>>558892241) He's a localiser, the differences between the two are pretty major
2) He was localising in association with NoA. 1998 NoA. I shouldn't have to tell you how difficult it would be to maintain references to thinks like Alcohol, Sex, Religion or excessive Violence would be to them at the time.
3) Things that are appropriate for children in Japan are not necessarily such in the West. Underaged smoking and drinking are quite taboo in the West and you'd be hard pressed to find any children's media with references to booze in it from the late 90s onwards where soccer moms and the like started to really come out of the woodwork.
You wanna know how bad it gets?
In Naruto there's a part of the story where Lee drink's some sake Tsunade leaves near his hospital bed thinking it was medicine and fights using the Drunken Fist technique. In just about every localization of the series, including the Viz Manga and Anime dub, it's generally changed to something stupid, like a "potion" where in the manga he's stated to be using the "Potion Punch" Even Jotaro's smoking in Jojo's needs to be censored in the TV airings of the anime due to his age (despite looking nothing like a 16 year old).
In contrast to these attitudes, not only was this old guy drinking booze, but the fisherman NPC in GSC smokes a cigarette on his sprite art.
This is nothing new and this peculiar difference in attitudes continues to this day. In contrast, Japan are very touchy towards realistic gore in vidaya despite the shit that they've got going on in anime, Visual Novels, manga and their many other forms of media. Even the most highly rated CERO games are usually censored compared to their Western counterparts.
Personally I'd say Pokemon has had a decent localisation and Nob did a great job in the time he was around. You will inevitably come across details being left out or differences in dialogue though, it is what it is.
