Nintendo Project: Big Bird's Hide and Speak

[snowspinner]

An oft unremarked upon aspect of the famed RCA Dog is that its fundamental concept of the image is that the dog is entranced specifically by the sound of his dead master's voice coming through the gramophone. The game today is Big Bird's Hide and Speak, and as you can see, we're setting up for a cheery little number

Comments

[best_ken_ever]

(Is it perhaps the first? I assume not, but I've no particular proof for this assertion)

Bases Loaded (1987) included voice files that said "Safe", "You're out", "Ball", "Strike", "Foul", and "Home Run". There might've been others, but I think that was it. Actually, I do not recall it saying "Ball", but I do remember "Strike", so I assume both. I still am not sure if this is the earliest.

[snowspinner]

I should be more specific - what I was wondering was not whether it was the first use of speech synthesis (earliest example I can think of there is 1984, Impossible Mission, for the Commodore 64, with the absolutely brilliant speech synthesis opener of "Stay a while... STAY FOREVER!" And the ever classic line "Destroy him, my robots!" Which are basically both the best thing ever.) And, of course, this was also chronologically adjacent to MacinTalk)

What is interesting about Big Bird's Hide and Speak is that the speech synthesis is deliberately made to emulate the actual voice of Caroll Spinney. That is, it is not merely human speech in a game, which has lots of antecedents, but the speech of a specific and identifiable human.