Donkey Kong Voice Samples

[Magmavision2000]

I'm curious about the voice samples in Donkey Kong, especially Kong's roar. Do we know who recorded them? If so, is there a place where you can find the uncompressed versions of them?

 

 

Also, since I have your attention, do we know who the actress was for Pauline's unused voice samples?

[Syzygy1]

Likely both Japanese.

[Jumpman1981]

IIRC, Donkey Kong's roar is generated by discrete logic circuits (TTL), so the only way to hear it uncompressed would be if someone made a high-quality recording of the original board. You have to remember that Donkey Kong's MAME samples were recorded in the late 90s/early 00s (MAME itself dates to 1997), probably by someone holding a microphone to the cabinet's speaker, so they're not exactly the cleanest.  

 

Pauline's voice probably belongs to an intern at Nintendo or Ikegami, rather than an actress. Nintendo wasn't in the best financial condition at the time of DK's development, so they probably couldn't afford to call a professional in. 

[John Stamos Mullet]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:20 PM, Jumpman1981 said:

IIRC, Donkey Kong's roar is generated by discrete logic circuits (TTL), so the only way to hear it uncompressed would be if someone made a high-quality recording of the original board. You have to remember that Donkey Kong's MAME samples were recorded in the late 90s/early 00s (MAME itself dates to 1997), probably by someone holding a microphone to the cabinet's speaker, so they're not exactly the cleanest.  

 

Pauline's voice probably belongs to an intern at Nintendo or Ikegami, rather than an actress. Nintendo wasn't in the best financial condition at the time of DK's development, so they probably couldn't afford to call a professional in. 

Donkey Kong's sounds have been fully emulated, without the need for any recorded samples in MAME, since MAME version .115 - which came out in May of 2007.

[Cynicaster]

20 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

Donkey Kong's sounds have been fully emulated, without the need for any recorded samples in MAME, since MAME version .115 - which came out in May of 2007.

 

Are you sure about that?  I run .122 on my cabinet, and it definitely uses recorded samples for DK.  

 

 

 

 

[John Stamos Mullet]

25 minutes ago, Cynicaster said:

 

Are you sure about that?  I run .122 on my cabinet, and it definitely uses recorded samples for DK.  

 

 

 

 

https://samples.mameworld.info/

 

As of MAME 0.116, the Donkey Kong sample set is no longer required and thus I've moved it to the 'Older Samples' page :) ~Twisty~

June 03, 2007

https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/52122-mame-078-sound-samples/

[Cynicaster]

I wonder if they ran into some kinks with the emulation and temporarily went back to using samples for a while before finally settling on the proper emulation. 

 

 

[Jumpman1981]

 

On 5/19/2020 at 1:12 PM, John Stamos Mullet said:

As of MAME 0.116, the Donkey Kong sample set is no longer required and thus I've moved it to the 'Older Samples' page ~Twisty~ June 03, 2007

Huh, guess I'm wrong. I don't know why I thought DK's roar would be TTL, perhaps it's because most of the other sounds (ex: all of Jumpman's movements) are done that way.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Jumpman1981

[John Stamos Mullet]

1 hour ago, Jumpman1981 said:

 

Huh, guess I'm wrong. I don't know why I thought DK's roar would be TTL, perhaps it's because most of the other sounds (ex: all of Jumpman's movements) are done that way.

Well - I mean, it's not like his roar sounds real or anything. It's just three digitized "Gonk Gonk Gonk" noises.