SEGA has finally confirmed that Michael Jackson composed the music for ‘Sonic 3’.

Yuji Naka, the former head of Sonic Team appeared to imply their was truth to the rumours on social media that the late King of Pop - who died in 2009, aged 50 - created some tunes for the 1994 video game while referencing the new ‘Sonic Origins 3’, which was released on Thursday (23.06.22).

He wrote on Twitter: “Oh my god, the music for Sonic 3 has changed, even though Sega Official uses Michael Jackson’s music.”

Yuji - who was a developer on the game - also questioned: “Does Sonic Origins 3 have a different song?”

The first questions that the ‘Bad’ hitmaker was involved in the game first came to prominence in 2006 after YouTuber Qjimbo produced a video highlighting the similarities between the music in the game and music made by Michael.

It came after a 2005 interview with Robert Hector, the ex Sega Technical Institute director, who stated that the ‘Billie Jean’ legend was commissioned to a part of the project but was removed from the project in light of the allegations he had sexually abused children. Qjimbo asserted that the music was not removed and remained in the game as they are eerily similar to songs, such as Michael’s ‘Jam’ to the game’s ‘Carnival Night Zone’.

In addition, the Grammy winner’s musical director Brad Buxer repeated the claims in 2009 but they were never confirmed by the video game giant.

A 1997 PC port connected to the game held ‘new’ music was once discovered with tracks allegedly to replace Michael’s music. However, it is not known if they were scrapped for legal or technical reasons.