The voices behind the characters
Charles Martinet defined the voice of Mario for nearly three decades, turning a cartoon plumber into one of the most recognisable vocal characters in the history of entertainment.
Cam Clarke lent his voice to Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid and Leonardo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, making him one of the most versatile voice actors to cross between animation and early voice-acted games.
David Hayter voiced Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series from 1998 through 2012, creating a raspy, stoic baritone that became the definitive voice of stealth-action gaming and one of the most recognised character voices in game history.
Mark Hamill's portrayal of the Joker across the Batman: The Animated Series and Arkham game series established the most celebrated version of the character in any medium and set the standard for theatrical villain work in games.
Tara Strong is one of the most prolific voice actors in game and animation history, with a range spanning Bubbles in The Powerpuff Girls, Harley Quinn, Twilight Sparkle, and dozens of game characters across four decades.
Norio Wakamoto's thunderously deep and dramatically flexible baritone made him the premier voice for gods, emperors, and villains in Japanese gaming, most iconically as M. Bison in Street Fighter and the Emperor in various titles.
Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario, but he was never the character's voice. Mario's early voices came from actors such as Peter Cullen and Ronald B. Ruben before Charles Martinet made the role his own; Miyamoto's own voice is familiar instead from Nintendo presentations.
Jennifer Hale is widely regarded as the finest dramatic voice actress in games, most celebrated as Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy and with roots in 1990s PC gaming that span dozens of classic titles.
Steve Downes voiced Master Chief in the Halo series from the original Combat Evolved in 2001, creating a stoic, weathered characterisation that became the defining voice of the Xbox platform.
Lani Minella is one of the most versatile and prolific game voice actresses of the 1990s and 2000s, known for voicing both male and female characters across hundreds of titles and for pioneering the casting of women in male roles.
Rob Paulsen voices Raphael and later Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and Yakko Warner in Animaniacs, bringing warm comedic range to game adaptations of animated properties throughout the 1990s.
The Japanese voice of Solid Snake in every mainline appearance, whose gravelled baritone became so inseparable from the character that Kojima's team modelled Snake's movements and even his smoking habit on the actor himself.
The voice of Colonel Roy Campbell, whose weary, paternal delivery over the Metal Gear Solid codec gave the series its conscience — the exasperated commander on the other end of the line.
A celebrated stage and screen actor who lent his theatrical menace to games remarkably early, headlining the star-studded CD-ROM cast of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers in 1993.
Jen Taylor holds the rare distinction of voicing two icons at opposite ends of gaming's emotional range: Princess Peach for Nintendo and Cortana, the AI companion at the heart of Halo.
Michael Ironside brought a career's worth of screen menace to Sam Fisher, giving Splinter Cell a weathered, gravel-voiced professional whose restraint made the stealth genre feel adult.
Grey DeLisle is among the most prolific voice actors who has ever worked in the medium, with over two thousand roles across animation and games — a range so wide that most players have heard her without ever knowing it.
A former radio DJ who was told to do Dirty Harry, did it, and was then told to go bigger than Clint Eastwood. He dropped his voice, and Duke Nukem was born.
For seven years and five games he was Kain, the vampire anti-hero of the Legacy of Kain series — a theatrical, sardonic performance that gave a PlayStation action series the voice of a classical villain.
A Royal Shakespeare Company veteran and Disney's Judge Frollo, whose raspy baritone gave late-1990s PC and PlayStation games some of their most commanding villains and gods.