VOGONS


First post, by appiah4

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Ron Gilbert tweeted this today: https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/153650 … MC4yaGA49IqAAAA

It's fun going into the studio with actors who have been in 5 Monkey Island games and I've never met them because voice back in 1990 was witchcraft. Witchcraft!

Which got me thinking - Wait, I'm pretty sure I heard digitized speech in games in 1990. My mind immediately went to Might & Magic V's cutscenes, which had blown my mind at the time. Of course, that is from 1993 and my memory was wrong. Then I remembered that Dune 2 had an awesome intro as well as in-game speech (Harkonnen Unit Destroyed.. Enemy Unit Detected, to the South. Reporting. Acknowledged.) but that is 1992.

So, in 1990, I had an Amiga - not a PC. Synthesized speech on Amiga was actually pretty easy thanks to Paula - I remember some versions of Operation Stealth actually having that feature, and even though it sounds like shit now it was incredible at the time. I'm pretty sure some better form of digitized speech must have been in Amiga games here and there but my memory fails me. If you remember that, feel free to point it out, but that is not my main question..

My main question is, what is the first proper PC game that had speech, as part of the game or the intro? Was speech really witchcraft in 1990, or had it been implemented?

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 3 of 7, by root42

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rasteri wrote on 2022-06-14, 10:12:

There were games with digitized speech that predate the sound blaster and used the beeper, Access Software was probably best known for this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealSound

I wanted to mention the original Links, but that's exactly from Access, using that same technology.

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Reply 6 of 7, by AppleSauce

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I mean you already had pinball machines as far back in 1979 with digitized speech like Gorgar : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgar
And Arcade machines like Wizard of Wor in 1980 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Wor

About 10 years later the 5.25 Version of Tongue of the Fatman from 1989 might have been the earliest sound blaster game with digitized voice acting.
https://youtu.be/qngBXbs3Of0?t=154

Silpheed also had digitised speech with the IBM PS/1 audio card.
https://youtu.be/o-z42LNQGu4?t=977

And people already mentioned using the pc speaker or realsound.

So by 1990 I don't think digitized speech on PC was witchcraft.

Reply 7 of 7, by pan069

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I rememeber Mach 3 and Space Racer, both by Loriciel.

Mach 3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_3_(1987_video_game)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zml30fpxFio

Space Racer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71BZ_biSoTc

Loriciel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loriciel