Sonic 3: The MJ Saga

Woe betide any poor soul who tries to fully solve this mystery. (which is probably talked about more now than the timeless awesomeness of the game itself).

It seems like the story of Sega, Sonic The Hedgehog and Michael Jackson are so intertwined it’s impossible to fully pick apart. The character Sonic himself was modelled, to quote this wiki article, as thus:

Sonic's color was chosen to match Sega's cobalt blue logo; his shoes were inspired by Michael Jackson's boots, and his personality by Bill Clinton's "can-do" attitude.

There you have it. The company wanted to target 1990s western youth and they didn’t bs around. They wanted to be cool and edgy, to counter Nintendos family-friendly (famicom) lamedom. Even Sonic’s red and white shoes were apparently inspired by the front cover of MJ’s album Bad. Apparently there was also a brief idea at the concept stage to pair this blue hedgehog up with a human girlfriend named Madonna. The evil Dr Ivo Robotnik (Russian/Slavic for worker) was modelled on Theodore Roosevelt, who ironically is quite an admired historical president for a number of reasons including his early environmentalism, though scrutinized over his imperial/expansionist tendencies. Combined with the Russian/Soviet name and the then-recent Chernobyl disaster and you’ve got an amalgamation of the cold-war’s two superpowers threatening to destroy our natural world. Sonic’s rival Knuckles was meant to be a tough and brawny Jamaican echidna, with green socks representing the Jamaican flag and dreadlocks as spikes. Reggae-pop crossovers were big at the time, as was rising environmentalism and third-world consciousness (MJs 90s lyrics cover these themes, and the game is full of pro-enviro/anti-tech symbolism, and you can hear abit of reggae/Caribbean in the songs too).

The deeper you go into this, the more you realise you don’t know. I have found this article to be impossible and not the cohesive summary I was hoping. But I can try to unpack this by relating how my story ties in to all this:

Many years ago, sometime after I had given up on gaming, I first came across the allegation that Sega had hired Michael Jackson to compose the music to Sonic 3 and Knuckles, their classic 16-bit Genisis/Mega-Drive game from 1994.

As soon as I read that, it instantly made sense and was very believable to me. Subsequent discussion that’s taken place online, as I look back at this mythical tale several years further ahead to today, only seems to further cement this as legit.

Before I go on, for those who never played it, an important disclaimer:

**Sonic 3 can colloquially refer to two games released almost simultaeneously: Sonic 3, and Sonic and Knuckles. And you could mount Sonic 3 onto the cartridge of Sonic and Knuckles (using a unique dual-connecting cartridge, the only game that ever had this) to create a the hybrid game Sonic 3 and Knuckles, which combined the stages and unlocked all the characters and other in-built prizes and bonuses. This combined game was one of the pinnacles of 20th century artistic achievements. The point is the design elements are very similar and the game production was probably all done in the same spot at the same time by the same people.

Now let’s look at the evidence.

The song that would initially get pointed to was Smooth Criminal, and it’s uncanny resemblance to the 5th Stage music for The Ice Cap Zone.

Then pop-rap stylings of the following Stage, The Launch Base Zone, seem roughly equivalent to MJs 90s back-to-the-streets experimenting (an upbeat “They Dont Care About Us” maybe?). There’s also MJ’s 1991 song Jam compared to the Carnival Night Zone.

Now in the age of youtube DJ splicing and blending, I’ve come across things such as this: an overlay of Thriller with Stage 3: The Marble Garden Zone.

The Lava Reef Zone and others are more noteworthy just for the fact that their musical composition is so much more elaborate and sophisticated then absolutely anything that you would hear on a 16-bit video game or earlier. And I would argue right up until Sony got fully involved with acquiring the rights to use music that already been published and released for the regular western music market (with Moby, The Caesars etc).

So what happened? Why the secrecy and obfuscation?

The story as i first read it goes like this:

In the early 1990s the Nintendo vs Sega, or Mario vs Sonic War, was at its height. Mario had the early lead in pop culture as he had arrived on the scene earlier. Sega was trying to make up for lost ground by making Sonic faster, edgier, cooler, better produced and sleeker. This extended to the back-end production of the game. Sonic 2 was a great breakthrough success and Sega wanted to capitalise on the momentum for the next installment. They already had a working relationship with Michael Jackson via the Moonwalker video game, and got him signed on to the production for Sonic 3. This was announced and hyped in the video-game press at the time. And justifiably so. MJ was at his peak.

But then, the bubble burst.

This was 1993 going into 1994. The reason I heard, and still believe, was because of the child abuse allegations that had begun to surface around MJ, and Sega kicked him off the project to protect their image. Another theory has also however been posited that he just thought the end results were crap to his ears (accustomed as he was to the highest standard of mainstream music studio production), quit the project, and asked for his name to be removed. They could also both be true.

What happened next? This is how I originally read it:

Sega, having parted ways with MJ, were too close to Sonic 3’s release date to start a new music score from scratch. So they just slightly tweaked what they had, changed the music credits, removing MJs name, and left it at that. This was perfectly understandable. It was a major release for a major company and the hype was huge. And with the existential duel between Nintendo and Sega always ongoing, the notion of canning or delaying the whole game was just not an option. This would be the last major Sonic game of the 16 bit era. The 32-bit era was dawning, and with that, Sega’s new machine: The Sega Saturn. Sony was about to barge into the market with the first Playstation. Nintendo were gonna fall back abit but could not be expected to capsize so easily (and indeed, they would be bringing out the Nintendo64 by the late 90s).

When I was playing Sonic 3 in the 1990s i loved the music, but had no idea about MJs involvement. Even though I, and everyone knew who MJ was and had been aware of.… “the controversies”. It took until the internet could openly start debating the tracks on Youtube for me to really be made aware of the link. But it’s undeniably there. MJ has to have been involved.

As I look at the detective work others have done, it’s interesting to see the timeline of the story trickling out. Here is how I have mapped it out:

1982 The Jetzons, a kind-of lesser known electro-funk band, featuring future MJ keyboardist and song-collaborator Brad Buxer, record… but do not release… a track called Hard Times (This is important, it does turn out to be a dead-ringer for the Ice Cap Zone theme, moreso than Smooth Criminal).

1984 Michael Jackson releases Thriller

1987 Michael Jackson releases Bad

1988 Michael Jackson’s feature film Moonwalker is released

1989 Sega release the Sega Genesis, (released outside the US as the Mega Drive). The first 16-bit console on the market, designed to replace the The Sega Master System, which lagged behind the 8-bit Nintendo on every performance and sales metric.

1990 Sega release two video-game versions of MJs Moonwalker movie, one released as an Arcade Game, and another on their 8-bit Sega Master System and 16-bit Sega Genesis consoles (The Genesis was released in 1989). They are beat’em-ups.

1990 Nintendo release the 16-bit Super Nintendo, packaged with Super Mario Bros 3. It’s a worldwide hit and makes it into 25% of American households. Sega’s president Hayao Nayakami issues a decree that his company needs a mascot of its own and take the fight directly to Mario.

1991 Sonic The Hedgehog (the first game) is released, the tables turn. Marketed on speed, as the Genesis’ graphics card is 2x faster than the Super Nintendos, Sonic’s graphic effects are billed as only possible on a Sega Genesis.

1992 Sonic 2 The Hedgehog 2 is released. It features a new sidekick called Tails, so is sometimes also called Sonic 2 and Tails

1993, January Sonic The Hedgehog 3 development begins. It will feature another new character called Knuckles. Due to overload of the project’s size, it had to be split into two releases: Sonic 3, and Sonic and Knuckles, which could be mounted together using the S&K lock-in cartridge, and that combined game is now called Sonic 3 and Knuckles.

1994, February Sonic 3 is released for Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive. Music credits at the end of the game (in order of appearance) are: Brad Buxer, Bobby Brooks (RnB/Motown Engineer), Darryl Ross, Geoff Grace, Doug Grisby III, Scirocco, Sega Sound Team…

1996 Michael Jackson releases the single Strangers in Moscow with chords pulled from the end-credit music for the end of the Sonic 3 and Knuckles game. Brad Buxer later says that he worked on this song with MJ.

1997 a Windows port version of Sonic and Knuckles Collection released (essentially a rerelease of the combined Sonic 3 and Knuckles Sega Mega-Drive game), with some of the songs from Sonic 3 changed.

…many many years of rumour and innuendo…

2009, Brad Buxer confirmed MJs involvement, and said MJ was a fan of the games, and met with the production team. All this is mentioned in a 2009 Guardian article.

…further years of “what does THAT mean?”

2022: Yuji Naka, who was the co-creator of the Sonic series, and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until 2006, says , on a tweet (sourced from reddit): “Oh My God, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though SEGA Official uses Michael Jacksons music”

Now what the hell does THAT mean???!?!?!?!?!

.. And this is where we still are. Apparently there is some kind of agreement from the official parties not to speak about it, lest it open up a massive legal can of worms. we are over 30 years after the release date of Sonic 3, and MJ has been dead for over 15 years. I’ll add further layers of intrigue: The Japanese have a code of honour, and MJ never admitted to being guilty of the crimes he was accused of. That probably complexifies the legalities, though I don’t know why it matters so much now.

Different execs and project team-members have given their statements over the years, and others who have written about this have noted the conflict in the various accounts. Brad Buxer seems more willing than most to clear the air. He said this in an interview in 2022:

I go knock at [Jackson’s] door and I had under my arm a cassette player. I’ve been doing all the SEGA Sonic the Hedgehog cues. Because, the way Michael works is he’ll tell SEGA he’ll do it, and then he says “Brad, you’ll do it,” right.

Those keeping an eye on recent re-releases/remakes of Sonic 3 (in full or part) on new platforms, have noted that the songs for some of the stages have changed, and these happen to be the stages most often cited as resembling the work of Michael Jackson.

And there we have it. There are still unconfirmed mysteries to solve out there. But this one is way more legit to me than the Loch Ness Monster. It’s probably gonna stay that way and we can all just live with it. Reading on how the professional collaboration took place really reveals alot abot how a creative process takes place, and things like “ideas”, “accreditation” and who did what can become abit hazy. The acknowledgement that MJ was “involved” with the project is probably the best we’ll ever get.

Sonic snowboarding the start of Ice Cap Zone, Act 1. If you read youtube comments about old 80s pop/electro tracks and someone says they wanna get on a snowboard, you’ll know what’s up.

Michael Jackson apparently rang Sega up to say he was a fan of the Sonic games and wanted to get involved with the music for the third game, but his ties to Sega went back even before the release of Sonic 1, to the Moonwalker Video-Games released in the late 80s.

To quote the website Meristation:

“In these three games, based on the movie of the same name, Moonwalker, the King of Pop signed on as designer and composer. The title was a nice beat'em up with horizontal scroll in which we tried to rescue, through music and dance, several kids kidnapped by the clutches of the fearsome Mr. Big.”

Longtime Sega President Hayao Nayakami was determined to take Nintendo’s crown as console king. Having attempted, unsuccesfully, to motivate Sega-of-America’s CEO Michael Katz with the rallying cry “Hyakumandai!”, Japanese for “1 million”(… as in, get a million sales in the mega-drive’s first year…) he dismissed Katz and replaced him with Tom Kalinske, Tom’s aggressive four-point plan including bundling Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in with the console itself. Nayakami was also blessed to have Yuji Naka on his team, who was leading a development team on a game character “to beat Super Mario”. The console wars were on, and Sega were going to hook into the cool side of American pop-culture to claim an edge.

Masato Nakamura, a bassist for a J-Pop band, did the music for the first 2 Sonic games.

Yuji Naka, aka YU2, was the co-creator for the original Sonic Games, including Sonic 3, and was president of the Sonic Team at Sega until he left the company in 2006. Seen as the main creative force of the Sonic Games, he confirmed MJ was involved in a tweet in 2022

Whacko Jacko and his keyboardist Brad Buxer, who was also at the top of published music credits at the end of the original Sonic 3 game .

Brad Buxer toured with MJ and was a creative collaborator from 1989 onwards. Over the years he’s been the source for a lot of the heresay over MJs involvement with Sonic 3. Buxer’s most recent comments in 2022 indicate that MJ actually just let him do most of the legwork for the Sonic 3 music, with MJ actually only doing one song, and Buxer providing melodies taken from the end-credits of Sonic 3 to be used in the 1996 MJ single “Strangers In Moscow”. Buxer is now a professional pilot according to wiki.