One of the strangest longstanding rumors on the internet was confirmed to be true today: pop icon Michael Jackson composed music for the 1994 Sega Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It was already known that Jackson was originally brought in to work on the project back in the '90s, but following his molestation scandals, Sega claimed to have terminated his involvement. A 2009 story in the the French magazine Black & White contradicted that account, as co-composer Brad Buxer claimed Jackson ended his own involvement with the game due to his dissatisfaction with the sound quality on the videogame system.
A new report from the Huffington Post goes into much greater detail about Jackson's involvement with the game, revealing the truth to be a combination of the two. Jackson worked on many of the game's tracks, and his entire team was credited for the work without him. Some of them claim it was due to the molestation charges, while others say it was due to the Sega Genesis' limited sound quality leaving him dissatisfied with the quality of his work. Regardless, it does confirm that Jackson worked on the game's music, and that the internet conspiracy theories had accurately matched up the cues to some of Jackson's subsequent music.
