Jess Ragan Posted March 4, 2005 Share Posted March 4, 2005 It's time to talk about early voice synthesis in video games. Which of the early game systems had the best voice synthesis peripheral, in your opinion? My choice would be the Intellivision Intellivoice... there's a surprising amount of nuance in each of the voices. According to Intellivision Lives!, Mattel hired actors to perform the voices, and I can believe it... each character in the Intellivoice-enhanced games has his or her own personality, and sounds distinct from the rest. The evil mastermind responsible for planting the bombs in Bomb Squad! can easily be distinguished from the goofy co-pilot in B-17 Bomber. Also, what was your reaction to the first video games with voice that didn't require a voice synthesis unit? I remember seeing Ikari Warriors II for the NES on store shelves and asking a nearby clerk if the game required a peripheral for the voice effects. He just shrugged his shoulders, and told me that he didn't know. Of course, now we all realize that no add-ons were required to experience the voice in any NES game, but back in the 1980's, it was a valid question. JR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisbid Posted March 4, 2005 Share Posted March 4, 2005 quadrun? i thought the voice unit for Intellivision was pretty cool, though you didnt really need it for the games the O2 had a voice unit too, but ive never heard anything on it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maibock Posted March 4, 2005 Share Posted March 4, 2005 Bee seventeeen bauummer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joeybastard Posted March 4, 2005 Share Posted March 4, 2005 I always enjoyed the voice effects in CV Squish 'Em and it didn't require any add-on. "Ouch!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveW Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 Another visitor! Stay awhile! Stay forever! First time I heard that voice coming out of a Commodore 64 after loading up Impossible Mission, I just about peed myself. It was so cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 Ding BLADES OF STEEL ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 Of course, one that didn't work out well was ALTERED BEAST on the Sega Genesis. In 1989, the Genesis looked absolutely amazing. I remember being in awe about how much ALTERED BEAST and GOLDEN AXE looked like the arcade games I played. When my friend got a Genesis and popped in ALTERED BEAST ... I was blown away ... until Zeus spoke and sounded like Elmer Fudd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
racerx Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 When my friend got a Genesis and popped in ALTERED BEAST ... I was blown away ... until Zeus spoke and sounded like Elmer Fudd. "Welcome to your doom!" I never had an Intellivision until a couple of years ago, so my first talkies were Blades of Steel and The Adventures of Bayou Billy on the NES, I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ralph3 Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 You have to love NESs Double Dribble saying "Rubble Ribble". Intv B17 Bomber needed the voice so you knew where the enemies were coming at-12:00, 3:00, 6:00, 9:00 amd it telling you to "Watch out for flack!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApolloBoy Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 Of course, one that didn't work out well was ALTERED BEAST on the Sega Genesis. In 1989, the Genesis looked absolutely amazing. I remember being in awe about how much ALTERED BEAST and GOLDEN AXE looked like the arcade games I played. When my friend got a Genesis and popped in ALTERED BEAST ... I was blown away ... until Zeus spoke and sounded like Elmer Fudd. WISE FWOM YO GWAVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 I still remember when I got SAM (Software Actuated Mouth) for my Atari 800 and my parents friend came into my room to see how the computer was talking, I remember him typing in f*ck you and hitting return and totally laughing himself out of the room to hear a computer curse... I was pretty impressed when I saw and heard the first Intellivision commercial and hearing "Welcome Commander" that was amazing. I think we were all enamoured after seeing Wargames and hearing what sounded like a real voice synthesis coming out of the speaker from the computer in the movie (and in reality what they did was have the actor say each word one at a time randomly and they then pieced the sentences together and added the voice alteration, so what came out was a monotone sounding voice very similar to what a voice synthesiser did sound like) Then there was the infamous article in Antic (or maybe it was Analog) magazine on how to build you own voice synthesiser from a Radio Shack SPL256 chip, I remember building it and the thing was, it powered off the Atari 800 computer joystick ports and you had to have it plugged into already, otherwise if you plugged it in after the computer was powered up you crashed the system Curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brasky Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 It's time to talk about early voice synthesis in video games. Which of the early game systems had the best voice synthesis peripheral, in your opinion? My choice would be the Intellivision Intellivoice... there's a surprising amount of nuance in each of the voices. According to Intellivision Lives!, Mattel hired actors to perform the voices, and I can believe it... each character in the Intellivoice-enhanced games has his or her own personality, and sounds distinct from the rest. The evil mastermind responsible for planting the bombs in Bomb Squad! can easily be distinguished from the goofy co-pilot in B-17 Bomber. Also, what was your reaction to the first video games with voice that didn't require a voice synthesis unit? I remember seeing Ikari Warriors II for the NES on store shelves and asking a nearby clerk if the game required a peripheral for the voice effects. He just shrugged his shoulders, and told me that he didn't know. Of course, now we all realize that no add-ons were required to experience the voice in any NES game, but back in the 1980's, it was a valid question. JR AFAIK, the Intellivoice isn't actually voice synthesis, since no voices are being synthesized. It's just grainy, primitive sample playback. The Coleco ADAM also has a rare voice synth module called the EVE. I don't know why you would need it though since games like Squish Em Sam and Sewer Sam had voice synthesis done in the software without any hardware add-on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Mitchell Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 Then there was the infamous article in Antic (or maybe it was Analog) magazine on how to build you own voice synthesiser from a Radio Shack SPL256 chip, .. The SPO256-AL2 is the basis of the VecVoice for the Vectrex made by Richard Hutchinson. The speech chip in both the O2 voice and the Intellivioce are both SPO256 family chips. The latest voice chip is the new SpeakJet which is the basis of the AtariVOX and the VecVOX. It can emulate the old SPO256-AL2 Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA (my Pythagorean Theorem program for the Vectrex uses the VecVoice to speak) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted March 11, 2005 Share Posted March 11, 2005 I still remember when I got SAM (Software Actuated Mouth) for my Atari 800 and my parents friend came into my room to see how the computer was talking, I remember him typing in f*ck you and hitting return and totally laughing himself out of the room to hear a computer curse... Yep SAM was the first software generated one I remember. Hardware would be berzerk! "Chicken, fight like robot" I vaguely remember a strip-poker game revolving around the SAM engine. SAM was unusual in that it required the computer to disable all vertical blank interrupts (hence a blank screen) while it talked. Although you could disable that for less accurate sound. Half of the fun was figuring out how to type the phonetic spelling so a word would sound right. I remember making up about 10 rude sayings and assigning them to the keyboard an making prank calls with it. So if someone here was the victim of prank computer calls in the state of MD it may have been me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.J. Franzman Posted March 11, 2005 Share Posted March 11, 2005 "He scores!" (crowd cheers!) [Five-A-Side Soccer, C=64] I had Impossible Mission, Blades of Steel and S.A.M. too. Before I got S.A.M., I had a pirate copy of Suicide Express that, when the game ended would say "Your score is..." followed by the score, one digit at a time. After I got S.A.M. I realized that that was what was doing the talking - somebody just hacked the two together! I think we were all enamoured after seeing Wargames and hearing what sounded like a real voice synthesis coming out of the speaker from the computer in the movie (and in reality what they did was have the actor say each word one at a time randomly and they then pieced the sentences together and added the voice alteration, so what came out was a monotone sounding voice very similar to what a voice synthesiser did sound like) Didja notice that the voice of the WOPR computer a.k.a. "Joshua" was done by John Wood, the same actor who played Professor Falken? I suppose it was meant to be so that, if you noticed the similarity, it was because Falken tried to copy his own own voice when he programmed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.J. Franzman Posted March 11, 2005 Share Posted March 11, 2005 Another visitor! Stay awhile! Stay forever! First time I heard that voice coming out of a Commodore 64 after loading up Impossible Mission, I just about peed myself. It was so cool! How about the evil laughter when you lose the game, or "no, No, NO!" with animated closeup of Elvin Atombender's face when you win? Oh yeah, here's another one: "GHOSTBUSTERS! AAAH HAH-HAH-HAH HAH-HAH-HAH HAAA!" I built a Halloween prop talking raven circa 1985 with an ISD1000 IC that cycles through 4 phrases, max 5 seconds each, at ~30 second intervals - that laugh is one of them. (The other three are me in my best raven voice: "Trick or Treat!", "Happy Halloween!", and of course, "Nevermore.") It still works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mister_pal Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 Bee seventeeen bauummer 809738[/snapback] Actually it sounded more like Beeeeee suhvunteeen bahmer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 I remember well my 99/4a(I should, I still have it...). I had so many games that talked. Whether it was the Parsec computer* warning me about the "alien craft approaching" or Mr. Spock** saying "Welcome Aboard, Captain" when I started up Star Trek, I was bathed in voices from the beginning of my gaming career. Heck, I even loaded up TXT2SPEECH and spent pr'ly an hour just making the computer say rude things. ... Then got sent to my room for making it curse. Of course, time went on, I moved to the SNES, and forgot about speech synthesis. Untill I heard Super Metroid utter its one line. And went "WOW! THAT IS SO COOL!" How quickly we forget. *Trivia: Parsec's computer voice is female because A. Star Trek had a female voice, and B. the hardware guys told them the speech synthesizer couldn't do female voices worth crap. ** Hey, I was little. Good imagination on a kid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin242 Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 The best Voice Synth I rem from back in the day was Sinistar at the arcades "RUn Coward" "Beware I live" "I am Sinistar" and so on... maybe the first was Bezerk. At home, I had an original Voicebox for my Atari 400 which could do amazing thing and even had a wierd poetry generator (if you typed Atatri into the Voicebox it would say "Atari is a good computer")... my friend had a Voicebox II and that could actually sing Amazing Grace synched to some bizarre looking guy on the screen one of the most bizzare things I've seen... eventually whenI became hip to pirating thru BBS's the first thing I ever downloaded was S.A.M. and a blackjack game that was pretty ffun "Place yer bet!" Other games I remember that talked were Womper Stomper and ET Phone home, but I believe they used primitive samples. --Kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pinball Wizzard Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 Talking about arcade games usualy stated that "Stratovox" were the first to feature digitized speech. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 I thought 5200 Berzerk sounded pretty cool. Now it sounds silly next to the 2600's Berzerk VE, which sounds MUCH more like the arcade game than the 5200 version does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mental Vortex Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 Nice to see someone else remembered the TI 99/4A's voice module. When my brother and I were kids, our babysitter had one at his house and we'd use to play Parsec all the time with that. It was pretty cool. The Intellivoice is still pretty impressive considering the technology at the time, as someone already mentioned with Bomb Squad. Probably the one that REALLY caught my attention was when I first played Jinks on the 7800 and heard the "YOW" and the other sample from Gauntlet. Oh, if they only released that game for the 7800 back then with those sounds, but no luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 (edited) Nice to see someone else remembered the TI 99/4A's voice module. When my brother and I were kids, our babysitter had one at his house and we'd use to play Parsec all the time with that. It was pretty cool. That was my primary game machine growing up, actually. Dad owned a fairly well-loaded set(got a battery-backed RAM disk card for it. Talk about awesome). And a lot of games. Now... it's sitting in my bedroom. Edited April 20, 2005 by JB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Thag Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 When my friend got a Genesis and popped in ALTERED BEAST ... I was blown away ... until Zeus spoke and sounded like Elmer Fudd. "Wise fwom yowr gwave! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 Red warrior needs food badly!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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