Lavender Town Theme
Posted by: Don Watermeleon
Date: 2012-12-22 00:17:02
It's a known fact that for some undisclosed reason the Lavender Town theme was changed from the original Japanese Pokemon Red and Green games to the later releases of Pokemon Red and Blue in the US and Pokemon Blue in Japan. However, I can't find any sort of consensus or official release of why a change was made, or exactly what was altered. Naturally, as with anything semi-arcane in the history of the Pokemon series (think Missingno), this tiny edit has given birth to cavalcade of myths and fantasies about the sinister nature of the original Lavender Town theme. The fact that the song is clearly intended to be somewhat unnerving only fuels the fire. A common story I've read is that the composer added certain extremely high frequencies to the original theme to make it extra frightening for kids playing, but entirely undetectable to older gamers. However, according to this tale, his unholy abomination of a song led to a mass of suicides amongst little kids in Japan. The police couldn't find any sort of wrongdoing because they were incapable of hearing these mindraping frequencies, but regardless Game Freak removed them from the song for all future versions and never spoke of this monstrosity again.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lavender-town-syndrome-creepypasta
Obviously all of that is complete bs, however stories like this have sprung up for a legitimate reason. The Lavender Town theme is the only song changed between the Japanese R/G to the US R/B, and it's very curious what made them do this. I've been listening to both versions of the song on loop and maybe I'm getting too old for this, but they sound the same to me. Both equally terrifying, but I can't see why they felt the need to change their original song.
Anyone here know exactly why Game Freak changed the Lavender Town theme, and what part is different? At 00:31 of the Japanese version the song gets a little fuzzy so perhaps that's where the ultra high frequencies are, but it's probably just my ears playing tricks on me and trying to hear something that's not there. GCL's never let me down, though, so I figure someone here can shed some light on this. And Merry Christmas!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly_M-laKN3c - Lavender Town Red/Green [Original]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_411G29lfy4 - Lavender Town Red/Blue