I highly doubt that. The zones didn't even last long enough to be in a proto, not to mention have a music track. It could just have been the music the wanted before MJ got involved.
Yeah, I highly doubt the track made it into any ROM, but that doesn't mean some music could be composed and reused later. I'm not saying that it was surely reused, but we have already found many reused concepts in Sonic games to discard it because it wasn't in a proto.
Just to add my voice to the Zeitgeist, no real evidence to back it up but nothing to really disprove it either: I wonder whether the proto/S&KC tracks were from some internal Sega music library. Like, tracks that got written for other games but didn't make the cut, or experiments that musicians worked on without a specific game in mind. Sonic Team could have used them as placeholder to block out the game, perhaps for internal presentation purposes, or so that once they got the final tracks from MJ and pals they could just swap them straight out. The S3 sound driver is a bit different to previous Sonic titles in the way it uses a universal instrument bank, so perhaps they wanted existing tracks that they could rejig to use as a test for that. The idea certainly jives with the special stage music appearing in SegaSonic Bros. It still leaves the question of why those tracks ended up in S&KC, and all the theories I'm seeing discussed about that seem plausible, so I think that's still an unknown.
My guess is that Setsumaru sent the original soundtrack to the three arrangers rather than the final, either by accident, or it maybe it was the only one he had on hand. Him and/or Sega were possibly also worried about copyright issues.
So all this speculation leads to a question I'm guessing all of us are thinking about: why can't they remaster Sonic 3 with this alternate music? I've been thinking and only one answer comes to mind: if Sega is still in legal trouble for the final Genesis soundtrack, they may be worried that the other side's lawyers will see the replaced soundtrack as an implicit admission of guilt, and make a move for the royalties of the original. I'm not a lawyer, but I cant think of any other reason why replacing the offending tracks wouldn't solve the problem.
I think they might just not want to release it with an inferior soundtrack. Well 'inferior' as in not the 'original'.
I mean to be fair, we've been saying "just replace the controversial music with the PC version music" for years. It's only just now we realized that the PC version music was Sonic 3 Beta music. I'm sure the reason for why they haven't done it is still the same (whatever it is, we don't know still), just our knowledge of the events that transpired has changed.
This is probably an overly ambitious solution, but what if Sonic 3 were remastered with the soundtrack entirely redone by Tee Lopes and/or whoever is on Sega's Sound Team? They could remix the songs Sega owns, including the prototype/S&K Collection tracks. That way the new music is seen simply as a feature of the remaster and not as a deliberate way to exploit a legal loophole.
I just don't think I can handle the second longest 2D game being remastered almost entirely with jazz, but then I can always play the original on Mega SG and I don't completely hate the S3 sprites, so it's not as though I'd be part of the target audience. All respect for Tee's work, it's just not really my taste. Either way, if using different music would solve the problem, then we're back to the "why not just use the S&KC soundtrack?" question. Maybe Sega is just biding their time waiting for some clause to expire or something. If the choices were "wait a few years" or "gut the soundtrack", I know which one I'd opt for. The original MD soundtrack is a bop.
I do think that just replacing the music with something entirely new would be for the best, but I'm biased since I never actually liked Sonic 3&K's soundtrack that much to begin with. This is excluding the boss music and Ice Cap Zone. The rest ranges from just okay to outright grating. I'm looking at you Marble Garden and Carnival Night final.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Genesis final soundtrack, too. But "wait a few years" doesn't mean much to me when we don't, and can't, know any of the specifics of the deal. If we're talking 2 years, then sure, I'll wait patiently. If we're talking 10 years, then fuck that, gimme the game no matter what soundtrack it is.
Bad as this sounds, I almost don't mind our current predicament. On one hand, S3K will never get treated with the respect and acknowledgement it deserves in the public eye as one of the greatest video games ever made and all that jazz. Which sucks, sure. On the other hand, we now have two different idealized Sonic 3s that our overwhelmingly talented community has blessed us with (S3Complete and S3AIR), and anyone who can follow basic instructions (and ideally the law) can play it. Sure it leaves the game locked in a niche state, but I think I'd take that over seeing any of the S3 staff risk walking head-first into a very hefty lawsuit. I don't know. Just counting our blessings more than anything.
Oh, I didn't necessarily mean WE should wait 10 years, necessarily (although, as I stated, I'm not particularly invested in a remaster) but more that this could be Sega's line of thought.
Who the hell is Brad Buxer and why doesn't he use Twitter? You're in for a treat from the moment you put his name on the credits of something, that's for sure. From what I've read, he's cool and very friendly, so why not just leave it at that and bring back the game? Do we have to fear fan backlash? I love the original Sonic 3 soundtrack and wouldn't want to change it. Maybe it's time for a whole new spin on Sonic 3 in general?
As much as I like the debate, I feel like we should separate this topic of music to another thread. I feel like the discoveries from the ROM itself are getting burred. Fact of the matter is, unless one of the devs tells us directly, we don't know.
Someone who worked with MJ frequently. From what I gather he isn't too bothered about the situation, although some of the other MJ-related composers are: Cirocco Jones and Bobby Brooks. There was even a lawsuit, so no wonder Sega are dodging Sonic 3.
Thinking about the S3 Knuckles theme/miniboss theme thing: I almost wonder if the ones used in the final weren't in-house compositions done to mimic Jackson's style after the CN/IC/LB/credits themes were put into the game. The in house composers may have felt that the cartoonishly "villain-y" beta/PC Knuckles theme clashed against the stylish new tracks, especially in Knuckles' appearances in CN and LB, so they composed something new. Then in S&K, they had Drossin replace a number of incidental cues, including the Knuckles theme, in order to help further justify S&K as a "separate game". After all, the less similarities there were between the two games, the less likely people were to figure out that they'd been ripped off by necessity because Sega's marketing department entered into a deal they couldn't back out of.
>>>>>>>>>>> Sonic 3 (Nov 3, 1993 prototype) - Technical Analysis & Research thread I hope you guys don't mind if I took the liberty, but I feel like someone had to.
Could be literally anything. Some of them might have originated from the "music dump"I don't think they would have bothered making Act 2 variations if they were just supposed to be placeholders quickly put together. They clearly had access to Iizuka. Fans would probably start hating Tee Lopes and Jun Senoue. Sonic Jam used recordings of the Mega Drive version rather than a recreation of them, so perhaps that would be included in the hypothetical contract? That would mean that ADXs made from them could be used without a problem... No idea about Pocket Adventure. They dun goof'd? =P
