Why did Sega of America decide to record the English dubs for the Adventure era games in San Diego instead of Los Angeles?

[The Great Egg Emperor]

 

I asked this already on Reddit, but I didn't get too many responses, so I decided to ask it here.

For those who are unaware, most American cartoons and anime dubs (except for the ones done in Texas, New York, and Canada) are recorded in the LA area. Hell, the Sonic games have been recorded in LA since 2010.

So when Sega was planning on dubbing the Adventure era games into English, why did they chose San Diego, a city with little voice acting experience whose actors were mostly ones from local theater, instead of Los Angeles to record the dubs of the games?

Hell, Sega of America's headquarters are in Irvine, which is in the LA metropolitan area. It would have been far more convenient TBH.

 

[Dreadknux]

They probably just wanted to watch the world burn.

Or maybe there was some tax break in it for them at the time or something. Probably a question for someone who used to work at SOA back in the day.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

On 1/20/2023 at 3:17 PM, Dreadknux said:

They probably just wanted to watch the world burn.

Or maybe there was some tax break in it for them at the time or something. Probably a question for someone who used to work at SOA back in the day.

What do you mean by "watching the world burn" in this case?

[Dreadknux]

I dunno. Was just having a laugh.

[FunkDoc1112]

Because it was 1998 and video games (and most anime, quite frankly) weren't prestigious enough to land in the orbit of the higher profile NA voice actors. And in general, voice acting in video games beyond a few soundbites was still in its infancy. So most of it was commissioned on the cheap. This was pretty much the case til the early 00s. The vast majority of video games in the 90s had laughably bad voice acting.

 

For further context, in 1998, "Texas dubs" for anime didn't even exist until Funimation started doing Dragon Ball in-house...and they just pulled guys off the street who had no real voice acting experience, just like Sega did.

[TheEyclopediaHBookReader]

Game companies didn't have the dubbing money and patience to go over it with the High Profile VA at the time (Rob Paulsen or Kath Soucie) Ryan's talent pool were mostly lesser-known actors whom were kind of lucky they got to do anything else on 1990S/Early 2000s TV (Ryan was on Veronica Mars as a Office person role) - Personally i assumed Sega still had anything to do with they're associates considering even around the 4kids voice cast era, they were using 'WEBTONE' VA, which also consisted of lesser-known actors, whom were stationed in san diego as well 

[Michael Takagawa]

What would an Animaze cast of the Sonic cast sound like? For my pick, it would be:

Sonic the Hedgehog - Joshua Seth

Miles "Tails" Prower - Wendee Lee

Knuckles the Echidna - Michael Lindsay

Amy Rose - Dorothy Elias-Fahn

Big the Cat - Skip Stellrecht

E-102 Gamma - Richard Cansino

Dr. Eggman - Michael McConnohie

Tikal - Lara Cody

Pachacamac - Beau Billingslea

Lumina Flowlight - Sandy Fox

Void - Bridget Hoffman

Illumina - Julie Ann Taylor

Shadow the Hedgehog - Kirk Thornton

Rogue the Bat - Mary Elizabeth McGlynn

Gerald Robotnik - William Frederick Knight

Maria Robotnik - Rebecca Forstadt

E-123 Omega - Steve Blum

Cream the Rabbit - Melissa Fahn

Vector the Crocodile - Lex Lang

Espio the Chameleon - Daran Norris

Charmy Bee - Lia Sargent

Neo Metal Sonic - Joshua Seth

[Badnik Mechanic]

I think I can somewhat answer this.

The gaming industry simply didn't know any better.

Whilst today most big studios approach games similar to TV and Movies, they go where the experience and the studios are.

E.g. any time a new Uncarted or Last of Us or Modern Warfare game comes out. You'll see actors in mo-cap in dedicated motion capture studios.

Voice actors will be in dedicated recording studios with years of experience...

 

In the 90s however... things were... different.

 

So this is a very old video of mine... for the game die hard trilogy. Skip to around 15:00 and you can see some of the old behind the scenes footage.

What you're looking at... is their mo-cap studio. It's a rented church hall, they do not have mo-cap suits. Just t-shirts and shorts.

Oh and the mo-cap balls. They stuck them to the actors body with tape.

This studio wasnt exactly an indi one. They were backed by Fox Interactive back in Fox's hayday.

Mo-cap in a church hall...This would be... Unthinkable today... absolute no studio, not even a 1 person indi dev would ever admit to this. But in the 90s this was standard.

The gaming industry didn't realise or know, it was likely a case of most leaders simply thinking "Why do we need those expensive studios? We can just do it ourselves."

 

And... Yeah you can... but... Well it's like me with trying to make my own thumbnails... the probably won't be as good as an artist.