Rumours: did Michael Jackson actually write the soundtrack to Sonic 3 videogame?

The rumour has been around for quite a long time, but now - at least according to new reports - it seems that the King of Pop (MIchael Jackson) actually contributed to the soundtrack of the videogame "Sonic 3 The Ice Cap Zone", released in 1994 by Sega.

A feature posted on "Huffington Post" a couple o days ago, indeed, states that three of the music producers on the game have confirmed Jackson's involvement, saying:

Six men—Brad Buxer, Bobby Brooks, Doug Grigsby III, Darryl Ross, Geoff Grace and Cirocco Jones—are listed as songwriters in Sonic 3's endgame scroll. Buxer, Grigsby and Jones tell The Huffington Post that Jackson worked with them on a soundtrack for Sonic 3—and that the music they created with Jackson ended up in the final product.

Buxer - who worked on the "Dangerous" album - told HuffPo how Jackson would beatbox and deliver other musical cues to his team, who turned that music into tracks for "Sonic 3":

I was working with Michael on the "Dangerous" album and he told me he was going to be doing the "Sonic the Hedgehog" soundtrack for "Sonic 3". He asked me if I would help him with it.

Then former Sega exec Roger Hector, who worked on "Sonic 3", confirmed Michael Jackson in the early '90s expressed his admiration for the new "Sonic the Hedgehog" franchise and Sega, which released several titles of Jackson's "Moonwalker" video game, invited him to visit their office. After the meeting, Jackson was provided with a demo of the game and invited to compose music for it:

He took it from there and started making music. I was really impressed with how much of a signature Michael Jackson sound there was in this, and yet, it was all new.

By the way, it must be reported that Sega - via HuffPo - still denies Jackson's involvement on "Sonic 3", despite the statement of the composers.

As "Billboard" points out:

Around the time "Sonic 3" was in production, Jackson was hit with child molestation allegations. Some have theorized this caused Sega to scrub his name from the project, while others speculate Jackson wasn't satisfied with the sound quality of video game-compressed music.

The theory has been around on the Web for a long time. People mainly talks about to three pieces of "Sonic 3" music: "The Ice Cap Zone" theme, the end-credits music and the "Carnival Night Zone". The most compelling musical similarity is between the "Sonic" end-credits music and Jackson's "Stranger in Moscow" from "HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I" (released two years after "Sonic 3").