Hello all,
This is my first post here, and I am so desperate to uncover more about this mystery that has bothered me for 3-4 whole years that I thought it would be worth asking the people who know so much about the Oddworld franchise and universe about it.
I hope I have posted this thread in the correct section!
I have created the following video to elucidate the mystery more efficiently, but I will discuss it in detail here too.
PLEASE WATCH THIS TO GET A PROPER UNDERSTANDING (
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouehzMcaY7A).
In 1997, the wonderful "Abe's Oddysee" was released. As a child growing up in the 90's, I always loved the short "Oddworld Inhabitants" logo screen and music that plays shortly after booting the game up, finding it mysterious and ominous. It stuck in my mind since I first heard it and always made me excited to play it.
In 1998, the cult Japanese anime "Serial Experiments Lain" was released. Many of the people on this forum may be unfamiliar with this television show, and I did not discover it myself until about 2013. Anyway, the show itself is very good, but it is not paticularly relevant to Abe's Oddysee...
APART FROM ONE SMALL BUT INSANE DETAIL...
During Episode 10 of the aforementioned series, at approximately the 12 minute 24 second mark of the episode, that same, unmistakable music that is engrained in my brain from the Oddworld Inhabitants logo clip can be heard,
LOUD AND CLEAR!
Except this time, the music seems to be a longer and more developed rendition of the original heard in Abe's Oddysee. It repeats, echoes and seems to have distorted guitars and higher-pitched resamples layered on top of it. (Please see the video as linked above).
As soon as I heard this music in Serial Experiments Lain, my brain crumbled and ever since I have been scouring the internet for other mentions or references to it, hoping to find a completely boring explanation. However, all I have found are a few other comments pointing out the similarity (one of the comments being in German). Nowhere can I find any mention of where this music originally came from, whether it is a licensed composition by one of the Oddworld team, whether it was a common, "license-free" sound sample used in many 90's productions in various countries with a limited budget.
If ANYONE has any information or theories that they think they can add to what I have discussed in this thread or in the above-linked video, then please, for the sake of my sanity, let me know!
Many thanks for reading,
Kind regards,
alice_squared