A lost SEGA game featuring the late Michael Jackson was discovered at a car boot sale in the UK.
The King of Pop’s FMV (Full-motion video) footage from his appearance in the 1993 arcade game ‘Scramble Training’ was bought second-hand and uploaded to YouTube for all to see.
‘Michael Jackson in Scramble Training’ would see players become pilots trained for their mission in an eight-man spacecraft by Commander Jackson.
However, it was rebranded to just ‘Scramble Training’ following the 1993 scandal that Jackson was broiled in when he was accused of abusing 13-year-old fan Jordan Chandler – and it no longer exists.
The pop culture icon was long connected to SEGA, and earlier this year, it was finally confirmed that the Moonwalking star composed the music for ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3′.
Yuji Naka, the former head of Sonic Team at the Japanese video game company, confirmed the long-time rumour that Jackson – who died in 2009, aged 50 – created music for the 1994 video game whilst complaining that the soundtrack for the title has been changed in new compilation release ‘Sonic Origins’.
Yuji 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?”
SEGA social media manager Katie Chrzanowski stated in an interview with Tails’ Channel, a Sonic news Twitter account, that the original music had to be changed.
Katie said: “While unfortunately we can’t use the original sounds from the Mega Drive version of the game, Jun Senoue has been working really hard to adapt the original music that was composed in 1993 for ‘Sonic Origins’.”
The first rumours that surfaced questioning if the ‘Bad’ hitmaker was involved in the game’s creation came to prominence in 2006, after YouTuber Qjimbo produced a video highlighting the similarities between the music in the game and music made by Jackson.
It came after a 2005 interview with Robert Hector, the ex Sega Technical Institute director, who stated that the ‘Billie Jean’ singer was commissioned to be part of the project but was removed for the aforementioned 1993 abuse allegations.
Qjimbo asserted that the music was not removed and remained in the game as they are eerily similar to songs, such as Jackson’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 SEGA.
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.
SEGA teamed up with the King of Pop to develop a beat ’em up game based on the 1988 film ‘Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker’.
The title – which featured Jackson’s biggest hits – was originally released in arcades and was a huge hit, later being ported to several home consoles.
It was well documented that Jackson was an avid gamer and had a gaming arcade at his Neverland ranch.