Figured I'd check
Digimon Ruby, out of sheer curiosity, since that game uses PCM drums as well as a PCM title theme. (Even if it does play the latter-- the original Japanese TV series' song
"Brave Heart"-- at a much higher sampling rate than it should...)
As if we needed any more proof that Vast Fame helped out with the sound programming on these platforming abominations, the drum samples are exactly the same between the two games, and in the same order. And as I expected, "Brave Heart" takes the place of the tune from
Digimon Adventure immediately after the drums-- though in this case, there's only one loop of it, not two.
Come to think of it, the
Digimon Adventure tune does kind of have a similar melody to "Brave Heart". Anyone with more knowledge of the series know if that's where it came from?
Edited to add: Oh, yeah, and based on the original recording of "Brave Heart", 11025 Hz is almost certainly the sampling rate they
intended to use.[/quote]Wait, now I think I have an idea of what it could have been used for: The title screen! That would explain the lack of music there - Digimon Ruby does almost the same thing, so maybe it's supposed to play there in that game as well, but due to very poor programming, it either just plays a buzzing sound or nothing at all. And none of the hacks bothered to fix it.
And if it was used, then it would probably play at a rate too high, like you said the theme from Digimon Ruby did. Can you figure out the rate that's used at the title screen in-game? I'd guess 16000hz, judging by my past experiences with this.
This isn't the only time where a pirate game company uses the wrong frequency for samples. Aladdin II for the Genesis seems to have all its sound effect samples recorded from Aladdin for the SNES (which it's based on) at 5200hz, which is already an extremely low quality, if you ask me, but the game plays them at an even worse 4200hz instead, making them all sound noticeably slowed down and lower pitched. There's also an unused "Genie win" sample jingle and a "press start" sample.