I'm not sure if you are all aware of the mysterious history behind the music in Sonic 3. (As a side note... Genesis Sonic games in general all have interesting unsolved questions.)
The director of Sega Technical Institute who worked on Sonic 3 and other games, said in an interview that Michael Jackson was signed on to do the music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. But when his scandals became public in the 90's, the deal fell apart, and this required alot of reworking. MJs music was erased and replaced. Or was it?
Some people think that the music in Sonic 3 still contains Jackson's work. There is alot of evidence too showing this.
First up, some of the music was changed in the PC version of the Sonic 3. I've played it myself... and the tracks that are different are Ice Cap zone, Carnival night zone, launch base zone and the credits music. (And they SUCK.)
One thing they all share in common is that they all have a vocal instrument that sounds like "GO!" in them. Oddly enough, this is kind of a signature in MJs work... so either they couldn't get anything close to that sound when creating midi versions of the songs for the PC... or they changed them because they were too similar to Michael Jackson's music.
And on top of that... people did some messing around and found out that those songs actually ARE very similar to some of Michael Jackson's later recorded songs. It's possible that instead of throwing the music he made for the game away... he used in new albums. You can hear the similarities in
This video on Youtube.
IN FACT... the credits music is so similar... not only was it changed in the PC version... it wasn't even in Sonic 3 & Knuckles...(which is the complete version of Sonic 3). It wasn't even available in the Sound test.
On top of that there is proof in the credits of MJs involvment in the music for Sonic 3. The clever detective work can be found on
this site (Safe link). The info there isn't covered in that video.
So what do I think? I think they had an entire soundtrack for Sonic 3 done by Michael... and when his scandals became public... they did in fact have to create new music. Sonic 3 was already running way behind schedule (as shown by it not even being complete... Sonic 3 was supposed to have everything in S&K also.) so in the later stages of the game, they didn't replace the songs, but just changed them somewhat. This is something they tried to cover up in the PC version, and even somewhat in S&K.
This particular track in Smash Brothers was probably not done by Jackson at all.... but ones heard later on in Sonic 3 were. That's what I think. To summerize... TL;DR
