Sonic 3 Director Confirms Michael Jackson’s Involvement

Ryan Easby

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UPDATE: Since the story went live, Yuji Naka went on to clarify he was referring to the use of Michael Jackson’s music on the Official Sonic TikTok account. Despite this, it seems like his original tweet still goes some way towards confirming the famous musician’s involvement with the music of Sonic 3.

After literal decades of speculation, the director of Sonic 3 & Knuckles has officially confirmed that Michael Jackson did music for the game.

Michael Jackson Did Sonic 3 Music

Yuji Naka, the director of several Sonic games, tweeted the following:

“Does Sonic Origins Sonic 3 have a different song?”

“Oh my god, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though SEGA Official uses Michael Jackson’s music.”

In one short tweet Naka has confirmed something that has been only rumoured for decades now: that Michael Jackson himself did the music for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The music in Sonic Origins has been changed due to a copyright issue which we weren’t previously sure of the specifics of, until now. It’s clear that the reason there’s copyright issues behind Sonic 3 & Knuckles is due to the Jackson estate still having a hold over the title.

When Does Sonic Origins Release?

Sonic Origins released today collecting Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The package also includes a lot of extras but has drawn a fair bit of criticism due to monetization that some have called predatory. These practices have included restricting certain new features behind the need to pre-order the game, or buy a special edition, as well as an overall belief that too much is being charged for 3 games that are all nearly 30 years old at this point.

In our review we stated that:

“Sonic Origins would be an incredibly example of how to do a collection of classic video games, if not for the corporate greed on display.“