A History of Video Game Voiceovers

Voiceovers in video games have come a long way in the past few decades. In the early 1980s, the Intellivision console — an early competitor of the Atari 2600 — introduced Intellivoice. Intellivoice was a voice synthesis device to be used with revolutionary speech-supporting games, but it did not sell well and was phased out after only a few years.

In 1983, Disney released the iconic laserdisc arcade game “Dragon’s Lair,” which featured some of the first human voices on a video game. Due to a very limited budget, the voiceovers were provided by the game’s developers and animators rather than professional actors.

Over time, video games added more and more dialogue, which became less of a novelty and more of an essential plot point.

The year 2000 saw the release of “Seaman” for Sega Dreamcast featuring the voiceover talents of famed actor Leonard Nimoy, and “Hey You, Pikachu!” for Nintendo 64, which included relatively sophisticated voice recognition technology that allowed players to give voice commands to characters. The characters were even able to respond with appropriate dialogue.