The Hotdog Laserhouse

Do you care about the voice acting in Sonic games? Is there a particular cast you prefer?

Anonymous

Voice acting in Sonic games largely doesn’t matter. It sucks the way Sega America keeps changing Sonic’s VO, but the short of it is they’ve changed it enough that you learn not to get too attached to any one cast. The new cast always starts out rough and then grows in to the roles a bit. It’s always awkward at first and then it doesn’t matter anymore.

I thought Jason Griffith was an awful Sonic when he first started voicing the character back in 2005. He sounded, to me, like a Ryan Drummond impersonator, and maybe that’s why 4KIDS hired him for Sonic X - because he could do a reasonable facsimile of the voice actor they had for the games. By 2008, I was totally okay with Jason Griffith.

Roger Craig Smith seems okay enough, I guess. His experience in the field of voicing for videogames and anime is apparent, because he seemed to slot in pretty nicely in Sonic Colors. I just don’t like how deep his voice is, really. He’s got that “I’m 35 but I’m trying to sound like a teenager” thing going on.

The important thing is they were smart enough (or perhaps just lucky enough) to keep Mike Pollock. Like the switch from Drummond to Griffith, Pollock was sort of hard to listen to at first but nowadays it’s actually pretty difficult to go back and hear Deem Bristow’s Dr. Eggman because Pollock is basically perfect right now. He nails being just over the top enough without overselling it.

I’ll admit something, though: when possible, I will sometimes switch back to the Japanese audio track just because Junichi Kanemaru and co. still voices Sonic and has been since 1998. The quality of the acting in recent games has improved quite a bit since the days of SA1 and SA2, so it’s not really necessary like it once was, but it’s like revisiting an old friend.

I flip it to Japanese and it’s the old Sonic again. The Sonic I remember hearing in high school. And it’s great that I’m allowed to do that.

Posted 9 months ago

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questions, sonic the hedgehog, deem bristow, mike pollock, jason griffith, roger craig smith, ryan drummond, voice acting, junichi kanemaru,