The speech synthesis was very 80's, with obvious 8-bit samples, but yet, the Intellivoice module actually sounded better than other speech synthesis systems I recall of the time, judging from your videos!
As for Matt's comment on the "novelty" status of speech in games, perhaps now, with full-scale orchestral soundtracks and sampled actors in games, such systems might seem lame, but back then, WOW!
The games may not, technically, be more fun or playable, but it was the WOW factor that added to the enjoyment. To computer nerds of the day like myself, the idea of "sampled sounds" was just amazing. I'm talking jaws-hitting-the-floor amazement as my friends and I heard the worlds "Robot Attack!" coming from a TRS-80 (Big Five Software's "Robot Attack").
Now people who had no knowledge of computing state of the art, it might not impress, but I suspect the average person of the time would have been amazed that a computer can "speak!"
I spent many an hour back in the day playing with S.A.M., a software (!!!!) speech synthesizer for the Atari. S.A.M. actually sounded pretty competitive with most of the speech synthesis I've heard over the years, until I heard the recent AT&T speech synthesis. Speech synthesis was (and IS) amazing technology.
Thanks for posting this, OldschoolGamer.
The speech synthesis was very 80's, with obvious 8-bit samples, but yet, the Intellivoice module actually sounded better than other speech synthesis systems I recall of the time, judging from your videos!
As for Matt's comment on the "novelty" status of speech in games, perhaps now, with full-scale orchestral soundtracks and sampled actors in games, such systems might seem lame, but back then, WOW!
The games may not, technically, be more fun or playable, but it was the WOW factor that added to the enjoyment. To computer nerds of the day like myself, the idea of "sampled sounds" was just amazing. I'm talking jaws-hitting-the-floor amazement as my friends and I heard the worlds "Robot Attack!" coming from a TRS-80 (Big Five Software's "Robot Attack").
Now people who had no knowledge of computing state of the art, it might not impress, but I suspect the average person of the time would have been amazed that a computer can "speak!"
I spent many an hour back in the day playing with S.A.M., a software (!!!!) speech synthesizer for the Atari. S.A.M. actually sounded pretty competitive with most of the speech synthesis I've heard over the years, until I heard the recent AT&T speech synthesis. Speech synthesis was (and IS) amazing technology.
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