nesdev.org

If you intended to include a digitalized speech sample into your NES game, where would you find the person that does the voice?

You could hire a voice actor (local university theater department would be my first go). I did for an animation project in uni, turned out okay and fit my budget at the time.

If you're on a budget, won't hire a voice actor, and don't want to record your own voice (like john romero in doom), speech synthesis *can* sound cool. There's plenty of good services these days - definitely good enough for being mangled to nes specs (especially if you just want it to say something like 'blue elf needs food badly'). Some are free within constraints, others take a royalty for samples used commercially, and so on.

I would record my own voice and run it through a vocoder and/or pitch adjust it as needed.

(Vocoder, because I'm interested in making a sci-fi game... will make voice sound like a robot, or a guitar if you're Daft Punk).

NovaSquirrel had me record a couple lines for his current project.

A while ago there was the Newgrounds Voice Acting Guild or something like that, people who did stuff for fun for free. If you don't care about amateurish quality, you can find people anywhere.

If you run a kickstarter for a game, you'll get a bunch of unsolicited e-mail from aspiring voice actors who haven't bothered to read the description of your game.

DRW wrote:If you intended to include a digitalized speech sample into your NES game, where would you find the person that does the voice?

For a NES game I believe you should record the lines yourself.
I mean you'll probably read isolated words or small sentences - so (usually!) there's no real need to call someone else.

I know it's not the same thing but I've played voices in 2 modern "retraux" games (Haggis in Odallus: The Dark Call and Tcheco/bosses/Didi Mocó in Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio) and even not being an actor I liked the end results (all in-game voices were converted to NES samples using RJDMC). So I think you should at least try to record it yourself.

M_Tee wrote:You could hire a voice actor (local university theater department would be my first go).

I think this would be a bit overkill. It's an NES game after all, not the story mode of the newer "Mortal Kombat". Even if I included a bunch of speech samples for various situations, this would be maybe 20 seconds worth of text. And in my specific case, it's just a single sentence that I let the main character say when you press Start on the title screen. So, I'd need something a bit more cost-efficient.

WheelInventor wrote:If you're on a budget, won't hire a voice actor, and don't want to record your own voice (like john romero in doom), speech synthesis *can* sound cool.

Do you mean these computer programs that can read texts to you? I've tried one of them about 12 years ago. Do they sound like real people yet?

dougeff wrote:I would record my own voice and run it through a vocoder and/or pitch adjust it as needed.

Macbee wrote:For a NES game I believe you should record the lines yourself.

There's just one little problem. Erm: Yeah, so, I don't think it would be a good idea to use my own voice.
I guess that's also what rainwarrior meant when he said:

rainwarrior wrote:If you run a kickstarter for a game, you'll get a bunch of unsolicited e-mail from aspiring voice actors who haven't bothered to read the description of your game.

tepples wrote:NovaSquirrel had me record a couple lines for his current project.

Judging from your name, you're a guy, right? Did he also have a female voice actor?

Dwedit wrote:A while ago there was the Newgrounds Voice Acting Guild or something like that, people who did stuff for fun for free. If you don't care about amateurish quality, you can find people anywhere.

I guess I can check it out.

If digging around, one term you might consider searching for is "voice talent" or "voice artist" (not "voice acting").

I worked at a company where we had several people who acted as our primary voices (one of the folks). They all operated independently, i.e. contract or freelance. Said company was not game-related (was phone-related).

koitsu wrote:If digging around, one term you might consider searching for is "voice talent" or "voice artist" (not "voice acting").

Thanks for the hint.


By the way, it's really a pity that I designed my game with the intention that it would have come out in 1986. Otherwise, I could have just stolen the voice from the "Dance Aerobics" instructor: "Let's go!"
(My actual phrase for the game is "Let's get it on!", but it would be close enough.)

Might also ask someone like Rachel Weil if she knows of someone (female) who would be willing to do the voice work. She's surprisingly resourceful like that :)

Check out fiverr.com for $5 voice acting.

If you don't like the results then you've only wasted $5.

I'd rather use my own specially since it's likely to be no more than 10 seconds total inside the cart lol.

Macbee wrote:

DRW wrote:If you intended to include a digitalized speech sample into your NES game, where would you find the person that does the voice?

For a NES game I believe you should record the lines yourself.
I mean you'll probably read isolated words or small sentences - so (usually!) there's no real need to call someone else.

I know it's not the same thing but I've played voices in 2 modern "retraux" games (Haggis in Odallus: The Dark Call and Tcheco/bosses/Didi Mocó in Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio) and even not being an actor I liked the end results (all in-game voices were converted to NES samples using RJDMC). So I think you should at least try to record it yourself.

I like your voice for Tcheco. If it weren't for your voice this would have NEVER worked:

"The sun and the dog - Tcheco"
Once upon a time there was a sun. Once upon a time there was a dog.
Then the sun said to the dog:
"adsfpoqiwufpsdjfpjzxopuvcouqefopdsf"
Then the dog said:
"weqrqwweeaqwaewaweaweawaasds"
Then the sun and the dog went to the riverbank to smoke crack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si991J2osDk -> 6:55

This place has worked quite nicely for me:

http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/forum.php

Some/all of the women in this game came from VAA.