Best ZX Spectrum speech

[5MinuteRetro]

So I stumbled upon this video earlier:

https://youtu.be/ggX6dlinh-I

I think it lacks context/judgement but I found it interesting. I'd say the best speech *in this video* was, by some margin, Rasputin. I remember as a youngling being mightily impressed by Rasputin's speech: it had a clarity and natural softness that I don't recall hearing in any other game with synthesised speech (all the others seemed weirdly loud/shouty). Is there anything better? Or even similar? Why was Rasputin's digitised speech so much better than most everything else?

[Stefan]

You need to separate 1 bit beeper speech from 4 bit AY speech, they’re worlds, well 16 levels, apart.

[5MinuteRetro]

You need to separate 1 bit beeper speech from 4 bit AY speech, they’re worlds, well 16 levels, apart.

Ah, so Rasputin’s speech was 128 / AY only? I guess that makes sense (and I had a 128). So the question mutates: what are the other examples of fine 128 / AY speech?

[zxbruno]

Robocop and Chase HQ are the first ones that come to mind.

There's also an older demo by Gasman where he mixes speech with chiptune music, and a newer demo that uses digitised samples for music and speech. Atari-something...

[spider]

I was thinking (hopefully on topic?) its a shame more games did not make use of the Currah Microspeech unit, although I am not sure how (un)popular said unit was. Certainly I never knew anyone who had one, and I don't know off hand if it would work with the original 128's and (probably not) the later black +2/+3...

Some good effects were done with the existing hardware though, a good achievement given the ram available to 'use for speech'

[Luzie]

There's also an older demo by Gasman where he mixes speech with chiptune music, and a newer demo that uses digitised samples for music and speech. Atari-something...

Thunderbirds are go (DivIDEo on 128 with divIDE):
https://youtu.be/td7K6cCNoAg?t=30s

[bluespikey]

I think the best speech is International Karate. It's beeper. And it's useful to keep scores. It's not just there at the intro to show off or owt.

[Alessandro]

The speech in Dizzy II, Dizzy III and I, Ball sounds distorted due to a bug. I have the respective fixes in my archive, I seem to remember they were done by [mention]Ast A. Moore[/mention].

[Ast A. Moore]

The speech in Dizzy II, Dizzy III and I, Ball sounds distorted due to a bug. I have the respective fixes in my archive, I seem to remember they were done by @Ast A. Moore.

Indeed. I fixed Dizzy II and [/i]Dizzy III[/i]. Not I, Ball, though.

[Alone Coder]

The speech in Dizzy II, Dizzy III and I, Ball sounds distorted due to a bug. I have the respective fixes in my archive, I seem to remember they were done by @Ast A. Moore.

Download link, please Maybe in private message.

[Ast A. Moore]

The speech in Dizzy II, Dizzy III and I, Ball sounds distorted due to a bug. I have the respective fixes in my archive, I seem to remember they were done by @Ast A. Moore.

Download link, please Maybe in private message.

My ZX Spectrum Game Bug Fixes.

[druellan]

I remember being quite impressed by the speech on Jonah Barrington Squash https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... ons_Squash it is quiet and has a distinctive high-pitch sound in the background, but on top the voice was very natural, without distortions in the 48k.

[Ast A. Moore]

While technically an easter egg, the “Get away from her, you bitch!” in SWIV is very detailed and high quality. I’m surprised they went to the trouble of putting it in.

[Van_Dammesque]

Download link, please Maybe in private message.

My ZX Spectrum Game Bug Fixes.

Never heard of this bug that distorts the speech, any more info on it?
The sample in Dizzy Fant World is really good now it has been fixed!

[Ast A. Moore]

Never heard of this bug that distorts the speech, any more info on it?

The contended RAM banks on the 128K/+2 are different from those on the +2A/+3. Dizzy II loads the sampled speech (and the player) into a bank that is not contended on a 128K/+2 but is contended on a +2A/+3. Dizzy III does exactly the opposite. I modify the loaders of each game to dynamically determine which machine they run on and substitute the appropriate banks.

I performed the same trick for Nodes of Yesod 128K, although it was more involved, because I had to modify the game’s code itself.

[MatGubbins]

I performed the same trick for Nodes of Yesod 128K, although it was more involved, because I had to modify the game’s code itself.

Ah, I've always wanted a version of Nodes 128K toasty/+2 but without the in-game speech. How easy is that to do? And yes, I do own the original game from new.

[Morpheus]

The first speech I ever heard on the 48K was Ghostbusters. I got it for Xmas and was loading it at around 2am with a pillow over the computer. Took the pillow off as soon as it was finished loading and then it shouted “Ghostbusters!!” made me jump
It sounded quite good at the time though.