43 replies to this topic

[boxpressed]

From 1982-83, speech synthesis seemed to be quite a compelling technology. You had the Odyssey 2 Voice and the Intellivoice for the Mattel Intellivision. I also had a TI 99 4/A with the separate speech synthesis unit. I'm wondering why so many companies thought that their product NEEDED speech synthesis. The technology seems like a novelty to us now, but I wonder whether it had a different meaning thirty years ago. Any thoughts?

[Rex Dart]

I think they were just showing off the audio hardware, since anything more than a buzzer was impressive back then.

[Ransom]

It was new and different -- something the marketing guys could hype. It was never more than a gimmick, though. Much like "full motion video" back in the 90s.

[save2600]

Oh yeah, speech synthesis was the shit back then. Especially when you heard it in an arcade game or pinball machine. Personally, I love the sound of vintage speech synthesis much better than today's realistic sampling when it comes to gaming and computer use.

On the TI, it was great fun playing around with the different values and phonetics in Terminal Emulator II, getting your speech synthesizer to say things well that it normally wasn't programmed for. For a commercial effort, Bigfoot on the TI is damned impressive - totally enhances the game. Alpiner, Parsec and many others. Still love 'em today.

And you have to remember, while we take RAM for granted today, that was definitely not the case back then. Especially in the late 70's/early 80's, so when new tech like this came around or was made more available, there was definitely a WOW factor going on.

[ls650]

Look at all the fuss over Berzerk. Great game, but did the voice really add anything to the gameplay?

[save2600]

ls650, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:44 PM, said:

Look at all the fuss over Berzerk. Great game, but did the voice really add anything to the gameplay?

For sure - the way it taunted you, got you that much more worked up and liable to make mistakes, causing you to die more often and feed the quarter slot.

[mbd30]

It was amazing when you heard digitized voices and music coming out of a primitive PC speaker that usually only made awful beeps and bloops. http://www.oldskool.org/sound/pc

[Goochman]

It was important cause you could have your computer say bad words and impress your friends!

uuuoo re a faacken idddiooot

or for arcade games it could just be "Insert Coin" - "Got the Humanoid"

[boxpressed]

I was also thinking about a movie like War Games (1983). The whole "Do you want to play a game?" thing seemed to signify that speech was necessary for computing to take the next "step" forward.

[high voltage]

Speech had to be digitized, as real voice takes up loads of memory. Back in the days memory was little,

There's some C64 games from USA which used real voices during gameplay, but hell I don't remember the names of those games.
Learning titles from Atari used real voice whilst playing the program, Conversational French for example.

Edited by high voltage, Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:21 PM.

[DemonoidTentacle]

When a game talked back then, it was something special. I remember when I'd boot up Impossible Mission and it would greet me with "Ah, we have a visitor. Stay a while. Stay forever!" It was the coolest thing ever. Now, heaps of games talk. It's not special anymore, it's expected.

[save2600]

Oh... speech was still big by the time the Amiga was released. Built into the OS and damn was that little Say program cool. Speech capable computing right out of the box. Pretty friggin' amazing.

[Mirage]

Are you kidding me? Computers that talked in the very early '80s?! It was awesome!!!!! Amazing time to be alive, witnessing all this glorious innovation come right into the home!

[fiddlepaddle]

It was computerized speech that made me realize computers were taking over the world. It's basically happened except we still can't carry on simple conversation with one yet without misunderstandings out the wazoo. Better give it another thirty years...

[Eltigro]

Yeah, anything other than a square wave was awesome. I remember arguing with people over what some of the scratchy synthesized voices were actually saying. (Same with the digitized voices on games in the "16-bit era.")

[Vic George 2K3]

Same thing why any new technology for video games is such a big deal. It was never tried before.

[SoulBlazer]

My first experience with a 'talking' game was Transformers for the C64. There was no voice in the game itself, but the intro story that you could watch had it narrated by the guy who did Optimus Prime. It was really cool as a kid. There was also a 'edutainment' game I had for the computer that wasn't half bad, a spelling game where you explore a cave and try to escape with a wizard who shows up and now then.

Even during the NES and SNES era it was a nice treat to get voice in games.

The next big jump forward was CD based games, which always included voice. That's about the time it went from being a rare treat to something expected.

[Emehr]

I long for the experience of chip music and synthesized speech in new consoles. It's infinitely more interesting and unique. Video gaming has become so homogenized since the CD era took hold.

[boxpressed]

high voltage, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:20 PM, said:

Speech had to be digitized, as real voice takes up loads of memory. Back in the days memory was little,

Speech synthesis units like the TI's synthesized "on the fly" as well as allowed for the playback of digitized samples. That is, as many have posted, you could get it to try to pronounce words phonetically. To me, this seems different from having the ability to play back digitized samples (Berzerk, Sinistar, etc.). The playback of digitized audio samples appears to have led to the FMV craze. I might be missing an obvious example, but even today, the idea of a computer synthesizing voice strikes me as pretty unusual. My Kindle can "read" a book to me, for example, and I'm not sure how many other devices can do this.

Edited by boxpressed, Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:24 AM.

[Ransom]

boxpressed, on Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:23 AM, said:

My Kindle can "read" a book to me, for example, and I'm not sure how many other devices can do this.

When I bought my first Mac (2002), I was surprised to see that voice synthesis was built in. Apparently Macs have had text-to-speech capabilities since the 80s. That was a surprise to me.

[Emehr]

Ransom, on Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:33 AM, said:

boxpressed, on Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:23 AM, said:

My Kindle can "read" a book to me, for example, and I'm not sure how many other devices can do this.

When I bought my first Mac (2002), I was surprised to see that voice synthesis was built in. Apparently Macs have had text-to-speech capabilities since the 80s. That was a surprise to me.

Yeah, my first Mac was in 1996 (System 7.5) and it had speech. One never tires of typing something into SimpleText (the precursor to TextEdit) and having the Mac speak it back to you.

[Ransom]

Was the text-to-speech about as good back then as it is now?

[boxpressed]

I didn't know that about Macs. I don't know if Windows can do it. I do have Dragon Naturally Speaking, which you read to, but I'm not sure if it can read to you. The TI unit wasn't nearly as good as the Kindle, but still pretty nifty.

[TwinChargers]

This is going to make me sound young, but back when I was in 7th grade I remember it was a real kick getting the Mac's in the computer lab to talk. That was about 1994 or 95. It was real funny when the teacher is up front telling us our assignment and all of a sudden in a loud robotic/computer sounding voice one of the computers is yelling "Yabba Dabba Dooooooooooo!"

[Emehr]

Ransom, on Wed Jan 18, 2012 11:24 AM, said:

Was the text-to-speech about as good back then as it is now?

On the old Macs? It was adequate back then. Imagine the voice that Stephen Hawking uses. Kinda like that. They had different voices you could select from. Some of them even sang. One was happy in a national anthem way and another was depressing like that sound it makes when you lose a life in Pitfall.

Edited by Emehr, Wed Jan 18, 2012 11:41 AM.