SEGA has finally confirmed that Michael Jackson composed the music for ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3'.
Yuji Naka, the former head of Sonic Team at the Japanese video game company, appeared to confirm the long-time rumour that the late King of Pop - who died in 2009, aged 50 - created music for the 1994 video game whilst complaining that the soundtrack for the title has been changed in new compilation release 'Sonic Origins'.
Yuji wrote on Twitter: “Oh my god, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though Sega Official uses Michael Jackson’s music.”
Yuji - who was a developer on the game - also questioned: “Does Sonic Origins 3 have a different song?”
SEGA social media manager Katie Chrzanowski stated in an interview with Tails’ Channel, a Sonic news Twitter account, that the original music had to be changed.
Katie said: "While unfortunately we can’t use the original sounds from the Mega Drive version of the game, Jun Senoue has been working really hard to adapt the original music that was composed in 1993 for 'Sonic Origins'.”
The first rumours that surfaced questioning if the ‘Bad’ hitmaker was involved in the game's creation came to prominence in 2006 after YouTuber Qjimbo produced a video highlighting the similarities between the music in the game and music made by Michael.
It came after a 2005 interview with Robert Hector, the ex Sega Technical Institute director, who stated that the ‘Billie Jean’ singer was commissioned to be part of the project but was removed following the 1993 scandal that Michael was broiled in when he was accused of abusing 13-year-old fan Jordan Chandler.
Qjimbo asserted that the music was not removed and remained in the game as they are eerily similar to songs, such as Michael’s 'Jam’ to the game’s ‘Carnival Night Zone’.
In addition, the Grammy winner’s musical director Brad Buxer repeated the claims in 2009 but they were never confirmed by SEGA.
A 1997 PC port connected to the game held ‘new’ music was once discovered with tracks allegedly to replace Michael’s music. However, it is not known if they were scrapped for legal or technical reasons.
SEGA teamed up with the King of Pop to develop a beat 'em up game based on the 1988 film 'Michael Jackson's Moonwalker'.
The title - which featured Michael's biggest hits - was originally released in arcades and was a huge hit, later being ported to several home consoles.
It was well documented that Jackson was an avid gamer and had a gaming arcade at his Neverland ranch.
