The sad part is that had the Sega CD not done terribly and S3&K was developed for it, Jackson likely would have had no problem with the music quality. //forums.sonicretro.org/public/style_emoticons/default/v.png
Nobody tell them it's not a thing. Run with it. Surely there's some hilarity in there somewhere down the line?
I would have to assume that the beatboxing samples they mention are what constitute the majority of the percussion in carnival night then; the 'woo' shows up in the S3 miniboss music, similarly. Given the way they discuss the collaboration, I'm curious as to what Jackson's specific contributions were to the individual songs. I.e., to what degree was he equally a composer and to what degree was he performer
In fact ICEKnight, this sample can be heard in the Act 1 Mini-Boss music (which is just a variation of this track). The songs we are sure of, and that fits the description given by the composers (use of samples): Carnival Night Zone Ice Cap Zone Launch Base Zone Act 1 Boss S3 / Knuckle's Theme Sonic 3 credits Which leaves us with this suspected one (because replaced in the PC version): Competition Menu Does it still fit?
Yes, I know, it's what I meant by "S&K theme song related items"...invincibility and 1up included. However the mid-level boss was always in Sonic 3, just not used unless you figured out the Hydrocity boss bug. Launch Base is the biggest mystery to me because it doesn't sound like anything else and doesn't give me the same MJ vibe even with its addictive 90s beats.
Just because LB was replaced in in the S&K Collection doesn't mean MJ did the whole thing. It could boil down to just particular samples being present in that track, like the "ow"(?) Vocal samples, which are very Jackson-y. EDIT: On re-listening, I realize they're probably saying "Go" not "Ow." Oops.
WOW! Absolutely amazing article. It was so cool to read all the minor details - the compression issues, the 41 (!!!!) tracks submitted, Sega sound engineers stopping by the studio to work with the crew, Grigsby thinking the in-game soundtrack sounded "really, really, really cool".... so many tidbits and nuggets we had never heard before. I feel like we now have EVERYTHING but the actual friggin' demo tracks. Who knows, maybe this article will be enough to change that! It's sure spread quite a bit. I also now wonder if most of the tracks were pulled by SEGA simply because they sounded terrible on the Genesis. Seems like the soundtrack may have been much better suited for Sonic CD.
Ciricco (sp?) Jones a few years back said he had all the demos. From the original interview: James Hansen of Sonic Stuff Research Group has stated that Cirocco Jones (credited as “Scirocco” in Sonic 3) possesses some demos of Jackson's contributions. “I actually have ‘all’ of the tracks…,” Jones wrote, “from the original humming of Michael calling in the middle of the night leaving messages, to his ideas at Record One with Matt Forger and Bruce Swedien. – but, I don't think I can let any of that out to the public without permission.” I'm sure all the composers took home a copy of the tracks for themselves.
It wouldn't matter much anyway. I doubt Ice Cap's music was done with the involvement of anyone other than Buxer and the folks doing the sound programming at Sega.
Yeah, that Launch Base sample is not MJ, and far from the first video game to use it. That's a Run-D.M.C. sample. It was from their track "Peter Piper" and was commonly used by a lot of hip hop/R&B tracks in that time frame.
I'm now imagining Jackson personally singing a hyperactive scat version of the s3 invincibility/super theme... The thought of such greatly amuses me.
Also (sorry for the double post, couldn't edit the last one for some odd reason), I am now no longer convinced that S&K's soundtrack didn't have his involvement in some form either. What do we know about who composed what for that game? Drossin did the title theme and replaced the few mentioned s3 tracks, but according to this article he didn't do much else. Do we know for sure that s&K's tracks were JP team only? 41 tracks is a lot of music for his team to send in, and falls more in line with the expectations for the original larger Sonic 3 vision.
Just because they sent in the tracks doesn't mean they made the cut for the final game. And while for Sonic 3 it might have been too late to have someone redo the problematic tracks, they changed couple of tracks and jingles for Sonic & Knuckles, and had plenty of time for someone to compose the remaining ~15 pieces. Do you believe the changes were so that the new game could sound fresh, or that the previous ones were bad, or perhaps the more likely 3rd scenario they wanted to get rid of them for external reasons?
I've thought about this quite a bit, and to me it it's starting to seem plausible that SEGA removed a bunch of MJ tracks simply because of how they sounded on the Genesis. The Huffington Post article mentions how difficult it was to compress the "MJ sound" down to a Genesis chip. I'd bet no one really wanted to put in the countless hours it'd take to make the tracks sound better. I recently re-listened to a few tracks from the Moonwalker Genesis game, and boy do they sound depressing compared to the original recordings (especially "Another Part of Me".) MJ's percussive, rhythmic, and edgy style just doesn't have that same groove on the Genesis sound chip. Whereas IMO Masato Nakamura's more melodic and simplistic writing style actually made his tracks sound BETTER on the Genesis in many cases.
If the Credits tune and IceCap are of anything to go by, any removed MJ songs probably sounded awesome by Mega Drive standards... Of course, he may have already heard what trhe SNES was capable of by then and expected something less chiptune-y than what SEGA's system is known for.
Problem with this line of reasoning is all the Sonic and Knuckles music except for those few cues was already in Sonic 3. The biggest change was fixing the looping on FBZ1.
The looping was different between the S3 sound test and the level as it was in S(3)&K? See, this is why I keep coming back here even though I am almost 30 years old...XD I am still learning about new stuff! But....can I be honest? When I first heard Carnival Night, Ice Cap, and Launch Base....waaaaay back in '94, I thought they sounded like crap. I've grown to love them but I was always perplexed as to why the instrumentation was completely different compared to the rest of the game and why the Act 2 versions were absolute weak sauce.
I posted this scan a while ago, from a 1993 issue of Sega Power. That got me thinking: There's always a chance he assumed Sonic 3 would be a CD title when he signed on, hence his disappointment at the sound quality.
