Most of the voice actors were credited under pseudonyms since they did not know if the project was supported by the Screen Actors Guild. The only ones who used their real names were David Hayter (Solid Snake) and Doug Stone (Psycho Mantis).
Arin Hanson, also known by his YouTuber alias Egoraptor, provided the voice for Dr. Bruce Banner during the development of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance after winning a contest held by Activision. Hanson described the experience recording Banner's lines as "humiliating" as it was the first time he had to work in a professional recording booth let alone for a AAA video game, and believed it was a bad performance. Hanson initially claimed in 2013 that his voice was used in the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS versions of the game, but a DS version does not exist and he is not credited in the PSP version. In a later email correspondence with a user from the Lost Media Wiki, he stated he recorded his voice after Activision informed him that it would be used in select versions of the game, those being the Wii, PSP and PlayStation 3 versions. Since this was also a local contest, Activision assumed that all auditions were coming from Los Angeles and in the surrounding areas. Hanson got a "congratulations" email and was invited to Los Angeles for recording, but he was unavailable at the time. His recordings ultimately went unused in favor of another voice actor due to time constraints from Hanson only getting a chance to record late in development. However, his unused recordings would end up being added in the 2016 re-release of the game.
The Western dub for Star Fox 64 3D notably brought back many of the original voice actors from the N64 version to reprise their respective roles for the first time in years, those being:
•Mike West (Fox, James) •Lyssa Browne (Slippy, Katt, Spyborg) •David Frederick White (R.O.B, Pigma, General Pepper, Attack Carrier Pilot) •Ja Green (Leon, Shogun Pilot, Sarumarine Captain, Forever Train Conductor, Area 6 Commander)
For unknown reasons, David Frederick White goes uncredited.
The rest of the cast, however, were recasted:
•Falco, Andrew, Meteo Crusher Pilot, and Caiman, all originally voiced by Bill Johns, were now voiced by Mark Lund, Mike West, Jaz Adams and Jay Ward respectively. •Wolf, Bill Grey and Granga, all originally voiced by Jock Blaney, were now voiced by Mike West, Jaz Adams and Mark Lund respectively. •Peppy and Andross, both originally voiced by Rick May, were now voiced by Jaz Adams and David Frederick White respectively.
Since Star Fox Adventures was in development at the same time as Melee, the cast of Adventures would voice Fox (Steve Malpass), Falco (Ben Cullum), and Peppy and Slippy (Chris Seavor) within the English versions of the Corneria and Venom stages in Super Smash Bros. Melee, despite both stages being based on Star Fox 64.
The voice of King Dedede was provided by the director of the game, Shinya Kumazaki. This marks the first time where King Dedede's voice was not provided by his creator, Masahiro Sakurai.
Seaman's face is actually that of the game's producer and creator, Yoot Saito. Saito also acts as Seaman's Japanese voice actor. During development, Sega had requested that a celebrity be used if possible to voice Seaman, but Saito was hesitant. He later said in a 2020 interview that the fact that he played the role himself was "the key to success", because it gave him the advantage of being able to rerecord lines as many times as he wanted, so it was no longer a question of money.
It's believed that all of the game's voice actors were family members of Chris Jelinek, the CEO of the game's North American publisher, O3 Entertainment. In the credits, each of the game's voice actors have the surname "Jelinek". This is the reason why the game is notoriously known for its bad voice acting.
Hideo Kojima originally wanted to use actor Kurt Russell, who portrayed the character Snake Plissken in the action films "Escape from New York" and "Escape from L.A.", as the voice of Naked Snake instead of voice actor David Hayter, who had previously played the role of Snake in Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2. After Russell turned the role down, Hayter stated in a 2016 Game Informer interview he was given the part only after re-auditioning for the role:
"I had to re-audition for Metal Gear 3 to play Naked Snake...I heard that Kojima asked one of the producers on Metal Gear 3 to ask Kurt Russell if he would take over for that game. He didn't want to do it."
The reason Hayter revealed this information at all was because of Kojima replacing him with Kiefer Sutherland as the voice of Snake in Metal GearSolid V.
Russell revealed in a 2024 interview with GQ that the role was one of many throughout his acting career that he turned down because he did not want to financially or creatively expand off of previously-established characters created by different people for a completely different project, in this case, imitating Snake Plissken through Naked Snake:
"You got to understand that from my point of view, whether it's Elvis, or Snake Plissken, or Jack Burton, or R.J. MacReady, that was that project, that was that thing, you get into that mindset, you create that, you wanna make that world happen… I used to do interviews when Elvis was coming out and they would say "Come on, do a little Elvis for us!" and, you know, it's like, it doesn't work that way. You don't just slide in and out of Elvis, you go to work on it, you refine it, and then you do it, and you get paid for that. I come from a different era. I wasn't interested in expanding financially off of something that we had created or that I had created in terms of a character. And I get business people, sure: "Oh, we could do this with that, we could do this with that, or we could do this with that." You know, and I look at it and I go "That's not written by John [Carpenter]. That doesn't smell right, John's not here to do this with, w-why am I… I'm not gonna do that." Let's go do something new. Let's go do something fresh. Let's go create another iconic character rather than saying "What can we bleed off of this iconic character?" you know? You don't look at them as iconic characters, I mean like, you refer to them as that if they become that, you're just doing a day- you're on a day-to-day, running it, having a good time and trying to make it work."
Raz's Archetype is voiced by Rosearik Rikki Simons, the voice of GIR from the American animated series "Invader Zim", as a direct compliment to Raz's voice actor Richard Steven Horvitz, who was the voice of the titular Zim, in order to recreate their character dynamic from the series.
In an interview with Xander Mobus, who voices the Announcer in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he revealed that Nintendo, in an effort to stop character leaks, would often throw him off about which characters would be in the game or DLC by giving him "red herrings", otherwise they would give him some ridiculous names to say that would be far-fetched. He even claimed that because of the intensity of this, he didn't believe that the Duck Hunt dog and duck were in the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U versions of the game as playable characters, and assumed Nintendo was referring to the Duck Hunt cartridge being in the game instead, and thus believed it to be a fake.
This also caused a rather humorous incident following a hoax created by YouTuber Artsy Omni to promote his "Smashified" series, where after it had spread, Mobus actually did a line read for Rayman, the subject of the hoax.
At the 2017 Emerald City Comic Con during a panel with American voice actor John DiMaggio, he explained that he was told to make Wakka's voice sound like an islander, with an island accent. At the time, he broke up with his girlfriend from Hawaii, so he came up with some Hawaiian impersonations which landed him the role of Wakka.
Charles Martinet, the voice actor for Mario from 1990 to 2023, first officially voiced the character as part of a motion-capture Silicon Graphics interactive exhibition used at Nintendo trade shows (with the role at the time sometimes split between him and musician Steve Coyle). The first commercially-released product to feature his voice acting is purported to be the Super Mario Bros. pinball machine released in 1992 and produced by Gottlieb. According to Martinet when asked by a fan in 2018, Gottlieb "stole" his voice clips and did not credit or pay him for his acting. While the 1995 PC game Mario's Game Gallery is often cited as Martinet's first official role as Mario in a video game, the actual first credited video game to feature him as Mario is the 1994 PC educational title Mario Teaches Typing, where he replaced the DOS version's voice actor, Ronald B. Ruben.
Destructoid gallery incorrectly listing Mario's Game Gallery as Martinet's first time voicing Mario in a video game; an update is provided at the start of the article stating that it was actually the CD-ROM version of Mario Teaches Typing (though the update misdates it to 1995): https://www.destructoid.com/behold-the-first-mario-game-voiced-by-charles-martinet/
Though Sleepwalker was released in collaboration with Comic Relief, it was not originally intended as a tie-in with the charity. Rather, when Comic Relief approached Ocean about making a charity game, it was too close to the date of the Red Nose Day telethon for a quality game to be made in time. Comic Relief were instead given a selection from Ocean's development lineup to choose from, and decided on Sleepwalker due to its comedic animations and plot. Comic Relief contributed the design for the bonus stages and allowed them to get British comedian and Comic Relief co-founder Lenny Henry as the voice of Ralph the Dog.
Despite the fact that Tom Kenny reprises his role as SpongeBob and Gary in this game, he does not reprise his role as the French Narrator from the show. This is unusual not only because the French Narrator has a prominent role in this game, but because the character sounds completely different to how he sounds in the show.
The racers may have planned to have losing animations for when they reach 5th or lower. In the game's data are Peachette and Pauline's losing voice clips, as well as voice clips from characters that appear in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (prior to the Booster Course Pass). The final game has the racers appear neutral should the player end up in 5th place or lower.
Since Pauline and Peachette were included as among two of the final four characters in the Booster Course Pass, these unused voice clips may have been a deciding factor behind their inclusion in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
The Italian version of the game uses different voice actors than the Italian dub of the Teletubbies TV series. This is especially noticeable with the Voice Trumpets, which have a feminine voice like the US version in the Italian dub of the game, but a masculine voice like the original British version in the Italian dub of the show.
The voice script for Mario Teaches Typing contained multiple negative remarks towards the player such as "That wasn't very good" and "That was a failure". Voice actor Charles Martinet objected to these remarks, and was given permission to write his own, more supportive lines such as "That was great, but you can do even better!" and "Great try!"
Most of the voice actors were credited under pseudonyms since they did not know if the project was supported by the Screen Actors Guild. The only ones who used their real names were David Hayter (Solid Snake) and Doug Stone (Psycho Mantis).
Seaman's face is actually that of the game's producer and creator, Yoot Saito. Saito also acts as Seaman's Japanese voice actor. During development, Sega had requested that a celebrity be used if possible to voice Seaman, but Saito was hesitant. He later said in a 2020 interview that the fact that he played the role himself was "the key to success", because it gave him the advantage of being able to rerecord lines as many times as he wanted, so it was no longer a question of money.
Charles Martinet, the voice actor for Mario from 1990 to 2023, first officially voiced the character as part of a motion-capture Silicon Graphics interactive exhibition used at Nintendo trade shows (with the role at the time sometimes split between him and musician Steve Coyle). The first commercially-released product to feature his voice acting is purported to be the Super Mario Bros. pinball machine released in 1992 and produced by Gottlieb. According to Martinet when asked by a fan in 2018, Gottlieb "stole" his voice clips and did not credit or pay him for his acting. While the 1995 PC game Mario's Game Gallery is often cited as Martinet's first official role as Mario in a video game, the actual first credited video game to feature him as Mario is the 1994 PC educational title Mario Teaches Typing, where he replaced the DOS version's voice actor, Ronald B. Ruben.
