Today’s Sonic Official on YouTube confirmed a long-standing concern about Sonic 3’s soundtrack in Sonic Origins. During the stream, Katie Chrzanowski, social media manager for SEGA, notes that the game will not have all the game’s original tracks. Instead, the game will have new original-hardware adaptations of the songs composed by Jun Senoue.
I know one question that we’ve seen over and over is, what is the situation on the music in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. So, while unfortunately we can’t use all of the original sounds from the SEGA Genesis version of the game, Jun Senoue’s been working really hard to adapt the original music that was composed in 1993 for Sonic Origins, and he’s been going so far as reproducing it with the same soundchip as the SEGA Genesis and using is own digital audio tape collection to make this, like, as faithful to the originals as possible.
Katie Chrzanowski, Sonic Official, Season 6 Episode 3, about 36:00
Sonic 3 has long had issues with re-releases due to music contributed by Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer. This includes Carnival Night Zone, Ice Cap Zone, Launch Base Zone, the Multiplayer menu, the Sonic 3 Act 1 boss music, and the Staff Roll. Unreleased beta versions of Sonic 3, as well as the 1997 Windows PC version of the game, used significantly different compositions in place of the tracks.
While it’s a shame that we won’t be hearing the iconic sounds of Ice Cap once again, it’s definitely encouraging that we’ll be getting new versions of the alternate songs from Senoue, who contributed to the original soundtracks of both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Though if you’re really itching for those original sounds… probably a good idea to keep an eye out on the modding scene after it launches.
If anything I’m hoping for the inverse: exporting the music for use in Sonic 3 A.I.R. (although doing it the way you said would be nice too).
I’m interested in Sonic Origins (particularly for the Story Mode feature) but not quite enough to buy it when it drops so having access to the exclusive features of it outside the game would be an apt substitute.
New music is unexpected. I certainly just thought the beta/PC tracks were gonna be used instead. Neat though, now we have 3 official soundtracks for a number of these stages.
On one hand, it’s a shame that Ice Cap isn’t getting it’s Act 1 track featured. On the other hand, Carnival Night’s proto music is better than the final music.
Good music for good music, I suppose.
It was pretty predictable even prior the confirmation that this was about to happen. From this point on, it’s up to mods to bring back those tracks for those who are really eager to have them in Origins and further re-releases. I just want to believe that Jun ain’t gonna screw this up, because we do know what the end result was when he made music for Sonic 4.
I’m totally ok with this, as long as he doesn’t use those god-awful synth instruments he used for Sonic 4.
I’ve been saving the Xbox credit I’ve been earning through their rewards program for this so I don’t feel as bad as I probably should about the soundtrack situation.
I’ve got Sonic 3 several times already anyway with the Megadrive version, Saturn, Ps2, 360 and PC releases already in my library. That and I’ll probably get the PC version of this down the line in a sale and mod it
I will be very angry if the original music is on the music menu
Not so sonic origins. That sux!
Sad, but at least it’s new music. So they couldn’t get a deal with the MJ Estate?
Either MJ’s estate or Brad Buxer. I’m guessing it’s MJ’s estate though because Buxer doesn’t seem like the type of person that would hold up a simple licensing deal like this. In that case, it seems like Buxer got the worst end of this deal. He said he did 99.9% of the Sonic 3 work, but he seemingly can’t license his own Sonic 3 music that he wrote because of some contract that MJ set up and then dumped the work off on him.