Wizard of Wor question

[SpiceWare]

As a sidenote, this game is known in the VIC 20 community for being vaporware, even having a screenshot shown on the back of some boxes in the top row under Arcade Excitement. Yet it never came out. The VICs short life is probably one reason, but the VIC also has only one joystick port and no hardware sprites, so this would have been challenging.

Yep, it's on the back of my VIC 20's box:

IMG_8331.jpg (115.37 KiB) Viewed 1641 times

The C64 got Wizard of Wor early in its life, in 1983, which may have been what happened.

The 64 version was one of the few games that supported Commodore's Magic Voice Speech Module.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTONhBLcAEQ

[scotland]

The 64 version was one of the few games that supported Commodore's Magic Voice Speech Module

That's neat. I missed out on this C64 voice peripheral totally. I do remember playing around with some voice software for the C64, something where you could type in a string and it would try to enunciate it.

I have a voice unit for the TI99/4a which has some nice voices, but also only works for selected games like M*A*S*H. and Parsec.

Its interesting to go back to early digitized speech, even in things like original Gameboy or GBC games, and how good it is relative to these earlier attempts at speech synthesizing. Of course, those are very different thngs. The synthesizers can try and say anything, and useable in your own programs, while a digitized voice snippet in a game is just a fun gaming moment.

[SpiceWare]

That's neat. I missed out on this C64 voice peripheral totally. I do remember playing around with some voice software for the C64, something where you could type in a string and it would try to enunciate it.

Most likely SAM. The hardware solutions where neat, but were quickly made obsolete once they figured out how to do digitized samples (even for the 2600!) and software based options like SAM.

[scotland]

Most likely SAM. The hardware solutions where neat, but were quickly made obsolete once they figured out how to do digitized samples even for the 2600 and software based options like SAM.

You are a great source of fun information, Spiceware. This "SAM" is exactly what I played around with. That brings back some memories. Like a lot of us, I wrote some (really bad) games, so somewhere I picked up SAM to mess around with. I think we tried to order pizza with it, but I never remember using it in any meaningful way. Still, what fun.

Digitized speech is definitely more limited, but can fit a gaming environment just fine. In games like Ghostbusters, I recall it seemed fuzzy, unclear and compressed, but digitized speech seemed to get much better in just a few years (or they did not compress it so much).

[Sut]

I think we tried to order pizza with it, but I never remember using it in any meaningful way. Still, what fun.

Brilliant. Way more imaginative than us, we just used to make it say swear words. "My Spectrum can talk! Let's make it swear and describe genitalia!".

[VideoGameCritic]

I remember having SAM on my Atari 1200XL! Yeah it was mainly good for having it say obscene things and getting a chuckle out of it. I don't think it was ever used for anything practical.