Sonic 3 & Knuckles will unfortunately not have its original soundtrack in Sonic Origins, but an adapted version of it is in the works.
Sonic social media manager Katie Chrzanowski confirmed in a recent official Sonic livestream that Sonic 3 & Knuckles won’t have the soundtrack it launched with in 1994 (thanks, VGC). “I know one question that we’ve seen kind of over and over is, what is the situation on the music in Sonic 3 & Knuckles,” said Chrzanowski.
“While unfortunately we can’t use all the original sounds from the Sega Genesis version of the game, Jun Senoue has been working really hard to adapt the original music that was composed in 1993 for Sonic Origins.
Senoue has apparently gone as far as reproducing it. To the point he’s using the same sound chip from the Sega Genesis. And he’s also apparently using “his own digital audio tape collection to make this as faithful to the originals as possible.”
why won’t sonic 3 have its original soundtrack?
This might seem like a strange thing to happen to a nearly 30 year old game. But the soundtrack for Sonic 3 is notable because many believe it was composed by Michael Jackson. Though the singer wasn’t credited in the game.
This belief comes from the fact that Jackson’s musical director Brad Buxer claimed the former worked on the soundtrack. Though this has never been officially confirmed by Sega.
There was a PC port of the game released in 1997 with new tracks. Which replaced the tracks that were allegedly composed by Jackson. Why this happened has also never been confirmed.
Chrzanowski didn’t note if it was for the whole soundtrack, or just the tracks supposedly composed by Jackson. But all other music in the game should be the original compositions.
Sonic Origins is out later this month, on June 23, and will be available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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