and Knuckles is pretty much just Sonic with different graphics.
It was shown during the live stream that the sideways rings which Sonic spits out can defeat Badniks.
Sure, but that's Brad Buxer, not Michael Jackson. How do you know MJ's fingerprints are on those particular tracks? Are they in his style? For the most part, yes. But that's not proof.
It is highly suspicious though that the game hasn’t been re-released in it’s final state - the one that has the MJ-type music - yet was re-released on PC with this proto music which sounds nothing like the genres of music that MJ or his associates would have composed. I was hoping for a credits sequence somewhere here where we could see if people like Brad Buxxer were named which might have strengthened theories in the matter. I suspect MJ’s music was never dropped but his name was instead simply removed from the credits and the removal mentioned by SEGA as a way to distance themselves from him in the wake of his scandals. I assume this as MJ would have been paid by SEGA and they would probably not have wanted to waste money on something that they couldn’t use. The name dropping sounds far more likely to me and they may have struck a deal with MJ never to mention the subject or his name, not use his music in the-releases again, however all of this is purely speculation. I’m not really sure where games like Mega Collection fit in to all of this.
I interpreted your post to include MJ's team, which includes Brad Buxer. I actually don't think MJ had anything to do with Ice Cap. I don't think we have "proof" that MJ did any other songs, but I don't know know if we will ever get true proof at this point. . Perhaps Sega is more afraid of Michael Jackson's estate than Michael Jackson himself? Mega Collection was released while he was still alive.
Thank you for all of the amazing releases over this month. And remember kids, it was Sonic who went Super Saiyan Rosé first.
Taxman and Stealth have a lot of splainin to do! Also, the ROM has some left over shit from earlier builds. I could go on, and on, and on but I didn't want to overload the page on the wiki. Check out the stuff in the offsets I mentioned, it's a real treat. Lava Reef Zone's Kosinski archives are present in their entirety, that's how we were able to restore it. The level layouts for Act 1 and 2 still exist, but we couldn't figure out what was wrong with Act 2 as far as pairing the graphics with it. Lava Reef's remnants come from a time when the 2P zones were just being implemented. You can actually see older versions of those zones still in the ROM, some of which are using tiles that look like collision chunks instead. In another leftover chunk, the level palette table is present in its ENTIRETY. So the palettes for all the zones worked on before the split still exists. Merry Christmas!
Going off-topic for a bit: If someone can hack the prototype music into S3 final and S3K, then there. SEGA's got a solution for future re-releases. They aren't opposed to using stuff from the prototypes anyways - Sonic 2 2013 literally uses HPZ, after all.
The fact that the PC Collection reused almost all the soundtrack from this point of the development makes a lot of sense now, I'll tell ya' what. Even most of the compositions in this beta are so much better than those midis or S3 Complete's renditions in some aspects (except Ice Cap 1). And I kinda bet Iizuka shared a lot of things form the game's development to Taxman and Stealth, which sure explains the Drop Dash's existence in Sonic Mania.
The fact that this proto uses the PC tracks implies to me that the game's final tracks are the replacements, and that the PC version simply restored the original compositions. May I kindly request a rip of this proto's soundtrack please? I'll play through this after I finish this new Pokemon game. :specialed: Unlike CD, this one I know religiously.
What is this art? I'm sure I didn't get the mappings right but I can't figure out what it is. ($10C8AE)
Seems oddly like a rainbow. Maybe it's a remnant from an even earlier version of Sonic 3, or perhaps from Star Trek: The Next Generation?
I found this link via their Discord server, within the YouTube playlist of the tracks, FLAC rips of all the tracks, from real hardware: http://www.sonic-cult.org/!trash/s3_proto_flac.zip