What's the Deal With Sonic Origins and Michael Jackson?
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2022-06-22

Sonic Origins is here, but while the game features a remastered version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it doesn't feature the original music for three zones in the game: Carnival Night Zone, Ice Cap Zone, and Launch Base Zone. Rumour has it that this is Michael Jackson's fault.

Rumours, though, are generally never a hundred percent accurate. In this case, the longstanding rumour that Jackson composed music for Sonic 3 has indeed proven true, but (and it's a pretty big but) Jackson wasn't the only member of his creative team that worked on the music, and his personal contributions are impossible to isolate, because early ideas sessions were a collaborative experience.

Similarly, while there are rumours that Jackson's estate is to blame for the change in music in Sonic Origins, there is no concrete proof that this is the case. There were a dozen people working on the music for this game, including Jackson's team as well as composers within SEGA, and there could be rights issues connected to any one of them (except people like Jun Senou, who's probably pretty cool with their contributions in the game, given that he created the remixes that have been used to replace the original music in Origins).

This is the kind of video that will probably become outdated very quickly as new information is revealed about Jackson's creative process while working on Sonic 3, but we've done our best. If you come to this in a few years' time, please don't judge us for not having told the story the way you would, with your additional wisdom, tell the story.

Lots of love,
BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

Sources:
https://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/michaeljacksonsonic/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFgnUa1v8uA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlYQooIyCAI
https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-incredible-way-michael-jackson-wrote-music-16799