Right, this topic is just becoming groundless speculation. Please leave that off of this topic before it has to be locked. Although it may just be out of gas. Basically, the documentary only created more questions than it did answers--which is typical because the time this happened in is gone, MJ is dead, and the data on this is basically gone forever. The people who worked with that time can't or won't tell anyone the full coherent story from even one perspective, so what we know is basically a few often contradictory data points.
Ah yes, I see what you mean. That was pretty filler for sure. By your talking I thought for a moment we already had accurate information on who did what regarding the S3 songs =/ Yep =/ So sad, I don't want accept this, but I also think we will be unable to know more about this. Also, I just can't stand to "anonymous" source saying eveything people wanna hear. Probably they called it anonymous just to say whatever they thought without needing to justify nothing.
We have literally no concrete information on anything except a bunch of hearsay between different devteam members as to why the songs were changed (many of them being conflicting answesr) in S3K collection. And some other hearsay about Scirocco and such. But in the end, you add it up, and we really have little data that actually makes a coherent picture.
Also there's still a recording deal ongoing to release at least 7 more MJ albums consisting of compilations and unreleased stuff. Who knows what kind of stuff could this be? Although I think there will be nothing much more than remastered MJ demos a bunch of we already have online for years.
If what Cirocco said was accurate, it's mostly a royalty thing. Apparently, some of MJ's sound team wasn't properly compensated for their work.
I was thinking about the whole MJ issue earlier and something just clicked in my mind. The musicians say that when MJ supposedly left, they had to cobble together the rest of the soundtrack, right? Then I have a feeling I know some of the tracks he did. The 1st three zones of Sonic 3 had truly remixed Act 2s. They sounded similar but had enough differentiation that you could tell it was not the same track. Angel Island Act 1 / Act 2 Hydrocity Act 1 / Act 2 Marble Garden Act 1 / Act 2 Carnival Night, Ice Cap and Launch Base's Act 2s on the other hand felt like they just muted sound channels off of the originals, and called it the Act 2 remix. Carnival Night Act 1 / Act 2 Ice Cap Act 1 / Act 2 Launch Base Act 1 / Act 2 It feels like there wasn't enough time to do actual remixes off them. Like they weren't...finished. With that noted, I conclude that MJ did NOT work on the Act 2's for those zones, but he DID work on the Act 1's. This explains why those zones did not receive proper Act 2 remixes, because he left before working on them. The remaining sound engineers figured the tracks would sound different enough if they muted some channels and slightly altered some of MJ's tracks, and thus the Act 2 songs as we know them were made.
Scirocco quotes directly that Michael Jackson created Zones 2 and 3's soundtracks. All the other information compiled here leads me to believe that this information is wrong and what RGamer2009 wrote above is an interesting point, considering that the latter stages were changed in the PC version too. Perhaps at the time of the PC release things were up in the air, I mean, it was 1997 after all. The official statement is that at the time of the release on the PC, tracks were changed due to "sound card issues". Why the frick would anyone then compose entirely new tracks when they could just recreate the existing tracks in to an easily digestible format for the PC? Seems like a lot of extra work for a sound card workaround. At the end of the day, this is something that is not going to be solved for a long time. Most of the pieces to the puzzle are there, it's just knowing where to fit them. Should we keep going with this topic or should we split one off to discuss theories etc?
Coming from someone who's favorite artist is Michael Jackson, and favorite game is Sonic 3, I really wish we could have a real answer to this legend that intrigued me so much since I heard about it in the early 2000s. Michael Jackson's Estate is run very poorly, but Sony is still the publisher of Michael's past music and the next few upcoming releases. Despite similarities in songs and style, even direct relations like Jam, In The Closet, and Stranger and Moscow to Carnival Night, Knuckle's Theme, and Credits Theme we still will likely never have closure on this. If Sega were to admit that Michael Jackson composed the music for the game, you can bet that Epic Records (The division of Sony Music that Michael Jackson was/is part of) would go after them in a second. We are potentially talking about lawyers going after royalties for sales of the Genesis game, tons of re-releases, other games that use the soundtrack (Smash Brothers Brawl, Sonic Pocket Adventure, Sonic Generations), etc. Between the threat of a potential huge lawsuit from Epic Records, and the current ongoing lawsuit, I don't think we will have closure any time soon.
It wouldn't be Epic records going after them, but his estate, because the estate has full control of both MJ's music as well as the royalties from the music. But either way, unless somebody brings it up to them directly, I doubt the estate will ever find out about this whole fiasco. And like I said before, the whole mess with mj is probably why Sega decided to pull the plug on the Moonwalker re-release a few years back.
Nah, they would never use his songs again in other game, so that excludes Angel Island, Hidrocity and Marble Garden from being his.
That would also peg down the changed out tunes from S&K PC as MJ songs for sure. Icecap, Carnival, Launch Base, Knuckles theme, Midboss theme, credits... was that all of them?
Well, it's possible that the zones hadn't yet been ordered properly when Scirocco and Jackson collaborated on music for them. It might still be accurate in that they created the music for two zones together, it's just which ones that's up in the air.
Didn't Scirocco once say that MJ had called him over the phone when he got the idea for the music that was supposed to go with the water level, or am I remembering wrong?
I remember this too, something like a call in the middle of the night and he sang what it would sound like over the phone. Something like that anyway I remember being posted.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I remember reading somewhere that Qjimbo interviewed Cirocco some years back, and he said that Mike made a demo called "The Water" or something among those lines for Sonic 3. It's not improbable to think that any tracks he DID make for Hydrocity got passed over for something else made by a different composer.