Support me on Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/bumblesmcfumble The irony of me of all people bashing other peoples voice acting is not lost on me, don't worry. Those who know: • Video
I paused partway through the "What am I fighting for" segement to look up the "Fill your dark soul with light" clip for a laugh, so you can imagine my immense amusement when I resumed this video only to have that exact clip play.
Even the Roger Craig Smith sonic, something many people punch down on constantly was treated with a "Hes good, I know he can be a great sonic, but no one has given him good enough material to really flex off what he can do"
I feel like when you have athlete actors playing themselves instead of professional VAs, you shouldn't give them a script, rather just tell them what information they have to get across and let them improvise it as if they were saying it normally.
Writing is still important. Telling them to improvise would be a disaster! Those people are athletes, not really people you go to for, to put it lightly, well written conversation. They already sound like they're having trouble reading the script, what more if they have to actually think?
Though look how awful it is when it’s already written out for them, there may not be enough time before the games releases for them to finish their sentences.
The one with Mortal Kombat seems intentional lol. Like the skin is already like “we got this actor in the costume” so I think it makes it that much funnier that his deliveries aren’t great. He’s not some cold hard killer like the rest of those people so I’d expect him to sound a little timid
@@diegobendinelli2680 ya voice work for a random dlc skin is a blip on the radar compared to changing a main character's va to a mma athlete who, putting it mildly, lacked the skill of voice acting.
I would like to give a mention in the comments to the cutscenes in two Fire Emblem games, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. It's sad that no one outside the FE fandom laughs at the hilariously awful voice acting in these. "Form up! Surround them all! Don't let a single one escape!"
It's funny, because everybody was introduced to the series via awakening, which had good voice acting, and people often assume it was the first. It wasn't.
Sonic voice acting is something I could talk about for hours on end......yeah I have a problem. It just feels like every time a cast gets it's footing with how they want a character to sound and act, out they go for the cycle to repeat (except for Mike Pollock. Even SEGA knows enough to understand it doesn't get much better than him). The Colours cast has to have had the longest time to really settle in mostly due to the writing sounding like it was made by 2 people who knew literally nothing about Sonic when they started OH WAIT!
IMO Mike is actually not even the second best Eggman. That isn’t implying he’s bad either, it’s just that Eggman has had some INSANELY good VAs. Deem Bristow and Long John Baldry were fucking fantastic. It’s a real damn shame both of them died. I’m still fine with Mike though, although he is a bit of a jackass outside of being a VA. Still the best VA of the meta Era, which isn’t saying much considering how bad the meta era cast is.
I unironically love bad voice over. As an aspiring VA, having a reference on what NOT to do is great. But more than that, I live for the cheese. These games wouldn’t be nearly as iconic without the stupidity of “you’re gonna crash! AHH!” or “WHAT AM I FIGHTING FORRRRR?”
I love the production values on this channel, and what I've really been fond of is the little cassette pop-up of "this is the music now". It's ridiculously common to think "WAIT I KNOW THAT MUSIC BUT FROM WHERE", and having the answer right there in a little unobtrusive short-lasting popup? It is the glory.
Found out the other day that the reason everything changed in the dubbing of Shadow the Hedgehog is that it was the first game that 4Kids did the dubbing for. Yes. That 4Kids. The ones responsible for the Shadow Realm in Yu-Gi-Oh. They dubbed most of the Sonic games for a solid period, their last being Sonic and the Black Knight.
Coming from Xenoblade 2, it is a goldmine of good and bad voice acting. On one hand, Morag, Zeke, Vandham, Malos, Akhos and Amalthus are all absolute masters at the craft. On the other, Nia and Rex, especially at the beginning of the game, can be so bad sometimes it’s hilarious. Jin’s line readings are also incredibly fast-
Honestly, aside from Rex's unforgivable scream-adjacent lines at the start of the game, it feels to me like it's more down to poor direction than actual voice acting ability.
Yeah, Rex's VA had his first (not sure if game, if overall) role as Rex, which unfortunately means he didn't start off well. He does get better with time, which is good.
Obligatory ‘Xenoblade 2 is a mixed bag of a game’ comment. So many little things just really bug me and lead me to not liking it as a game. I’ve said it a million times on other channels, so I won’t repeat myself here. I absolutely love the story and that is something I will admit is the best part of the game! The gameplay… Yikes.
To be fair, having the mouth movements be off in DBFZ feels kinda fitting considering it's such a nostlagia fest. I genuinely wonder whether that was a decision they made or just... ArcSys being Arcsys. Probably the latter.
@@bumblesmcfumbles Personally, my full Sonic lineup would be: Sonic: Jason Griffith(or Ryan Drummond) Tails: Kate Higgins(the one meta era VA on this list lmao) Knuckles: Scott Dreier Amy: Lisa Ortiz Eggman: Deem Bristow(RIP) Shadow: David Humphrey(or Jason Griffith) Rouge: Kathleen Delaney(I don’t really have a preferred Rouge, but I don’t like her adventure voice so I’m going with the 4kids one) Omega: Anyone, really. Big: Jon St. Jon or DUKE NUKEM lmao. Silver: Pete Capella(duh) Blaze: Erica Schroeder Bonus(never had a VA but I thought it’d be funny) Scourge: Dave Mustaine(yes, really, lol)
3:04 The only kid characters that _were_ voiced by kids at the time that I think were done _well_ - as far as I recall - were Leonard Helperman from Teacher's Pet and Chowder from, well, Chowder. The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack had one that _also_ wasn't voiced by an adult woman, the titular Flapjack...and that was because he was voiced by an adult _man_ - none other than the show's own creator, Thurop Van Orman.
The problem is he delivers it so flat. A voice crack in a highly emotional state makes sense, but the rest of the line sounds like he was reading the line at 1 AM before realizing halfway through it was supposed to be emotional.
@@BillyBob-xx5jr fair enough, I guess. But why does everybody bring that 1 up & give a free pass to DMC3 when Dante says "My soul is telling me to STOPYOU!" ?
Dude...the voice crack was bad, but then they took it added reverb and echoed it a bunch of times to emphasize it as much as they could, to literally push it in the player's ears. It's like polishing and displaying a turd. Maybe that's why it's so remembered. (Yeah the IS TELLING ME TO STOP YOUUU was pretty bad too)
sorry i keep thinking about the "i don't know if you know this, but english isn't the main language of japan / *What?*" back and forth, it's so god damn funny. you have really good comedic timing, man
I will say a thing with lipflaps, is that with games that use Unity/Unreal, they have the ability to sync lip flaps to the actual vocal frequency instead of needing to do it manually. They've had this tech since Half Life 2(Yes, even 20 year old Source has this feature.), although it wasn't automatic like AI scripts can do now (Instead you put some markers in the sound file to tell the engine what mouth shape to make at what time.). The issue is that a lot of gaming companies would rather use Havoc, Cryware (Ew) or their own proprietary engine instead of an open engine like those two, so they have to figure out those scripts themselves. Fun Fact, Nintendo has moved over to Unity/Unreal for faster game production in most mainline nintendo games. I believe Odyssy was made in Unreal. (That'd also explain why Nintendo games are so easy to mod on a console.)
Mario Oddessy doesn't use unreal It's a heavily modified version of the The Super Mario 3D world Engine which was then later used for Bowser's Fury. The only Nintendo Published Game I know for certain use Unreal 4 are Link's Awakening and Yoshi's Crafted World, which were developed by Third Party Developers. Super Mario Odyssey is pretty optimized for the Switch where as most Unreal Engine 4 games have some frame rate issues and occasional the texture pop in issues associated Unreal Engine. These days Nintendo supposedly recommends Unity over Unreal as Unity is easier to optimize for performance on Switch.
Wow a video about bad voice acting in video games and not one single mention of Jill Sandwich(tm)??? Unsubscribed, unliked, uncommented and unclicked on that bell, good sir! Also, hearing the Zero line acted seriously feels so wrong for some reason.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a prime example of what not to do in voice acting. Not the bad voice actors but the idiots who messed the actors up with bad scripts and idiotic decisions.
Roger Craig Smith's voice acting in sonic is great, but I feel that his voice fits Boom sonic better than the normal Sonic, which makes it even more infuriating that they cut any development for Boom sonic when they decided to ruin Rise of Lyric by making it a Wii-U exclusive. It WAS planned for more powerful consoles, but they had to downgrade the engine, and restart from scratch, when they got told this
roger has a "nathen drake" feel to his sonic voice to me which fits sonic boom perfectly. also, it really is a shame what happened to sonic boom's game. there was potential and the stuff people have found years later really highlights how fucked over the dev were in that project.
honestly i love roger craig smith as a va anyways but ur absolutely right, he was PERFECT for boom sonic and with other games its a bit more mixed (not bad by any means, and its not like the dialogue helps him lmao)
I'm so glad you ended up showing the Lucas Gilbertson fandub of the "What am I fighting for" scene, cause he's my favorite voice of Zero from X8 and Command Mission
Have to say, I'm surprised Metroid Other M wasn't listed. the english voice work in that game is bad. you flat out had a non-native speaker of english directing Samus's VA to sound as monotone and borderline robotic as possible. from what i understand that is a cultural thing in japan where you sound at peace but that does not translate over at all in english.
I'll get to catch the video as it goes up one of these times. Great job as usual! I had no idea what the third game was until you said it. I had no idea it was a Sega game!
Thanks for not bringing up Xenoblade 2. The English delivery can be a bit stilted (due to the circumstances surrounding the dub) but overall I think it's solid. When games like Arc Rise Fantasia, Baten Kaitos, and Chaos Wars exist, I boggle that some people say that Xenoblade 2 has the worst English VA in a JRPG.
@@bumblesmcfumbles tbh one thing you should have picked was Ronda's performance as Sonya Blade in MK11, rather then a cameo from a Belgian DJ who is not an actor by trade and whose first language is not english... idk one of those things seem MUCH bigger then the other.
I did want to mention you CAN get good voice acting performances out of professional athletes. The simpsons did it in one of the best episodes of the show
Cant believe you missed the "Remember. There is no such thing as a second chance." From house of the dead 2 that was an Iconic Line I quote to this day
I just wanted to point out that Steve Blum also voiced starscream in Transformers prime frankly he should just voice every version of old screamer from now on as he did the best job at showing starscream as both a conniving schemer and cowardly loon
Hey, say what you will, I will stand on the hill saying that Ben Scwartz's performance as Sonic was magnificent. I love Roger's work, especially his performance in the Colors Ultimate shorts, but Scwartz stole the show in the movie.
Lots of people like to hate on English voice acting, especially in anime, often saying it's not as good as Japanese. Sure some performances aren't great (such as ones in this video) but I feel these people are very quick to call out bad ENG VAs while ignoring bad JP (or really any bad foreign) VAs. Part of that can be due to being easier to pick up on off performances with languages you're more familiar with, other times it's due to placing foreign VAs on a pedestal to the point that one becomes convinced that performances in your native language are automatically bad. Obviously the reverse can happen too but that's less common I find. If you happen to prefer one language over another when it comes to voice acting fine, but if you're gonna criticize & call out bad ENG performances then it's only fair you do the same for foreign ones as well. Same with recognizing & praising both good ENG & foreign performances.
Man, the original dub for Yakuza was weird. Really did taint the series reputation, pretty much until zero. BUT, it did have Mark Hamill play Majima, so all is forgiven.
I have one voice acting credit on IMDB because of a make a wish trip and I was not and have never been a good actor nor voice actor so I really don't go out of my way to advertise it o_o' I can really empathize with some voice actors in this, like the young family members that got roped into the project
Weird tangent but I want to thank you or mentioning that little bit over how what you look like doesn't matter so long as you can fit the voice role properly. I've seen a bit of discourse over if voice actors, notably white ones, should be playing roles of characters that aren't their ethnicity and while there is definitely something to be said about giving people of color deserving fitting roles, as a POC one myself, prioritizing if the person and character are the same ethnicity over them actually fitting the role of a character feels like just the other logical extreme of the issue. Not to mention how people seem total fine when it's an Asian character in anime being voiced by a white person since I guess they 'look white enough' which is already a WHOLE nother conversation. TL/DR: As long as you turn in a fitting performance, what you look like should be irrelevant unless its a role that really calls for a certain ethnicity because An authentic Jamaican accent is VERY different to an improvised one lol
god i remember a bunch of people were calling out funimation for a character in my hero academia not sounding black enough when the voice actress WAS BLACK. at some point a good intentioned movement turned into complaining about things and possibly showing off one's own racial bias.
@@Zekana0 God, I remember that too! And its funny because what did they even mean by 'not sounding black enough'? Like there's not one universal black voice, it comes in all ranges and tones. Its like they wanted her to sound like she's from the hood or something when they phrase it like that. That's the double edged sword of the more 'sensitive' world we live in currently I find, people become so hyper fixated on something **potentially** being an issue that they develop all sorts of weird paranoia and logic and end up causing more trouble than if they just let things be and end up exposing their own insensitive or ignorant world views and standards.
20:57 Actually had to do a double take here. Gregor and Gaius?? I had no idea you'd even be familiar with the characters, let alone do voice work for them in a fandub. I'm honestly blown away here.
I was gonna mention using "Work Harder" as the background music during the segment about weird Shenmue voice acting (because the song heavily samples Deulin's weird grunting from the game) but like five other guys in this comment section already did so I uh... well I guess I did too. UH HUH.
When you started playing the clips from Chaos Wars, I thought you were using clips from streamers reading the text boxes. Then it just kept getting worse. What on earth.
Sonic gamers: Knuckles is Jamaican. Sonic Comic readers: Knuckles is Australian. I heard Shenmue was voiced by American expats who had no experience in voice acting.
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