Sender: eric@ruckus.brouhaha.com From: Eric Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Votrax speech synthesiziers in video games (was Re: Movie Computers (was: Celebrity Salespeople.)) References: <19991024230937.25603.00001243@ng-cg1.aol.com> <38147DE8.635725E9@trailing-edge.com> <7v32er$hpk@simba> <3815A00E.2684A921@trailing-edge.com> <38244d7d.130145287@news.nashville.com> <38173911.68B2F23B@egg.chips.and.spam.com> <7v9k2t$j8c$2@ausnews.austin.ibm.com> <38186c86.1188460375@192.168.2.34> X-Disclaimer: Everything I write is false. Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy. Date: 28 Oct 1999 21:47:37 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 11 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 NNTP-Posting-Host: ruckus.brouhaha.com X-Trace: 28 Oct 1999 22:17:58 -0800, ruckus.brouhaha.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!diablo.theplanet.net!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!news.spies.com!ruckus.brouhaha.com dhansen@btree.com (Dave Hansen) writes: > I remember a space-type shoot-em-up video game popular in the early > 80's timeframe that I think used the Votrax chip. I think it was The most bizarre application for the Votrax chip in a video game was in Q*bert. When the player manages to get killed, Q*bert "talks". But the speech is just random phonemes strung together. IIRC, there's a "speech balloon" presented on-screen as well, consisting of a bunch of punctuation and symbols as would be used in comics in place of expletives. So presumably Q*bert is swearing. ###### Subject: Re: Votrax speech synthesiziers in video games (was Re: Movie Computers (was: Celebrity Salespeople.)) From: aek@spies.com (Al Kossow) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: Originator: aek@spies.com NNTP-Posting-Host: goonsquad.spies.com Message-ID: <3819d450@news.spies.com> Date: 29 Oct 1999 10:07:28 -0800 X-Trace: 29 Oct 1999 10:07:28 -0800, goonsquad.spies.com Lines: 9 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!diablo.theplanet.net!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!news.spies.com!spies.com!aek From article , by Eric Smith : > dhansen@btree.com (Dave Hansen) writes: >> I remember a space-type shoot-em-up video game popular in the early >> 80's timeframe that I think used the Votrax chip. > Sega/Gremlin produced a couple of space shooters with speech; Space Fury and Zektor. Both were color vector games and used a GI SP250 LPC synthesizer. ###### From: Eric Fischer Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Votrax speech synthesiziers in video games (was Re: Movie Computers (was: Celebrity Salespeople.)) Date: 29 Oct 1999 17:10:22 GMT Organization: EnterAct Corp Turbo-Elite News Server Lines: 11 Message-ID: <7vckdu$9kt$1@eve.enteract.com> References: <3819d450@news.spies.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.229.143.41 X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) Originator: enf@enteract.com (Eric Fischer) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!diablo.theplanet.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.enteract.com!news.enteract.com!not-for-mail Al Kossow wrote: > Sega/Gremlin produced a couple of space shooters with speech; Space Fury > and Zektor. Both were color vector games and used a GI SP250 LPC synthesizer. The ColecoVision home version of Space Fury was a weird one, because the hardware didn't have any support for speech but they retained the narration anyway. So the game would start with the alien moving its mouth but what should have been spoken was shown in subtitles instead. eric