Sonic 3: Yuji Naka confirms that a superstar worked on the game, decades later

Game News Sonic 3: Yuji Naka confirms that a superstar worked on the game, decades later

Yuji Naka has just confirmed, after years of speculation, that Michael Jackson had a hand in composing the Sonic 3 soundtrack.

Since the released in 1994 on Mega Drive, a rumor persists about Sonic 3: Michael Jackson reportedly worked on the soundtrack of the game. Rumors and speculations come to an end, since Yuji Naka just confirmed it.

Yuji Naka confirms Michael Jackson’s involvement in Sonic 3

Oh my god, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though SEGA Official uses Michael Jackson’s music.

— Yuji Naka / 中裕司 (@nakayuji) June 23, 2022

This is a picture taken by me with my camera when we went to his house in his helicopter. It’s pretty faded. I miss it. pic.twitter.com/wtM1BtMHwT

— Yuji Naka / 中裕司 (@nakayuji) June 23, 2022

Does the Sonic Origins version of Sonic 3 have a different song?

Oh my god, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though SEGA is using Michael Jackon’s music.

This is a photo I took with my camera when we went to his house in his helicopter. It’s quite washed out. I miss it.

The blue hedgehog franchise classic compilation, Sonic Origins, also promised new content. But for Sonic 3, a good part of the music was replaced by other tracks. Not long ago, Takashi Iizuka, creative executive on Sonic 3 and Sonic Origins, explained at Eurogamer :

When we go back and try to recreate all these games that are over 30 years old, we get a lot of old data that isn’t really usable. And the music was one of those things – we had to dig up the old DAT tapes in order to get the music that was on all those games, and Jun Senoue came in and had to recreate in a modern format the music that they could put on Sonic 3 and Knuckles as an end product.

Whether many people criticized the removal of this soundtrack, some pieces have been kept. Yuji Naka confirms in particular that the music composed by Michael Jackson has remained.

A rumor that started as soon as the game was released

From 1993before the release of the game, the collaboration with Michael Jackson had been mentioned. Indeed, following a court case involving the singer, it was claimed that SEGA cancels its collaboration with Michael Jackson for Sonic 3, the future Mega Drive flagship game. But as soon as the game was released, rumors said that the content the King of Pop had been working on actually stayed in the game. Yuji Naka had always been very discreet about this rumor, which had never been officially confirmed. This time it’s not a rumor anymorewe know that Michael Jackson worked on the music for Sonic 3.