Isn't Tomonori Sawada presumed to be behind Angel Island due to being credited for a remix somewhere? Just curious. But Ice Cap being confirmed for Brad Buxer, it's pretty much a straight conversion from the original audio to the Mega Drive.
That's a good point, but I think it can still be rationalized. Stranger In Moscow wasn't released until 1996. Brad Buxer doesn't appear in the credits for the actual release of the song, but we know that he did work on it with MJ originally from his own quote, mentioned earlier in the thread. This tells me that Stranger In Moscow existed in demo form at the time of S3's development. Since Buxer himself had worked on it, and since as of the time of S3's development it had never been released, it would have fallen into the same category as Ice Cap. Do we have a concrete date of when SiM was originally written? It's possible it had been on the backburner for MJ for a long time, making Buxer decide it would be okay to use. MJ may have decided to revisit it later, and either didn't realize Buxer had used the melody in S3's credits, or didn't care. I'm inclined to believe the former, but this is all just speculation anyway.
This is just getting weirder. It's all starting to fit in to place though, and I agree with TheKazeblade in his sound reasoning. As for the Youtube video; poor fuckers, now every comment in future is going to be linked to Sonic The Hedgehog and all respect for the song as a singular entity will be forever diminished :v: I don't think it's a very good song, but then again putting music to a video game song I've known about for well over half my life could just be the reason why I think it sounds like an awkward song, even though obviously it's the other way around IRL.
To be fair, of the comments before this discovery - all four of them - half were "hey, this song was used in [another, non-Sonic piece of media]! Cool!"
So waitaminute, why does the PC version contain different Ice cap music then? I don't know if this got answered before but with this new information it makes me wonder about the theory that the music got changed for the PC version because MJ had wrote them or something? either way this is some fascinating stuff, I am tempted to buy the song now because it's pretty good in it's own right.
This just keeps getting better and better. Looks like Brad Buxer participated in more fancy footwork than we could have ever imagined. My question now is why does "Who Is It", which was released in 1991/1992, sound so similar to Hard Times / Icecap?? Something seems very fishy here. We know that Jam was put directly into Carnival Night, so it's nice to have confirmation of something else. Could it have even been possible that MJ wanted all or nothing when it came to composing Sonic 3 and BB ended up using his stuff anyway? Don't mind me if it sounds like I'm talking out of my ass. It's just that even with this wonderful answer for Icecap, something still seems fishy in other places.
If the problem was an issue of copyright it wouldn't explain why the contemporary release of Sonic Jam didn't have those songs replaced -- it's gotta be streamed from the disc anyway, so it's not as though they had to recode a bunch of the game the game to support replacing the music; simply include the replaced audio streams instead. (Note to anyone coming up with counterarguments about this: be careful with your explanation of why this happened -- keep in mind the replaced levels were the ones whose music didn't appear in Sonic Screen Saver) I mean, it's possible there's some odd specific details in the contract that meant those songs couldn't be included in the PC version specifically, but I'd be surprised.
Ummm. You need to learn more about the music industry. Most artists write their own songs or co-write them with others. Sometimes a record producer writes them or they cover another artist's songs after getting permission, or pick another artist's scraps. Sometimes a song is already written and they need the vocal talent of an artist their intersted in (usually the case with most soundtracks). An artist may choose to work with another artist to make a desuired song, etc. Their usually a lot of possiblities in the industry. Micheal Jackson likely just picked up Brad Buxer's scraps. So yes, you are talking out of your ass. No offense intended.
I thought it was universally agreed it was that soundcards and FM synths at the time couldn't replicate the samples in those tunes and decided to change them at the last minute. People still think MJ had something to do with the change?
I mean I feel like they could have done some bastardized version of those three songs to go along with the bastardized versions of the rest of the songs. Hell this whole game has some strange stuff surrounding it's music. It was slightly remade for Sonic Generations, it's the only classic game not being considered for a mobile rerelease, and no one from that time can talk about what they made for the game. Hell some music was changed from Sonic 3 to Sonic and Knuckles. Something's fishy with this game.
There were fan-made MIDIs around the time that PC version came out that were able to replicate the sounds just fine. For the most part, anyway. So I think it threw people off that SEGA couldn't do what fans were able to do from their homes. So that's where Ice Cap came from, huh? It kinda stinks that it wasn't really MJ's work. =/ But oh well... it's a neat find.
Ummm. As far as MJ's involvement and other things, yes. But Sonic 3's jingle changing when attached to Sonic & Knuckles, no. This game was likely started as a massive project that ended getting rushed. You can look at all the glitches and oversights as well. This game was extremely rushed and could gone the way of 06 if it was anymore rushed. It's likely they couldn't even keep a handle on who did what or who to give credit too. Unlike Sonic 2, the development staff seems more Japanese. A right's issue probably popped up around the time PC version was made (as sometimes happens in the music industry). From my prospective the project was a bit of a mess. Again, I don't think SEGA wants to bother with it much anymore. It's just too much of an issue to deal with.
If anything, I would suggest they changed any theme which had a credit for an outside source too, whether acknowledged or not. It'd explain Icecap changing too.
This thread is specalation now. As the Sonic 3 title theme and other themes are present in the PC version anyway. Jun Senoue is credited for the Invincibilty and title theme jingles in Sonic 3 (which is present in the PC Version). Howard Drowsin just wrote the Sonic & Knuckles jingles to make it feel like a new game. This results in two set of jingles. The only tunes that were changed in the PC version are likely to licencing issues at the end of the day. From a business prospective it just looks sloppy and they couldn't get a game out on time with only releasing half-a-final product. Sonic 3 didn't even have ending medley unlike the other 2 in the series, but Sonic & Knuckles did. It's seems like SEGA is so embrassed by it, that no one is allowed to talk much on it. From Job experince out in the workforce, people are fired or leave and employers typically can't comment it on because of privacy laws (that information is often confiditional and can get employer in trouble with the law). P.S. I just focus more on song credits instead of the real reason why MJ left/letgo or whatever that is, that's just something that can't be answered. It's difficult to get a straight answer anyway. The song credits would be the tell all on what really happened with his music. EDIT: Leave the dead man to his privacy, to anyone who was living you have a maginitude of problems with the law. It borders on going too far.
I haven't seen anyone use this discovery as a reason to pry into the reason behind Michael Jackson's departure from the project. I don't think anyone even really cares why he left anymore, do they?
Well if you pay attention to video posted you can tell they were being invasive a little bit. It would be more productive and less invasive approaching it like an intersted fan of their work. Than asking, "Oh what was this MJ involvement any reason why?" You might actually get somewhere farther approaching it like a fan of their work than going media style on them. Hell, look at the lyric booklets of songs, buy them on iTunes and look at the composer info if listed. From what I gathered it's likely nothing of his was actually left in the final game and could have been the result of someone that composed it for him. He might have only written lyrics for those songs and arranged them and not bothered with anything else when he used some of the said songs. Sometimes people don't even read the credits of a movie and start crap just to get people going. Most of the time people don't read farther than the thank you notes or printed lyrics.
Eh. I see where you're coming from. By the way, you seem to know a lot about music licensing. I was wondering if it were possible that Sega could retain the rights to use the music as originally intended (in the game) as much as they wanted, but weren't allowed to recreate the music using the original compositions? The audio in Jam and Sonic Classics Collection is prerecorded, presumably straight from the source, and used as it was originally intended to be used. Every other re-release of Sonic 3 and Knuckles had the music emulated. Also, none of the tracks that were replaced in S&KC had remastered versions in Sonic Generations. Could that be the issue? Sega owns the tracks as they ended up in the game, but can't use the compositions for anything than...the game?
Yes, you can look at the problems with Sonic CD as example, they couldn't use the lyrics. And there has been a lot of shows on TV that got DVD releases but couldn't re-use the songs that were in the broadcast version of their shows. Their have been songs used in TV shows or movies they couldn't be include in the released soundtrack because they were composed else where and were simply library cues.
Then I wonder if all of the replaced tracks were based on something that MJ ended up using, or was influenced by him in some way. Most of the composers working on Sonic 3 worked with MJ one way or another, right? I'd wager that the replaced tracks weren't originally written for the game, and were thrown together based on bits and bobs that these MJ-associated composers had lying around. In Ice Cap's case, it was Brad Buxer using an unreleased track from his old band. Carnival Night takes a lot of cues from Jam, and the only composer Jam has in common with Carnival Night is Michael Jackson, so there's that. Any one of the composers could've had direct access to it's demo tapes and whatnot (except Drossin?) but Jackson is the only direct connection. The rest of the replaced tracks I don't know much about, though Knuckles' Theme and the Competition Menu sticks out to me as very Jackson-esque. Launch Base is very bass(heh) heavy, so I wouldn't be surprised if Doug Grisby dug it out from his closet and someone else paired it up with some other Jackson album-intended thing they had lying around.
