Pokemon historian discovers Niantic is ruining Pokemon Go’s soundtrack with each update
A Pokemon historian recently made a grave discovery as Niantic is seemingly ruining Pokemon Go’s soundtrack with each game update – with some original songs quickly becoming lost media.
With any franchise as old and prolific as Pokemon, there’s guaranteed to be lost media that fans swear existed… but it’s nowhere to be found. However, it’s rare to see media slowly wither away, which is the case for Pokemon Go’s soundtrack.
Pokemon Go has always had a rough go with its soundtrack and sound effects. From the ear-piercing sounds when tapping on icons or the repetitive overworld theme, players may not have noticed that these sound bytes are getting worse in quality with each update.
YouTuber and Pokemon historian Lewtwo – aka Lewis – has spent months of 2022 working to preserve assets from the Pokemon franchise. With the help of a dedicated community, he has managed to put together a catalog of high-quality concept art, game sprites, and digital resources that aren’t easily found online. And now, they are on the hunt to help save Junichi Masuda’s work from fading into oblivion.
Pokemon Go soundtrack is on the brink of extinction
The discovery was reported by Lewis via a Twitter thread on November 7. In the initial post, he played two clips of the Pokemon Go encounter theme. One was how the soundtrack sounded at launch and the other is how it sounds now.
“Pokemon GO’s actual soundtrack is quickly becoming lost media,” Lewis wrote. “With every update, Niantic compresses the previous music, and we need help in preserving it. we’re literally losing most of Junichi Masuda’s modern work in real-time.”
He posted a few more examples of how this compression is ruining the Pokemon Go soundtrack. In one, Lewis showed two files for the evolution sound effect. The 2016 version was 463.4 KB in size while the current compressed version is only 53.29 KB – almost a ninth of its original size.
The compression is likely an effort from Niantic to minimize the size of their mobile game so it doesn’t take up too much storage space. But it’s slowly chiseling away at the quality of Masuda’s hard work.
Luckily, many Pokemon fans are already finding ways to help Lewis in his pursuit of preserving the franchise’s music. But this does beg the question, what will the game sound like after a few more years of updates?