Yuji Naka confirms Michael Jackson wrote music for Sonic 3

It’s long been a gaming myth that Michael Jackson wrote music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, sparking long-running rumours as to which parts of the soundtrack he was involved in.

Now, Sonic creator Yuji Naka has confirmed that Michael Jackson did indeed write music for the game.

“Does Sonic Origins Sonic 3 have a different song?” he tweeted out of the blue. “Oh my god, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though Sega Official uses Michael Jackson’s music.”

Sonic Origins, the new compilation of Sonic games, was confirmed to not be using the original soundtrack. It was suspected this was due to the ongoing speculation around royalties with Jackson’s estate.

Instead, the compilation uses new arrangements from composer Jun Senoue.

Creative officer Takashi Iizuka confirmed as much to Eurogamer: “When we’re going back and trying to recreate all these games from 30 plus years ago, you get a lot of old data that’s not really usable. And music was one of those things – we had to dig up the old DAT tapes in order to get the music that was on all these games, and Jun Senoue went in and had to recreate in a modern format the music that they could put on to Sonic 3 and Knuckles as a final product.”

Naka has even tweeted an image taken from Jackson’s home when the team visited. “It’s pretty faded,” he admits. “I miss it”.

Sega allegedly dropped Jackson from Sonic 3 following allegations of child abuse, though fans believe that the music he composed remains in the original version of the game and was worked on by Jackson’s producers instead.

Naka’s tweet is a major admission in this long-standing rumour.