Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (#870)

[fusoxide]

I won't post a composer breakdown here, as the page on Sonic Retro already handles that anyways, but I'd like to note that Masaru Setsumaru on Twitter denied composing Sky Sanctuary but confirmed he ported the track to SMPS. He said that it was composed by someone outside of Sega, but he doesn't remember who, and it doesn't seem to be CUBE and certainly not the MJ crew.

Maybe there were even more uncredited subcontractors we don't know about? I'm still curious who Masanori Nakayama of Studio Who is, there's literally no info anywhere last time I looked. I don't think he was a composer, but possibly did coordinate said unknown subcontractors. There's also the whole deal with Masayuki Nagao apparently saying that Opus were credited because he was preparing to join the company, which is strange and I can't find where that was stated anymore. But I wonder if other Opus composers were involved with the music for Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I'm not sure if this was ever clarified.

[datwerg]

Now that this thread is here, I'd like to go ahead and post something of a conspiracy theory I've developed regarding this game's sound credits. I believe that the crediting order of specifically the Sega Sound Team is of extreme importance, and may indicate that Sachio Ogawa was in fact Sega's lead composer for Sonic 3.


(This is from Sonic 3K, but the order is the same across all versions).

We know exactly this from prior testimony and various entries on the old Wave Master website:
Bo (Tokuhiko Uwabo) was Sound Director
Milpo (Yoshiaki Kashima) provided the Sound Driver and exactly one (recycled) composition
Setsumaru provided Sound Effects and Sound Programming
Maeda also provided Sound Effects and some Music (likely only a small contribution)
Sawada didn't list any MD games on his page but we know he did music and there's a chance he did sound effects too given his prior experience (someone should ask him about both this and about his contributions to J-League Pro Strike '93)
Nagao arranged some compositions but may have also provided some music of his own (feel like we don't have the full picture for his contributions)
Senoue did music

So, with Ogawa credited between Uwabo and Kashima, wouldn't it make the most sense for his contribution to have been rather signficant? Especially with the knowledge that he mainly did music composition and arrangement around this time, it's led me to believe he was likely in charge of the most musical contributions for the game (it's just a matter of which ones).

Furthermore, I believe the credits of The Hybrid Front, a game developed and released by SEGA in 1994, has such a staggeringly similar credit order (even including the roles of the participating staff) that there's no way for me to think it's purely coincidental.




You can choose to believe it or not, but I really think there's something here.

...In any case, the only way we're gonna get anywhere with this is either by asking the right people the right questions (better now than never) or by waiting for SEGA to drop the game's soundtrack on CD with all the credits, which seems highly unlikely at this point. Asking Uwabo (if they're even still on the internet) about Ogawa would be a good starting point I think.

As for the OPUS situation, I wonder if there's anyone we could reach out to who was at the company around that time (someone like Enoki or Akahori)...

[fusoxide]

Hard to say for sure about Ogawa, but I definitely agree he likely composed some music, though I don't quite know his style well enough to really guess which ones he did.. It doesn't even feel like the game has a "lead composer", but rather just several contributors doing a handful of tracks. If anything, it seems as if most of the music was outsourced, possibly to Opus or even other third parties. As for Uwabo, it seems he deleted his Facebook, but he still has a LinkedIn. Not sure how much he will remember about specifics though, but I'd like to see if he knows anything about Masanori Nakayama and Studio Who - there's a chance Nakayama brought in more contractors too.