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Bad Videogame Acting Chronicled
An anonymous reader writes "This site is documenting some great bad acting in video games. Sure, we all talk about what game had bad acting (Resident Evil comes up all the time), but this place has examples of why people call these games bad." This immediately brought to mind one of the bosses from the game Final Fight, when he says "Oh, my car" right after you've smashed his car, and he couldn't sound much more disinterested, nevermind that his ride was beaten in with a lead pipe.
Is in the first Thief game on the first level. If you knock out the first citizen you encounter with the blackjack. He makes this effeminate groan "Ooooooooooo". I play that level for a laugh now and then.
Let the obligitory "All your base" jokes begin.
My favorite. From ninja gaiden II.
Irene: What the?!
Ryu: What the!?
Robert TS: What the?!
Did everyone in the game have to say it??
What, me Tweet?
In which a leary Mark Hamilton barely fitting in a blue jumpsuit tries to pull every chick in the game remains one of the most memorable acting moments in PC gaming.
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Great games, bad acting by the lead characters
Slightly off topic, but let's not forget Ginger Lynn in Wing Commander.
With an ex-porn star in a videogame, I was expecting the worst kind of acting in the movie clips when I got this game.... Surprisingly, though, she pulled off a decent job.
...the FFX "laugh" scene. You know the one I mean. Why did my mom have to walk in on me THEN of all times. Gar... Embarrasment++.
"Hello, Smithers. You are quite good. At turning, meeee on."
Although not acting in a computer game, some pretty atrocious advertising accompanied the launch of the Amiga CD32 games console in Europe.
The official "Creation" commercial for the CD32 went something like this: A young man in a white coat was welcomed to a laboratory by a scientist in another white coat. Then there was a voice-over: "I never understood why he chose *me* to share his secret." (show a CD32), "this was twice as fast, twice as powerful" (pan over the "32Bit" text on the CD32) Then he continued "and colours, so many colours", before a robot was called over to play Microcosm, a pretty impressive FMV game at the time. The game is so amazing that the robot malfunctions, the scientist hits loads of red buttons, the robot explodes, and the picture stops at "CD32 - The worlds first 32-bit games console".
Sheer quality.
My favorite experience with voice samples still has to be the Playstation RPG Star Ocean 2... partially because the bad voice acting is something you *had* to experience in order to unlock the harder difficulty levels. You had to figure out ways to trigger the different voice samples during the fight sequences by having the characters fight in different combinations, try different attacks, etc. You also had the ability to play them from a big board of voice samples, which seemed to indicate that there were, oh, 1300 or so unique ones. Once you "unlocked" a certain number of them, you could play the game through again at the harder levels (and play any you'd encountered so far at will.) Some of the best included:
* "Craude has advanced forward!" (When the main character, named *cough cough* Claude) gained a level
* "I will turn you into a behot!" (One of the characters says this before a fight. We still don't know what it means.)
* "Secret medicine!" (actually the name of one character's attacks...)
* "Don't you think I'm very tough?" (one of the mini-bosses says something like this... very unconvincingly...)
Red alert 2's acting was so bad, I almost stopped playing the game. Tanya was the most memorable character. There seemed to be an endless number of tanktops she would wear while leaning over a table. The camera knew where to point;) I thought it was pretty sad.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Could they mean biot?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Resident Evil is a great game, but the acting truly deserves the label that it gets. I think the worst example is right out of the chute, where Chris Redfield is missing and Barry and Jill find some blood on the floor of the mansion, and Barry asks "Is this .. Chris' blood?" in the same tone of voice that you might ask "Are you going to eat that sandwich?"
Of course, I think right before that, there's an exchange like this:
BARRY: What? What is this?
JILL: What is it?
BARRY: Blood!
Apparently, Jill and Barry have never seen blood before?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I guess that in the 8bit/16bit era there were technical limitations, but what do you think about these ones:
"Comeoooonn.. let's fight" Ikari Warriors (NES): This one really makes you laugh when you listen to it.
"The last metroid is in captivity, the galaxy is at peace" Super Metroid (SNES): Did the guy had some helium before the voiceover?
"Aaahhh" Final Fight (SNES): Well.. it would have been better if the action was better coordinated with the speech
"Riise from your grave" Altered Beast (GEN): What the hell was that... a keyboard speaking?
"Tatsu-maki-senpu-kyaku!" SFII (SNES): OK. Guys/girls... is that what you hear? I hear "Tat-tet-tet-oruken"
"The adventures of Bayou Billy" (NES) : What? I guess Konami liked "speech" Better Examples: World Series Baseball (GEN): Very impressive at the time.
Rock n' Roll Racing: Decent, but very very redundant
Captain: What happen ? Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb. Operator: We get signal. Captain: What ! Operator: Main screen turn on. Captain: It's You !! Cats: How are you gentlemen !! Cats: All your base are belong to us. Cats: You are on the way to destruction. Captain: What you say !! Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time. Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
"I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
I always used Guy's lightning fast punches.
Marques Johansson
I think for what RE was, the acting was great. The cheesy B'ness of the acting was spot on. It just felt like a cheesy horror film, only scarier (those damn dogs scared the piss out of me...and that thing dropping down from above).
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Spam subject of the moment: Offshore account secrets -nashville disrupt
I can't think of many video games that have good acting, or even good dialogue. Even though Metal Gear Solid has good voice acting, the plots and dialogue are so laughable at times, it destroys the acting. The website wouldn't suck up as much bandwidth if they listed the games with good acting.
Greetings! I am Twyla. (Hologram: Time Traveller by Sega).
JC 'Corn Fed' Denton had no range at all.
Jock: OH MY GOD, JC, IT'S A BOMB!
JC (loudly): A bomb.
Words cannot express the hilarity.
Most of it was OK, but one of the women doing the maid voices was terrible. Also, Deus Ex. Especially the maid in the French hotel who said "I clean all of the rooms". It sounded like she had a mouth full of rocks.
"Shake it baby!"
"You wanna dance?"
Now THAT was acting. Am I the only person who hit spacebar for a half-hour?
More than enough BS
Revenant!
Couple years old, it was sort of a dungeon hack -- Diablo style -- and the voiceovers for the main character (Locke) were simply ATROCIOUS. The game itself was sort of decent, but I actually gave up in disgust after a while. It was impossible to take the plot line seriously! I'm sure those of you who played the game agree. Anyway, I did a quick google for reviews, guessing I wasn't alone in thinking this, and sure enough:
Understandably , Locke is angry and confused to suddenly find himself in a situation beyond his control, and he certainly shows it when he delivers his lines! I mentioned the character voices earlier, and, without wanting to over emphasise, I must mention that Locke does have a habit of bellowing his words to the point of agitation.
It was just too bad that many of the voice actors were so over-the-top in their line delivery with lines containing so much potential. Locke in particular had an annoying habit of screaming his lines, especially ones that did not need to be said with such intensity. I found this to be so distracting that I often avoided conversation with other characters and thus occasionally missed important pieces of information or quests.
Less impressive was the extensive recorded voice dialog for Locke and the many NPC's you can interact with. While some of the performances, especially the snake in the grass performance of the court Mage, are well done, they are sabotaged by the often unintentionally funny voice acting of the main character Locke. It's unfortunate that the character with the most dialog is the worst of the lot and it does detract from the game in a very real way.
I don't even know what to say.
It was bad enough that I couldn't even laugh. I just felt bad, like I felt bad for Jack Tripper when he scheduled a date with two girls on the same night. I felt bad for the actors, and for the people who wrote the scripts. It made me feel bad for everyone else who worked on this game (and did a good job).
Best voice acting? Impossible Mission for the C64: "Another visitor. Stay awhile... STAAAY FOREVER!"
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Tenchu had the best bad acting ever. I played the levels over and over again and didn't mind that I couldn't skip through the cut scenes because they were so entertaining.
"He. He. He. What is THIS Bi-Zen-YA? There is more HERE than UUUSUUUUAL?"
"We.. Could.. Not.. Do bus-i-ness without you"
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
If I recall properly from my wasted youth, this was a special stage not a boss. The bosses you actually fought and didn't say too much afterward - this stage you just got to smash up the car with your trusty pipe/knee/elbow/etc.
Sierra's Quest For Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness had great voice acting. I don't know if it's true, but they claimed it was the first PC game to have voice acting. The acting was all very good. They had John Rhys-Davies (Gimli in the LOTR movies) do the narration. Unfortunately, the game suffers from CPU speed bugs. Certain parts were a little hard on my Pentium 75. They're impossible on my P3-850. The game is definately worth playing though if you can. It has a lot of replay value, as you can play as either a Fighter, Magic User, Theif, or Paladin. The subplots are different with the different character types, and the puzzles that are shared between types usually have different solutions for different characters.
Another good one is Eternal Darkness on the GameCube. Some of the acting at the very end of the game is a little painful, but I think that's more because of the really cheesy writing than anything else.
Not only did it feature Wayne from the Wonder Years, but it had the single most memorable (and poorly acted) line of the MPC Revolution:
Want some rye? COURSE YA DO!
If you could be anything you want, I'll bet you'd be disappointed.
Night Trap on the SegaCD had THE WORST acting EVER. As soon as I read the title of this article it instantly came to mind. I'm surprised it's not listed! The only great thing about that game was that, when I was ten years old, the girls running around in underwear was as good as porn!
Symphony of the night , best game in PSX, really bad acting as well, the text was fine for a game, but the pronunciation was laughable.
ie:
"I guess the same could be said about all religions".(Faggy sesame street villain voice.)
"What!?" (Completely over the top "David Hasselhof is my role model for voice acting" voice )
"But enough about that, have at you!" (less Faggy, saturday morning cartoon villain voice.)
Now these have the BEST voice acting:
Soulreaver: Ah!!! now thats what I call good voice acting! (with a slight shakespearian Tone as well mind you) first time I heard someone at a videogame without laughing. Part 2 was ok, but a bit over the top.
"Raziel you've been choosen."
Metal gear solid: snake, best game voice ever. Period.
Silent hill: part 1 was good, but part 2 is amazing, the voice acting in the end may just move you to tears, no kidding.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
I always loved to play as Scorpion (I think he was the one that did it) and throw people. He says, in his worst WWF tone, "Oh! I'm gonna throw you over there!"
I believe the first saying is for Ken/Ryu's Whirlwind Kick and the second saying is for their Fireball.
I can't believe I actually remembered that...
Prozac makes the voices in my head say nice things to me.
I suggest you grab a copy from mame.dk or for maybe just get the rom for the genesis version. The whole game is just one bad acting scene. My favorite has to be:
Villin:"You can not escape"
Hero:"You'll be the one whos escaping"
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
How about those Neil Manke's "They Hunger" (any part).
I had to laugh...
Yeah, it fit well and it wasn't that bad most of the time IIRC.
;)
It was most funny seeing a special operations soldier freak out seeing a corpse (in the intro).
This game had some of the worst acting ever, in quasi-FMV no less. I'm having a little difficulty coming up with specific examples since it was so long ago, but I do remember that it was pretty bad. Somehow, the game itself still managed to be pretty good, though.
"Shy Gypsy Slyly Spryly Tryst By My Crypt"
Deus Ex: the accents from the Hong Kong part of the game were hilariously horrible. Star Fox Adventures: yeah the game sucked but the king triceratops's voice was particularly bad
A very entertaining and addicting game, almost totally ruined by the bad ren-faire acting. Even the script was decent... but the voices! *SHUDDER* I had to turn them off and go with the subtitles. old school, but I still played!
Cough cough... excuse me my dear boy but where is the rest of my illustrious family ::stuff chuckle, cough cough::
-some annoying mammoth guy
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I went out and bought Fox Hunt just because I saw it on a certain (extremely attractive) actress's resume. After dealing with software issues (who writes these brain-dead installers?), I went through about 5 minutes of crude game play, potty humor, and really really bad acting before I realized that I'd never be able to do the game long enough to see the object of my obsession. Being a stalker is all very well, but there are things you just can't do!
Best voice acting in a videogame EVER: Sinistar. That used to freak my **** out.
Creepiest: "Beware. I Live." (when he's fully assembled somewhere on the map)
Second-creepiest: "I Hunger." (when he's looking around for you)
Most Adrenaline-Pumping: "AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRARARAGHHHHHHHGGAGRGARAR!" (when he finds you, approximately one and a half seconds before you die.)
I had the distinct misfortune of seeing "Super Mario Bros." on cable the other day, for lack of any other good thing on, and that got me thinking. Sure, the acting in many games today is bad... but at least it was never that bad.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Anybody remember Off World Interceptor for the 3DO? I forget the purpose of the game, ya drive around on some planet and shoot stuff. It was made by Crystal Dynamics of Star Control 2 (port) fame.
They had cheesy FMV scenes that were acted and written almost as bad as any given episode of Babylon 5. But they had these two guys sitting in front of the screen a la MST3K riffing on them. Heh. That was funny!
I can't help but wonder, did they originally plan that, or did they realize the footage was so cheesy that they needed something to fix it? Either way, I enjoyed it. Too bad I had to play the game to get to those scenes.
"Derp de derp."
"I hope this isn't...Chris's blood!"
Can't you just hear the "dum dum DUM!" after it? :)
gta vice city
Biatch?
I assume that by "Bonderanko", you mean "Dekker".
I think in an interview, Warren Spector said that many people were saying that the voice acting of JC was so terrible, etc, etc, but he wanted it to be as emotionless as possible, because he didn't want to force an emotion on the player, so he didn't want to say "at this point, you are angry", it is up to you to decide the emotional state of the character.
Robotic Alchemic Drive ("RAD")
This is one of the best games ever made. I wish it had gotten more coverage. The voice acting is THE worst. Far, far worse than Resident Evil. Far worse than Star Ocean 2.
The game has no hillariously terrible translation to save it (ala Zero Wing), it was just downright horrible. Particularly the blond German/Russian/Jewish/Chinese and sometimes Polish accented Scientist, and the male Heros ex-fiance Ellen.
Seriously, go hunt this game down right now (~$20) for the entertainment of making your ears bleed, but I promise you'll find yourself sucked into a really killer title soon after.
conker's bad fur day by rare. the only passable
voice in this game was conker's. the others,
especially the bad guys, were so cheap that
i had to sell the cartridge after trying it out
for an hour. i became embarassed, because of
the bad voice "acting".
Not the expansion, but the actual game. The "voice" which instructs you on the initial training levels was just purely bad. I remember wondering if the whole game was going to suck so badly.
Throw in some of the odd dialogue, particularly in the expansion (the whole Illadin evil-twin-brother love-triangle thing) sounded like a bad bad soap opera. I had to turn off the sound and just watch the subtitles, less I be embarred by anyone listening in.