Not exactly breathtaking news considering the rumours and theories that have been doing the rounds on the internet for YEARS, but according to "Black and White" - the official French Michael Jackson magazine, his involvement in the composition of various Sonic 3 themes wasn't credited due to Jackson feeling that his works were ill represented by the gaming technology of the time.
By this I'm assuming Jackson wasn't a fan of chiptune then. But what did he expect from the Megadrives humble architecture? The poor old Z80 sound controller and its measly 8Kb of dedicated RAM could only handle so much (that being said, the Mega Drive's two internal sound chips were capable of some brilliant percussion, see the soundtracks to Revenge of Shinobi, Streets of Rage 2 and Mega Turrican for good examples)!
Jackson wasn't the only one who had ideas above his station though. Nolan Bushnell wanted the sounds of roaring crowds to be included in 'Pong'. As Stephen Kent points out in his book 'The Ultimate History of Video Games', the now infamous ‘blip’ sound effect, whose sole function was to indicate successful contact between ball and paddle was actually created by mistake when designer Al Alcorn experimented with the sync generator found inside the game machine. And look how iconic that sound is! Sonic 3's tunes were and still are celebrated all over the world, and surely Jackson must have noticed, so I do not know why he would've been so coy as to have his name attached to such a great game.
Anyway, click here for what is arguably Sonic 3's most famous tune: Ice Cap Zone.
Enjoy,
By this I'm assuming Jackson wasn't a fan of chiptune then. But what did he expect from the Megadrives humble architecture? The poor old Z80 sound controller and its measly 8Kb of dedicated RAM could only handle so much (that being said, the Mega Drive's two internal sound chips were capable of some brilliant percussion, see the soundtracks to Revenge of Shinobi, Streets of Rage 2 and Mega Turrican for good examples)!
Jackson wasn't the only one who had ideas above his station though. Nolan Bushnell wanted the sounds of roaring crowds to be included in 'Pong'. As Stephen Kent points out in his book 'The Ultimate History of Video Games', the now infamous ‘blip’ sound effect, whose sole function was to indicate successful contact between ball and paddle was actually created by mistake when designer Al Alcorn experimented with the sync generator found inside the game machine. And look how iconic that sound is! Sonic 3's tunes were and still are celebrated all over the world, and surely Jackson must have noticed, so I do not know why he would've been so coy as to have his name attached to such a great game.
Anyway, click here for what is arguably Sonic 3's most famous tune: Ice Cap Zone.
Enjoy,
Great article mate!
ReplyDeleteI was reading about this earlier and it made me think it's strange how he didn't want to be credited with having worked on this but yet he was happy for shitloads of his songs to be played via MD chip renditions in the Moonwalker game!