Saturday, 28 November 2009

The Music Of Frogger

I couldn't find a page on the internet about this, so I thought I would make one.

The music to the 1981 arcade version of Frogger features a medley containing:

* Children's song Inu No Omawarisan (the dog policeman)

* Children's anime Araigumi Rascal OP theme Rock River e

* Children's anime Hana no Ko Lunlun OP theme

* Children's anime Alps no shoujo Heidi OP theme Oshiete

* Children's anime Mahou Shoujo Lalabelu OP theme Hello Lalabelu

* Traditional American song Yankee Doodle

* Traditional American song Camptown Races

These are the ones I recognise. Let me know if you recognise any more!

Japanese wikipedia doesn't list Lalabelu, it lists the Moero Arthur Hakuba no Ouji anime OP theme instead. It's a Mizuki Ichirou theme, and I do own a CD of 1980s anime themes with both that song and Lalabelu in the same compilation! I personally have never heard anything recognisable as that song in Frogger, so I thought I would just mention that that's what wikipedia says but I have heard no proof.

The later ports of Frogger don't use any anime music in the soundtrack (probably copyright / licensing issues), they just don't seem right...

EDIT 2014-07-27 : I heard the Moero Arthur Hakuba no Ouji OP in there! It is a tiny snippet that plays very rarely, here it is.

1 comment:

zaphod said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmHnO4Y4LrE seems Yankee Doodle is a different tune in Japan. this is why it was included.

But before that this song was brought to japan by US military.

https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2238

Camptown races was indeed known by Japanese kids as well, so that's why it got picked. Those two were not randomly chosen American songs.