Michael Jackson and the music in Sonic The Hedgehog

May 11th, 2008

A guy I talked to at Microdisko told me about how he was in love with the sound from YM2612 FM chip in the Genesis/Megadrive, although most game music composers at the time didn’t know how to fully utilize the chip’s full potential. He (as well as I) love the music of Sonic 2 and beyond.
And today I stumbled upon the awesome news that some of the tracks in Sonic 2 might have been composed by Michael Jackson. Yes, that Michael Jackson, the king of pop. Apparently he composed music for the games, but then it was removed when the pedophilia accusations started to pop up. This video show a compelling argument, supported by statements by former Sega employees, that the music in fact remained in the final games.
Unfortunately, they won’t let me embed it. :/
So here’s a link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbVM-l2Oku4

Instead, I’ll put a video of Streets of Rage here, which my newfound friend told me about for the music. It’s nothing actually nothing short of rave music, and I love it.

4 Responses to “Michael Jackson and the music in Sonic The Hedgehog”

  1. b-knox says:

    I didn’t even know Micheal Jackson knew how to write music. All his classic stuff worth listening to was produced by Quincy Jones. If he did write these tracks maybe he should have got some halp with the embellishments. =X

  2. Sebastian Tomczak says:

    I really enjoy the music to the Streets of Rage series of games. Really excellent stuff!

  3. Gamma Goblin says:

    b-knox: Michael Jackson wrote both Beat It and Billie Jean, as well as a few others on the Thriller album. Rod Temperton wrote most of the rest. Quincy Jones had little to do in the writing process, only sharing a credit on PYT.

  4. Giant mechanical O nyudo doll — Online Game Playing says:

    [...] by former Sega employees, that the music in fact remained in the final games…. source: Michael Jackson and the music in Sonic The Hedgehog, Gameboy [...]

Leave a Reply

If you'd rather contact me directly, please use the following e-mail address: It appears that you have Javascript disabled. Please enable it to see my e-mail address.