Memorable sampled speech

[hudson]

When I heard that low bit rate sampled speech in video/arcade games in the 80's, early 90's, it really impressed me. So much so, that at a young age, I may have bought games just because they sounded great. Going in to an arcade and hearing "Fire.... Fire" from Afterburner or "Checkpoint!" from Outrun gave me goosebumps.

Other notable speech came from Space Harrier - "Get ready!"
Operation Wolf was everywhere. A stern voice would say "Operation Wolf" on the title screen.
Chase HQ drove (pardon the pun) me into overdrive when that came out. Nancy!

Which sampled speech are most memorable to you?

[CMcK]

Got to be the Sega chorus at the start of Sonic The Hedgehog on the MD. Closely followed by the vendor in Speedball 2 "Ice cream, ice cream". What a weird thing to get stuck in your memory!

[DeathAdder]

Captain America and the Avengers for me, especially the boss fight at the end of the first level.

Villain: Do not disturb us!

Avenger: Why should it go well?

[Jay]

"Stay a while. Stay. Forever."

"I'd buy that for a dollar."
"Big money. Big prizes."

Also, there was an Asteroids game on the Spectrum called Meteor Storm and it had the most noisy, garbled speech at the start of the game. I think it literally just said, "Meteor Storm". But it was speech on a Spectrum. I remember being so impressed.

[randombs]

Street Fighter 2 (arcade): "Hadoken!", especially going into an arcade and hearing a fireball fight "Hado-hado-hado-hado-hado-hado-hadoken!"
Alone in the Dark (PC): the sampled voices emanating from my PC speaker were pretty special
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 (Amiga): "Checkpoint!"
Treasure Island Dizzy (Amstrad CPC 464): opening voice
Sonic: Sega logo

[chocklo]

"Serve the public trust, protect the innocent. Uphold the law"

And...

"Riiiise from your grave"

[chocklo]

"Elf, needs food....badly" and "Valkyrie, is about to die"

[chocklo]

"This is Nancy, we got an emergency...."

This thread is bringing back some old school arcade memories!!

I used to love playing "The Main Event" too in the arcade. A four player Konami wrestling game. That had loads of great voice samples on it and it used to blare out in my local arcade (Storeys in Leeds). "Busting knee drop" "Body Slam!"

[hudson]

Yeah Gauntlet!

Atari had loads around that time. APB had loads of sampled speech!

Another memorable one for me was Track and Field. "The distance was six point seven zero metres".

[Dogg Thang]

The very first bit of sampled speech I heard has stuck in my memory for my whole life, because I thought it was amazing. It was on the title screen of a game called Sea Dragon on the Apple II. You can hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-LjVfx4Itc

That was 1982 and it was in the home, not even the arcade. Blew my mind.

[chocklo]

Yeah Gauntlet!

Atari had loads around that time. APB had loads of sampled speech!

Aye, the ol' "SKATE OR DIEEEEEE!!!" (720) used to really put the windies up me!

[Asura]

I was going to suggest a few examples, but I'm not sure where to drawn the line between sampled speech, and speech that is just playback of a recording.

For instance, surely the intro to Castlevania Symphony of the Night goes here?

What is a man? Merely a worthless pile of secrets!

[hudson]

Technically it's all sampled speech. My bad. Back in the day though, you see the term "sampled speech"was a buzz word for this new amazingness in games.

I particularly love hearing a spectrum struggle with it's whispery smoker's voice croak out some speech.

[chojin]

Space Harrier is up there, I think it must have been the loudest arcade machine in every arcade in Blackpool because as a kid it was always the first thing I heard when racing in to blow my wad

But for me the most memorable one was "Welcome to your doom" in Altered Beast...

While searching for a clip of it came across this, just made me

[hudson]

Haha. Can't work whether the altering into a beast sound is sampled or synthesized. I'm thinking latter?

One snippet of sampled speech that has always stuck in my mind was the press start sound on Darius 2 for MD. Goodness knows why