Sonic Origins comes without the original Sonic 3 & Knuckles soundtrack

The Sonic 3 & Knuckles original soundtrack will not be included in the upcoming Sonic Origins compilation.

This was confirmed by Sega’s Sonic social media manager Katie Chrzanowski in a live stream.

Instead with an adaptation

“Unfortunately, we can’t use all of the original tracks from the Sega Mega Drive version of the game, but Jun Senoue worked hard to adapt the original music that was composed for Sonic Origins in 1993,” she says.

“He even went so far as to reproduce them using the same Sega Mega Drive sound chip and using his own digital tape collection to make them as faithful to the original as possible.”

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What’s behind it?

The problem behind this goes far back. Rumor has it that Michael Jackson was originally involved in the production of the Sonic 3 soundtrack. In the wake of allegations of child abuse against Jackson, Sega distanced itself from him. At the same time, he is said to have been dissatisfied with the way his music sounded on the Mega Drive.

His music is believed to have been included in the original Sonic 3 soundtrack. Similar melodies and chord progressions are found in songs Jackson later released. You can find a good analysis of this at the colleagues from VG247.

On to the history lesson. The 1997 PC version featured different music that appeared to be from an earlier Sonic 3 prototype. However, other re-releases of the game included the original soundtrack. All the way up to 2018. Since then, it seemed that Sonic 3 has been interestingly banned from new releases.

Speculation has it that Jackson received money to use his music until his death in 2009. After that, things are said to have gotten complicated. And fans are wondering: without the original soundtrack, how definitive is this definitive edition that’s supposed to be Sonic Origins?

What do you think about that? Do you need the original soundtrack or are you satisfied with an adaptation?

Sonic Origins will be released on June 23, 2022 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.