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Michael Jackson became SEGA's partner because he was pissed at Nintendo

S

Subaru

Member
According to Stefano Arnhold (Chairman at Tectoy - Brazil), Michael Jackson went to SEGA personally because he was furious at Nintendo. It seems that MJ presented a project to Nintendo and they ignored him.

I don't know if this is true, but this is a nice piece of information. I never heard anything about this. Stefano also said that SEGA sold more then 500.000 Genesis units to women just in Tokyo because of Moonwalker.

Source (in portuguese): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi-29Dgojr0

"Tectoy is a Brazilian video game and electronics company. They are best known for producing, publishing and distributing Sega's consoles and video games in Brazil." (WIKIPEDIA).

The most crazy thing about Tectoy is that they still sell Master System in Brazil. It still sells around 150.000 units/year. <-- I got this info from Wikipedia and it is wrong, I'm sorry. In 2012, Master System + Mega Drive = 150.000/year. Strangely enough, they don't produce Mega Drive anymore, but they keep producing SEGA's 8-bit.
 
B

beril

Member
Subaru said:
According to Stefano Arnhold (Chairman at Tectoy - Brazil), Michael Jackson went to SEGA personally because he was furious at Nintendo. It seems that MJ presented a project to Nintendo and they ignored him.

I don't know if this is true, but this is a nice piece of information. I never heard anything about this. Stefano also said that SEGA sold more then 500.000 Genesis units to women just in Tokyo because of Moonwalker.

Source (in portuguese): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi-29Dgojr0

"Tectoy is a Brazilian video game and electronics company. They are best known for producing, publishing and distributing Sega's consoles and video games in Brazil." (WIKIPEDIA).

The most crazy thing about Tectoy is that they still sell Master System in Brazil. It still sells around 150.000 units/year.
Click to expand...

Megadrive sold just over 4 million in total in japan so I'm calling bullshit on that
 
TheMoon

TheMoon

Member
Master System selling 150k yearly up until 2015? Seriously? I know the landscape is different over there but ...am I seriously supposed to buy that?
 
L

lazygecko

Member
TheMoon said:
Master System selling 150k yearly up until 2015? Seriously? I know the landscape is different over there but ...am I seriously supposed to buy that?
Click to expand...

The Master System has a unique cultural significance in Brazil. The country notoriously also has very stringent import taxes on consoles, which makes it very hard for them to penetrate the market there. Tec Toy were in a unique position in that they got a license from Sega to manufacture their own consoles within the country which evaded those taxes.
 
Tiu Neo

Tiu Neo

Member
150k/year? I doubt that. Yeah, they still sell the Master System here, but it's waaay less popular than it was a few years ago. 50k I would believe.

The part about Michael Jackson being angry at Nintendo... may or may not be true. He kinda stops a bit to think before telling that story, not sure. Wouldn't surprise me if it was true, too, it sounds like something Nintendo would do. I remember reading somewhere that Nintendo Ito rejected at first, when he presented the Mother project.
 
S

Subaru

Member
TheMoon said:
Master System selling 150k yearly up until 2015? Seriously? I know the landscape is different over there but ...am I seriously supposed to buy that?
Click to expand...

It shocks me as well, but while PS4 is sold oficially for R$ 2199,00 (U$ 555), Master System is only R$ 200,00 (U$ 50,00). And it comes with more than 120 games installed.

You have to remember that Brazil is a 3rd world country and there is so much poverty around. Even R$ 200,00 can be a big amount of money for some people... it is sad =/

EDIT: I got this info from Wikipedia and it is wrong, I'm sorry. In 2012, Master System + Mega Drive = 150.000/year. Strangely enough, they don't produce Mega Drive anymore, but they keep producing SEGA's 8-bit.
 
P

Piers

Member
Enter the Dragon Punch said:
SNES soundchip couldn't do MJ justice anyways.
Click to expand...

Apparently neither could the Megadrive's either; IIRC he dropped out of the Sonic 3 soundtrack production because he was dissatisfied with the sound chip or whatever. (Going by one of his musicians, who'd also collaborated for the soundtrack)

I like to think he moonwalked out in in disappointment
 
E

Enter the Dragon Punch

Banned
Subaru said:
It shocks me as well, but while PS4 is sold oficially for R$ 2199,00 (U$ 555), Master System is only R$ 200,00 (U$ 50,00). And it comes with more than 120 games installed.

You have to remember that Brazil is a 3rd world country and there is so much poverty around. Even R$ 200,00 can be a big amount of money for some people... it is sad =/
Click to expand...

i don't feel too bad for people who get to play master system games or Genesis games. awesome platforms... wish I could get my hands on a proper master system with 120 games for cheap :p

Piers said:
Apparently neither could the Megadrive's either; IIRC he dropped out of the Sonic 3 soundtrack production because he was dissatisfied with the sound chip or whatever. (Going by one of his musicians, who'd also collaborated for the soundtrack)

I like to think he moonwalked out in in disappointment
Click to expand...

still did wonders for moonwalker tho
 
Tiu Neo

Tiu Neo

Member
Enter the Dragon Punch said:
i don't feel too bad for people who get to play master system games or Genesis games. awesome platforms... wish I could get my hands on a proper master system with 120 games for cheap :p
Click to expand...

The newest Master System is pretty much an emulator box, doesn't even have the cartridge slot. I hear the emulation quality is kinda meh, too, for some games.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Piers said:
Apparently neither could the Megadrive's either; IIRC he dropped out of the Sonic 3 soundtrack production because he was dissatisfied with the sound chip or whatever. (Going by one of his musicians, who'd also collaborated for the soundtrack)

I like to think he moonwalked out in in disappointment
Click to expand...

There's so much smoke and mirrors around the collaboration, along with speculations due to the scandals in the media at the time, that it's pretty hard to deduce the actual reasons. I can sort of believe it though. Pretty much all of the tracks in Sonic 3 that point towards being made by Jackson's team are distinguishable in that they rely very heavily on samples (like Ice Cap, Launch Base, the credits music, etc). And the quality of the sample playback in Sonic 3's sound engine isn't exactly great since it has timing problems resulting in the very scratchy sounding playback. Conveniently, these are also the very same tracks that ended up getting replaced with new music in the PC release.
 
F

FadedRevolution

Member
Piers said:
Apparently neither could the Megadrive's either; IIRC he dropped out of the Sonic 3 soundtrack production because he was dissatisfied with the sound chip or whatever. (Going by one of his musicians, who'd also collaborated for the soundtrack)

I like to think he moonwalked out in in disappointment
Click to expand...

tumblr_m7iliyK7kV1rzy540o1_500.gif
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
lazygecko said:
There's so much smoke and mirrors around the collaboration, along with speculations due to the scandals in the media at the time, that it's pretty hard to deduce the actual reasons. I can sort of believe it though. Pretty much all of the tracks in Sonic 3 that point towards being made by Jackson's team are distinguishable in that they rely very heavily on samples (like Ice Cap, Launch Base, the credits music, etc). And the quality of the sample playback in Sonic 3's sound engine isn't exactly great since it has timing problems resulting in the very scratchy sounding playback. Conveniently, these are also the very same tracks that ended up getting replaced with new music in the PC release.
Click to expand...

Ice cap zone doesnt use samples outside of the odd "slush" noise at the beginning of the song.

And hydrocity zone uses samples for the drum snares.
 
C

Chris Ticehurst

Member
Oddly knowing alot about Michael Jackson and Nintendo it could be likely he suggested a game idea that Nintendo didn't like. He was a big fan of Nintendo and video games. he wrote music apparently for Sonic 3 but wanted anonymity due to the final product being poor. I don't think he knew video game consoles during that time couldn't put out the type of music that he made. He was a big fan of Sonic too.
 
B

BriGuy

Member
I heard Segata Senshiro teamed up with Sega because his first name is basically Sega with a ta tossed on it.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Krejlooc said:
Ice cap zone doesnt use samples outside of the odd "slush" noise at the beginning of the song.

And hydrocity zone uses samples for the drum snares.
Click to expand...

Well yes, all the music uses samples for drums. It's just that the MJ-affiliated ones use them differently in more prominent ways. It's pretty easy to point out the distinguishing factors when analyzing the music. Ice Cap uses a bunch of drum and percussion samples unique from the other zone music (the base kick and snare samples are different, for one).

This is what you commonly hear in the tracks that were (probably) handled by Sega's in-house composers. You got your standard drumkit samples and not much else going on.

The MJ-associated tracks have a very different approach. Here is Ice Cap with just the samples. Not the same drum sounds as the other music, and more unorthodox percussive samples thrown in there. Same thing going on with the Carnival Night music, where the samples sit very loudly in the overall mix and thus the poor quality of the playback becomes that much more noticeable.

It's little wonder you might end up feeling frustrated when approaching the music from that kind of angle which the engine wasn't good at handling. It could have been better, but Sega themselves ironically weren't the top tier sound programmers around.
 
S

Saikyo

Member
"Diz a lenda" doesnt sound to me as a "fact"...still nice to hear more about tec toy and sega in Brazil.
 
Kilau

Kilau

Member
uGNF7av.jpg


I don't think I am getting the full story from youtube auto translate, but it sure is interesting.
 
V

v1oz

Member
TheMoon said:
Master System selling 150k yearly up until 2015? Seriously? I know the landscape is different over there but ...am I seriously supposed to buy that?
Click to expand...

When you can buy a cheap android tablet with an emulator and bluetooth controller
 
shaowebb

shaowebb

Member
lazygecko said:
Well yes, all the music uses samples for drums. It's just that the MJ-affiliated ones use them differently in more prominent ways. It's pretty easy to point out the distinguishing factors when analyzing the music. Ice Cap uses a bunch of drum and percussion samples unique from the other zone music (the base kick and snare samples are different, for one).

This is what you commonly hear in the tracks that were (probably) handled by Sega's in-house composers. You got your standard drumkit samples and not much else going on.

The MJ-associated tracks have a very different approach. Here is Ice Cap with just the samples. Not the same drum sounds as the other music, and more unorthodox percussive samples thrown in there. Same thing going on with the Carnival Night music, where the samples sit very loudly in the overall mix and thus the poor quality of the playback becomes that much more noticeable.

It's little wonder you might end up feeling frustrated when approaching the music from that kind of angle which the engine wasn't good at handling. It could have been better, but Sega themselves ironically weren't the top tier sound programmers around.
Click to expand...

Carnival Night Zone has part of its stuff in the Michael Jackson song "JAM". Most notably the breakdown around 3:20.

Also the artist from the 80s group The Jetzons worked with Michael and Ice Cap Zone is pulled heavily from his song The Jetzons "Hard Times"
 
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