Between Sonic 3's Carnival Night Zone, and Michael Jackson's "jam", there's some startling simularities. I'm suprised Jackson didn't go after Sega for this one. Well, Sega is older then 12, so I guess it was a bit out of his range.
Clips:
Carnival Night Zone
Michael Jackson's "jam"
And that's not all.
According to an interview with Roger Hector (Director of Sega Technical Institute, worked on Sonic 3, K, Spinball):
Michael Jackson was originally brought in to compose all the music for the game, but at the very end, his work was dropped after his scandals became public. This caused a lot of problems and required a lot of reworking.
So this made people dig. A few music tracks were changed in the PC version of Sonic 3 for unknown reasons - and among the changed tunes were Carnival Night, Icecap, Launch Base, a Competition tune and the credit roll theme. Most logical reason for these being changed is the thing about converting them to MIDI (thought to be not a 5 minute work like the rest of the game due to the huge differences of the samples used in the Megadrive version and the capabilies of MIDI music). But what if it was copyright problems, those tunes being too similar to MJs stuff? Obviously that's stupid, but people started combining things...
| Icecap music |
Jackos Who is it
Who is it, sped up |
|
Mix them together and you get:
BOOMSHAKALAKA Or you can mix the Sonic 3 ending song with Jackos "Stranger in Moscow" to get THIS | |
After some pitch & tempo modifications, the two tunes pretty much match. Other similarities include the S3 Credit Roll tune and MJs "Stranger in Moscow", and the boss theme that Sonic & Knuckles eventually dropped sounds very Jacko-ish too.
Qjimbo did an excellent video which covers most of this, which by now already circulated from Youtube to IGN to ASS Emblergames to Gamingforce to Greenland to the grave of Genghis Khan.
Check Qjimbos the Documentation video by clicking here
So what's up with all these similarities? According to the exec of the game, Jacksons tunes were ditched. Umm, maybe?
Maybe not. The Sonic 3 credit roll lists these guys (screenshot):
- BOBBY BROOKS
- DARRYL ROSS
- GEOFF GRACE
- DOUG GRIGSBY III
- SCIROCCO
- HOWARD DROSSIN
Howard worked for SEGA in a hardcore way (play Comix Zone), but who are the rest? Scirocco? Yup, you guessed, it:
WATCH OUT SECRET
IT'S SCIROCCO MOLE!
Well well, if it isn't Scirocco, the evil twin brother of Morocco Mole!
Scirocco has harassed his twin brother Morocco ever since they were in the womb and in the kindergarden, years later he tried using Morocco as a bait to kill Agent Triple Zero Super Secret Secret Squirrel (along with Morocco), but he failed and was eventually captured by Secret Squirrel and his clumsy twin Morocco, who is the faithful yet retarded sidekick of Secret ever since they met at Sciroccos first assissination attempt. After prison, Scirocco turned to playing music and eventually found himself composing for many big names in music, and even had a brief collaboration with Jackson for doing music in Sonic 3! It's all written down here.
Among his henchman were Brad Buxer (worked with Jackson all the time), Bobby Brooks (credited for Synthesizer Programming and Drums and Percussions in MJs HIStory and other albums), Darryl Ross (wrote music for Jacko, also credited in HIStory booklet), Geoff Grace (worked with Michael Jackson, also credited in HIStory booklet), and Doug Grigsby (credited in MJs HIStory and Blood On The Dance Floor - google this one up yourself - there are tonsa results).
...so perhaps Jackos tunes weren't dropped at all. Hmm, hmm, hmm.
And to further add to the theory, if you finish Sonic & Knuckles WITHOUT any cart attached, the credit roll will not list Scirocco and his henchman, only Howard Drossin. For Sonic 3 or Sonic 3 & Knuckles you get all of the composers, confirming that those guys worked on some of the Sonic 3 tunes.
Of course, the "Sonic & Knuckles music existed in Sonic 3!" argument comes up too, but does it make sense to credit people whose stuff didn't make it into the game?
