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

Sonic 3 PC have same music of Sonic 3 Proto
If you need staff roll?

 

Sonic Jam Official Guide scans are available here: https://twitter.com/Scotty980_/status/1145490175704862720

Flying Battery Zone on Page 80.

 

I agree. The linked MIDI is from the VG Music Archive, which consists of MIDIs sequenced by fans. The headers we're looking at were created by the person who sequenced and uploaded the file, so the composers are most likely just a guess.

 

That too. It could be a rip of the game data but my suspicion is that it's a custom job done by someone with no more (and possibly less) information than we had 15 years ago.

Hell I don't think we had good rips of the midi data until like 2009 or so.

 

I think I'm starting to maybe see what happened here. Emphasis on 'maybe'.

If Roger Hector was (or at least pretended to be) unaware of the MJ music's implementation, that implies it's possible contractual obligations may have not been seen through. Is it possible Sonic Team, after looking at their collection of songs they'd accumulated and picking the "best" of the bunch (like that Iizuka quote mentions), went ahead and used whatever songs Brad/Bobby/Cirocco composed despite business plans to keep going falling through?

Not to say anyone at Sonic Team willingly cheated any of the composers; in a hectic work environment with clashing heads like at Sega, it wouldn't be surprising to know they went ahead with something they shouldn't have without even knowing.

But that's just my tin-foil hat scrounge up of everything we have documented vs what's been discussed here and elsewhere the past few days.

 

I deactivated it years ago for personal reasons. Although, some of the stuff was asked on their walls and not DMs, and I'm (fairly) sure that stuff wasn't always kept archived on people's profiles. But I could be wrong, it's been at least 6 years since I did anything Facebook related.

 

I don’t know who first made the connection, but I’ve been seeing people compare it to this song from Shadow the Hedgehog:

 

I know i initially said the S3 Proto music was placeholder, but after listening to the tracks more closely, i think it's highly unlikely that's the case. At least some of the tracks are probably written specifically for Sonic 3. Obviously we know some music in Sonic 3 (such as the special stage) is recycled, but it's probably not the case for all the tracks which were replaced by MJ's team.

Firstly, the tracks align to Sonic 3's use of Act 1 and Act 2 remixes (the only tracks which are lazy about this are those by MJ's team). Launch Base and Ice Cap Zone especially stick to this rule, as both acts play off the main melody in a way which is very similar to other tracks in the game. Carnival Night Zone is not as rigid, but you can tell the two tracks are related to each other. I think it's implausible that all the tracks would follow Sonic 3's remix rule so closely if they were all placeholder tracks randomly found in SEGA.

Secondly, placeholder music doesn't really make any sense in the context of this prototype. The level select doesn't have any music, so if they wanted to put placeholder music everywhere, why not put it in the level select?

I think we just need to accept the truth, which is that the SAK Collection music the fandom collectively used to make fun of is just as legitimate a part of Sonic 3's OST as Hydrocity is.

 

What's wrong with Hydrocity's music?

Anyway, as I've said, it's a lot easier to accept that with how much better they sound here than on PC.

 

The point is that Hydrocity's music is great

And to be honest, I've listened to the MIDI's and the prototype music sounds pretty good there too. I strongly believe that the only reason anyone (myself included) wrote the music off as just replacements is because they didn't have the authority or legitimacy of being in the original Genesis release of Sonic 3.

 

The unused track and proto Knuckles theme are unquestionably Jun Senoue.

 

Not sure if all tracks are Jun Senoue, but Icep Cap and unused track definely sounds Jun Senoue's works for me. Especially the unused track, which is kinda similar to Balloon Park and a lot of Sonic 3D Blast songs.

 

I think whoever was responsible for Hydrocity was also responsible for proto Carnival Night and proto Launch Base. Check out the act 2 arranges, they're very similar. At the moment, I don't see any reason to believe that acts were split up among different composers.

Drossin mentioning Setsumaru as "an act 2 arranger guy" is interesting, though. Back then, sound programmers had a LOT of influence over a soundtrack, to the point where they can automatically be treated as an arranger in many cases. Ever heard of Gage? It's a PC-98 game that everyone assumed was done by Yuzo Koshiro for ages, until it was revealed that nearly all of it composed by someone entirely different and Koshiro did the programming (and one song) instead.

I don't know about proto Icecap being Senoue's, it doesn't sound like his other stuff much. The unused track sure does though.

Absolutely right. As soon as this proto broke, I saw tons of people that I would never have seen before "apologizing" to S&KC or talking about how great "the PC music" was.

 

Welp, Sawada hasn’t gotten back to me (yet?). Maybe he needs time to answer my question, or he hasn’t checked his messages yet, or he just can’t be bothered answering. (back when I messaged him in 2015 he responded like a day later and it’s been nearly a day now).

 

He might just be busy, I speak to academics a lot and they can easily take a week to respond.

When I talk to Craig Stitt he can take a month to respond.

So I don't think you should get worried by a day.

 

Most people are "apologizing" to the proto/SKC soundtrack because the arrangements on the Genesis are seriously that much better than their midi counterparts. We never had the originals to fill in the blanks in our heads for what sounded off, so dopey midis was our only point of reference.

The difference is night and day between Launch Base 1&2's midis vs the originals, and it turned Carnival Night 2 (for me at least) from "this is okay I guess" to "this is a top 5 spot for best in the ost ez".

 

Well, for me personally, I may just not like the sound of general MIDI that much. Every single track in the game sounded inferior to me on PC, because the instruments were different. As another example, I LOVE the S3 Act 1 boss theme. I've heard dozens of MIDI renditions of it over the years, and I thought that not one of them did the original Genesis version justice.

EDIT: what Azookara said, basically.

 

Carnival Night Act 2 blowed my mind (and ears) how GOOD it is actually (even dare to say I like it more than the final version).

 

I don't really buy that, I just listened to the entire MIDI soundtrack and it's not as bad as everyone makes out. The prototype music also sounds very similar in the MIDI as in the Genesis soundtrack. The melody is still the same, even if the production isn't as good, it's not as if the entire song changed.

I really do think people just wrote the proto themes off because they didn't consider them legitimate.

 

There's nothing to not buy if that's how my opinion changed on it. lol

And sure, their legitimacy did help me turn my opinion on them, but doesn't that make sense anyways? With new knowledge that this is what it was all along, it helps realign your perspective on what they were thinking when making the stages; rather than seeing it as some musician who (in post) changed the tone of the stages with lack of regard for what was 'originally' there.