Ever since we were told to “Halt!” by the damn, dirty, digitized Nazis in Castle Wolfenstein (Apple II, circa 1981) we’ve been utterly fascinated by video game voice work.
As the years passed the technology and quality of actors got better and better too, what with Impossible Mission on C64 imploring us to “Stay a while... staaay forever!”, Gauntlet in the arcades telling us that our “red wizard needs food... badly”, and the sexy, (borderline wet dream inducing) tones of the Test Drive 2: The Duel female announcer.
(If you really want to tickle your nostalgia bone, you simply must read The Complete Histories of the 5 Big Console Makers).
Over the course of the Christmas break we found ourselves wondering if the gruff voice of Marcus Fenix really belonged to a computer synthesiser that can create human speech from sound samples of chunks of gravel being ground together. Apparently we were wrong, he is in fact voiced by a human being. Fascinated by this surprising result, we got hooked on the idea and decided to go through and unveil the true faces of the talented people behind some our favourite videogame characters.
From left to right: Kratos – Terrence C. Carson, Brucie Kibbutz – Timothy Adams, Urdnott Wrex – Steven Barr (awesome voice, no pic), Niko Bellic - Michael Hollick, Master Chief – Steve Downes, Duke Nukem – Jon St. John, Captain Price – Billy Murray, Solid Snake – David Hayter, HK-47 - Kristoffer Tabori.
From left to right: Jill Valentine - Catherine Disher, Cryptosporidium - J. Grant Albrecht, Commander Shepard – Mark Meer, Kyle Katarn – Jeff Bennett, Ratchet – James Arnold Taylor, Sonic – Ryan Drummond, Raz – Richard Steven Horvitz, Raiden – Quinton Flynn, Altair - Philip Shahbaz
Now, once we’d linked up these unfamous faces to famous characters, we then started wondering how many games a typical voice actor has under his/her belt – how many times have we heard the same person in a different role and been completely unaware of it? To answer the question, here are the rap sheets of some of the most talented, and more ubiquitous voice actors in the game today...
