>>2725
>>2785
Jackson liked video games and had a previous relationship with Sega due to Moonwalker, which had three different versions that were three different games. It was a big selling point for the Genesis early on, before Sonic. So they got him on board, and he was also working with producer Brad Buxer, who was one of Jackson's regular guys. Buxer later claimed that Jackon wasn't pleased with the quality of the sound coming out of the Genesis, and thus decided not to go through with the whole thing, but this sounds like bullshit because, as mentioned, he already knew what the Genesis sounded like due to Moonwalker. Also this all happened in 1993, so there were plenty of other reasons this relationship may have soured.
Some people argued over the years that some songs sounded like Jackson's songs. For example, there is a bit in Carnival Night Zone that sounds like a bit from Jam. To this day it's unclear if this is Jackson's direct influence, or the influence of Brad Buxer, who for all we know may be responsible for the bit in Jam as well. But many years later, it came out that the theme for Ice Cap Zone was actually a Genesis adaptation of an unreleased song called Hard Times, from Buxer's previous band, The Jetzons. It's very blatant, and when the song was eventually released, the cover was the background for Ice Cap Zone, acknowledging it. So Buxer definitely had a lot of involvement, as that was a song that had nothing to do with Jackson.
When the PC version of Sonic 3 was released in like 1997, they removed some songs and replaced them with others. The sound quality of these songs sucked balls as they were shitty midis or something. Many years later, a beta for Sonic 3 leaked which had these songs in their original, Genesis forms. They sounded much better. "Coincidentally," these songs that were changed were all ones people said sounded more like Michael Jackson's music. Other songs very much sounded like music from Jun Senoue, a guy who started doing Sonic music in Sonic 3, but went on to be the main music guy for most of the games to this day, including being the lead guy behind Crush 40, the band that does all those rock songs for the 2000s era Sonic games (and some after, to this day). Notably, he reuses a lot of riffs here and there, but mostly only from his own songs. The ones that got removed in the 1997 rerelease are not ones he references in later games.
When Sonic Origins released, the music from those levels was removed again, like in 1997, but now higher-quality versions of those songs first heard in 1997 were included. Of course opinions are mixed. People want the ones originally released with the game, but these songs were made before Jackson's involvement came along, by the guy who did the rest of the music for this game and most later Sonic games. Jackson came along and replaced his songs, technically.
NiGHTS into Dreams creator, Yuji Naka, (who also worked on Sonic a bit,) did say at this time confirmation that Jackson did the music that was replaced. However, it frankly still remains unclear how much of it was really Jackson's composition, and how much was Buxer's, given that Buxer clearly had a big influence on Sonic 3's music, and also likely had big influence on Jackson's music from the era. The two guys were collaborators at the time, but Jackson got more credit because he was way more famous. I'm sure Buxer would give Jackson more credit than himself, but he's probably did come up with a lot of beats.