![]() Even putting aside the usual fears of games making kids violent or turning them into addicts, there is the very real incident of the Pokémon cartoon, which gave a number of Japanese kids seizures. It’s certainly not a stretch to imagine that Pokémon could hurt kids. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that dark moment being twisted into even more unsettling tales. If you grew up playing Pokémon Blue and Red, you remember that they were light-hearted right up until the point that Lavender Town introduced mourning trainers who told you that Pokémon could die. In the case of what makes Lavender Town Syndrome so compelling, part of the appeal comes from corrupting such an innocent symbol of childhood. A Google image search produces tons of fan art, some of it legitimately unnerving. There are dramatic readings of various editions of the text, debunkings and analyses of the myth, remixes of the song to make it even more unnerving… pretty much any topic you can imagine has been covered. To give you a sense of the story’s popularity, searching “Lavender Town Syndrome” on YouTube produces dozens of videos ranging in views from 50,000 to over 3.3 million. Interest in the story peaked in the summer of 2012, but it’s still searched and shared routinely today.Įveryone loves a good ghost story, and the Internet lets people share and build on them with ease Sometimes the music’s effects are an accident, sometimes they’re part of an experiment, and sometimes there are additional elements only included in the very first version of the game - a special boss fight against an undead trainer who was buried alive and who will drag you into the ground with him if you lose, being one of them. From there it slowly spread to gaming forums and large general interest sites like 4chan, usually being rewritten somewhat along the way. The story of Lavender Town Syndrome was uploaded anonymously to Pastebin in 2010. Everyone loves a good ghost story, and the Internet lets people share and build on them with ease. But it’s a compelling lie, and it’s one of many alluring urban legends surrounding popular videogames. The fact that Pokémon is celebrating its 20th anniversary instead of languishing in obscurity after being banished for the horrors it unleashed on the world should be enough to make it obvious that Lavender Town Syndrome is fake. We wouldn’t be speaking about it today if a single distraught employee hadn’t leaked Nintendo’s report on what they dubbed Lavender Town Syndrome, complete with a chilling line by line recap of the names, ages, and varied symptoms of its many victims. Nintendo released an updated, less prone-to-inducing-insanity version of the game and, with help from the Japanese government, covered up the entire ugly incident. Something about its high pitch binaural beats messed with the brains of children in a way adults were immune to. ![]() It was eventually determined that Lavender Town’s music was to blame. Eventually, a commonality between the incidents was established-players started feeling the effects when they reached Lavender Town, home of the Pokémon graveyard, and the one dark segment in an otherwise light-hearted game.įurthermore, most of those affected had been wearing headphones instead of relying on the Game Boy’s tiny little speaker. ![]() Others suffered nosebleeds or brutal headaches, or became irrationally angry when their parents asked them to take a break. The myth goes that when the first Pokémon games came out in Japan back in 1996, over 100 children who played it committed suicide. ![]()
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