Sonic Origins is an upcoming compilation of Sonic the Hedgehog games through the 90's that aims to preserve the history of Sega's blue, speedy mascot's ventures in 2D side-scrolling platforming. The music in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, however, will sound rather different compared to its original release. The original scores will be reproduced, as it has proven to be very difficult to obtain rights to the original productions.

This news was broken during a live stream in which Sonic social media manager Katie Chrzanowski clarified that the tracks used in 1994 will not be present in Sonic Origins. 

"We can't use all of the original sounds from the Sega Genesis version of the game. Jun Senoue has been working really hard to adapt the original music that was composed in 1993 for Origins. And he's been going as far as using the same sound chip from the Sega Genesis and using his own audio tape collection to make this as faithful to the originals as possible."

Jun Senoue is the lead guitarist and producer of the band Crush40, who has contributed many tunes to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and their music has become synonymous with the games and other Sonic media. 

Over the years, it's been popularly and strongly speculated that the late pop star Michael Jackson aided in production of the music in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but nothing has ever been officially confirmed. The rumors started when many on the internet began pegging similarities between some of the arrangements in the game to some of the backing music featured in Stranger in Moscow, Smooth Criminal, and Jam. This has been contested by Sega employees like former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, despite Michael's musical director, Brad Buxer, stating he indeed provided assistance, but in a "hands-off manner", during an interview with Abbey Road Institute Paris. The details about Sonic and Stranger in Moscow begins at around 7:04.

It could be speculated that these tracks aren't recreated due to licensing rights, the allegations against Michael and Sega not wishing to associate their involvement with him, or perhaps the original MIDI chips and samples not being found, but this is probably the closest to confirmation we seem to get.

Sonic Origins releases June 23rd for the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Windows