Former SEGA director talks about Michael Jackson and Sonic 3

We thought the story of Michael Jackson’s involvement in Sonic 3’s soundtrack had finally been well and truly figured out (or, well, close enough to figured out) since former Sonic Team head Yuji Naka has seemingly confirmed that Michael Jackson did compose some of the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

But a fresh interview with a former SEGA America executive once again threatens to fog things up with an added layer of mystery.

The man credited as executive co-ordinator on Sonic 3 (and the director of Genesis-era studio SEGA Technical Institute), Roger Hector, claims that Michael Jackson’s contributions to the game’s BGM never made the final cut, with all the pop megastar’s work removed from the project and swapped out in early 1994.

In an interview with Retro Gamer, Hector said:

“I get this call from one of Michael Jackson’s people, telling me Sonic was Michael’s favorite game and could he come to SEGA and meet the people who made it. He came in after hours, I gave him a tour and introduced him to the creators of the Sonic games and he was thrilled. You could see he was a total Sonic fan – he was really, really excited. So one of our guys says, ‘Why don’t you write the music for the next Sonic?’ And he says, ‘OK.’ Everyone’s jaw dropped. I’m thinking, ‘How are we gonna work this out?’ but basically, he did write the entire score for Sonic 3.

I had a CD of it! It was all in the game and we’re just a few weeks away from delivering the final code so it can be produced for Christmas that year and then stories start appearing in the papers about Michael and, you know, him being the bad guy with kids. Everyone panicked. I mean, we had kept it a secret because it was going to be this huge, surprise announcement that Michael was doing the score, then boom, this thing comes out about him.

SEGA of Japan made the decision to take [his music] out… I had a composer on my staff, who’d done a bunch of videogame music in the past, called Howard Drossin. I told him he had to replace the audio [for Sonic 3], basically 16 weeks’ worth of work, in a week and a half. I said we’d slide food under his door but he couldn’t leave the office. And he did it! He was an amazing guy and has gone on to do a lot of movie music in Hollywood but he got his break at STI as a last-minute replacement for Michael Jackson!”

We should point out that the above quote has in fact been a long-standing party line from former SEGA America personnel who worked on Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles – that Michael Jackson’s work never made it to print and that Howard Drossin (and Jun Senoue) stepped up to replace the whole thing. We’ve heard this story before, it’s not new.

But, while it’s a story that might have carried weight some ten years ago, today it’s a little less believable. More recent developments on this story over the last several years, from sources directly involved in Sonic 3’s music production, not only confirm Michael Jackson’s contributions happened but that they remained on the cartridge. In an interview last year, Brad Buxer confirmed he worked on Sonic 3, for Michael, and cited specific music tracks that are present in the final release.

Hector (intentionally or not) is really kind of suggesting that Michael’s music isn’t on the cartridge at all, which may not be necessarily accurate.

Add the fact that mysterious “licensing issues” prevented an entire half of Sonic 3’s soundtrack from being included in a remaster of Sonic 3 & Knuckles in Sonic Origins, and that the game itself had previously not seen a re-release in over a decade.

However, Hector does have direct experience with the game’s development and that cannot be discounted. The question then remains; why is Hector sticking to this particular story a decade on? One day we will get to the truth!