The "Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles" Quest for Music Composer Research

It is obscure indeed, but with the recent revelations from the prototype, an official 3&K remaster with the PC songs wouldn’t be hard to sell (from a marketing standpoint seeing as they’re the true originals)

I was questioning as well how the PC tracks are locked by legal issues (again that’s just a rumor.. I can’t confirm it to be true unless someone posts a source where that has been mentioned)

 

People here have mentioned that the problem is that swapping out the "offending" tracks would be an admission of guilt essentially. Sega would rather sit on it forever and pray that this goes away instead of going to court at all, even if they had a chance of winning.

 

That’s the thing.. it won’t go away because the fans will constantly ask for it until SEGA does something about it.. just ignoring the fans’ requests like that will only make them want it more.

If SEGA actually tries to look into it instead of just sitting on it, then maybe progress can be made and something can be worked out. But until then, Sonic 3 is just going to end up like the Avengers at the end of Infinity War (if it hasn’t already)

 

It's not exactly true. If they release the game as Sonic & Knuckles Collection they're pretty much clear on the legal side.

 

This is something I briefly mentioned a few posts back.. from a marketing standpoint, it would be a good opportunity to introduce the prototype songs to a new audience of gamers who have not even heard of the original Sonic and Knuckles collection on PC.. Only die hard Sonic fans like us will already know about the PC/prototype tracks and the development history, but the majority of the casual gaming audience do not have a clue (I think)

If asked why songs were replaced in some zones, SEGA can just admit (without going into detail) that licensing issues prevented the original MJ Genesis versions from being used.. but the upside is that the new tracks were actually conceived during development of the original game.. knowing what we know now, it wouldn’t be hard to sell

 

That’s actually a cool idea.. Sonic & Knuckles Collection Remastered lol

 

Can we stop hitting the same buttons for pages on end? We get it, we've been saying this for a dozen pages now.

I want to focus on the two S3&K tracks that got released. They appear to be recorded straight from hardware, which is why it sounded strange at first. Both tracks were EQ'd and mastered for the album, which is kinda unpractical if they recorded the songs in their entirety without splicing the channels. Or they could've re-released the MIDI renditions from that S&K album. Oh well.

 

But then a question is not enough to go to court. They're just rereleasing a product that had a different OST for whatever reason.
It's a similar case as Sonic Lego Dimensions -- eyebrows were raised with its bootleg-like tracks but the original composers can't do anything about them.

Not getting sued isn't so hard as you think.

 

Nobody buys Sonic 3 outside this forum, they'd lose money just packaging a ROM and emulator together.

 

If they didn't lose money with Lost World or Forces, I'd doubt they'd lose money with a simple emulated version of Sonic 3.

 

"no one" buys Sonic 3 because Sega's own actions have kept people who aren't into the classic games from knowing it exists. which is a crying shame.

good thing that Mania had stages from it included - it means that now they can go "hey remember these from Mania? this is the game they're from".

Also, it is for sale on Steam as is. They likely are making money on it.

 

Sonic 3 is also available on Xbox One, it was specifically added to the Backwards compatibility list and it will probably be available on the Series X too.

 

I agree with SystemsReady.. we got both Angel Island and Hydro City in Mania Plus so curious players will do the research.

Who else thinks the $5 price tag on Steam is a tactic for SEGA to avoid paying a fortune in royalties?

 

What do you mean? Are they better off selling it at $5 and netting $4.75 (assume a 5% royalty for argument sake) than they would be if they sold it for $10 and netted $9.50? How does that make any sense?

The Steam digital download is pure profit for SEGA at this point. All the R&D work has been done 25 years ago. No maintenance or other financial resources are required for it at this point.

The reason it's $5 is because SEGA knows/thinks demand for the game would drop off significantly above that price point (eg people would move on to another game, or just take the time to emulate it instead).

 

Yeah I don’t know why I thought video game royalties work the same way as it does when it comes to movies or music.. maybe there’s similarities but few and far in between so yes color me stupid on that question lol

 

Yeah it's a tricky subject. The vast vast majority of VG music is either composed for a one-time fee and SEGA would own the rights, or created by staff composers on salary - again with SEGA owning the copyright. The only time royalties usually come into play is if (1) a company cannot afford to pay a large lump sum for the music, so the composer may take a gamble and agree to a royalty instead, or (2) you are someone famous like MJ who has leverage, wants ownership of the music, and SEGA want him bad enough. Typically they would get a small royalty per track per copy sold. Even if MJ got 25 cents for every copy of Sonic 3 sold, SEGA would be on the hook for over $1 million dollars (assuming the game sold around 4 million copies), an enormous price to pay for a soundtrack.

Of course, different agreements can be worked out. Sometimes royalties only come into play if a game hits a certain milestone (eg above 1 million copies sold). Sometimes there is a graduated royalty scheme. There could be cases where it's theoretically possible that SEGA comes out ahead selling for $5 than for higher - but it's unlikely and it's impossible to know without actually seeing the agreement.

As I mentioned before, I think Cirrico's beef is that whatever agreement they drew up doesn't cover digital downloads. He may feel upset but if SEGA was really guilty, they would have settled a long long time ago.

 

Yes thanks for the insight.. it’s a very sensitive subject and I do agree that maybe Cirocco has a misunderstanding of the original agreement because I can’t fathom their original deal would include re-releases much much later than 1994. Unless documents leak, which I highly doubt, then it will stay in the dark, which doesn’t bode well for a 3&K remaster but you never know.