Although it doesn’t fit the guidelines of your original post (movie sound clips)- Peter Weller deserves a mention for Robocop and Stern Star Trek
I am not familiar enough with Shrek or Austin Powers to know for sure - did Mike Myers record any custom calls for these?
Yeah I just went and listened to the interview. I was way off base, thanks for the correction. 
And the Longmire game that’s just a twinkle in my eye…
I mean, he voices 3/5ths of Dethklok, wrote the show, and played 4 instruments in the studio on all 3 Dethalbums (only 2 live, sadly). I think he counts.
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Does anyone have details on veteran voice actors, on the other hand? People like Vic Mignogna, Tara Strong, Kari Wahlgren, and Billy West can be considered celebrities in their own right, albeit minor ones but adored by fans of works they’ve voiced in nonetheless. To my knowledge, pinball companies don’t seem to reach out to them. The physical ones, at least. The digital companies, on the other hand, are different: In Zen Studios’s tables, for instance, I frequently recognize Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey (makes sense for the two since they’re married to each other), Patrick Seitz, and J. Michael Tatum, all of whom have had very long resumes for their voice work.
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The problem with Billy West, Clancy Brown, whoever else you want to think of as a “big voice actor” is that they ARE big in their field and are therefore not the cheapest of talent compared to the budget for a pinball machine.
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I don’t know how much they’re charged for their roles, but certainly, with the case of non-union actors, most of them don’t make enough in voice acting to earn a living on their own. Small indie video game developer have been able to get people like Kyle Hebert, Sean Chiplock, Christina Vee, and Dave Wittenberg. Do manufacturers like Stern and Jersey Jack set aside even less budget for voice acting than startup game companies that ran on crowdfunded money like Yacht Club, Lab Zero, and GalaxyTrail do? I mean, Stern got Seth MacFarlane for Family Guy, and he alone, as far as I can determine, costs more than those four combined.
(They’re not as big as Billy West or Clancy Brown, the latter of whom is also a regular live-action actor too, but they are certainly well-respected and recognizable among animation fans.)
If it sounds confrontational, it isn’t. Pinball is the only non-print entertainment medium I’ve consumed that still rarely uses professional voice actors, and I’ve genuinely been confused as to why. Do they have their own group of voice actors, the way video games did until around the mid-00’s, when the video game voice actors kind of merged with TV animation voice actors?
LOL no
Almost every actor used in a pinball is professional on one level or another, with relatively few exceptions (Steve Ritchie on whatever he does, Ed Boon as Rudy are some of the most notable). We used, I think, 5 different voice actors on WOZ, for example. They all even went through a tryout and everything.
In my experience, “regular” voice actors are about 10x more than relatively unknown/more obscure talent. A-listers, recently, again IME, have been 10x above THAT.
So, I can get a professional voice actor for somewhere around 1000/game, a Billy West type for around 10,000/game, and a Martin Freeman type for around 100,000/game. These are approximate of course, but most definitely in the ballpark.
There’s no guild of pinball voice actors or anything. It really is all about budget, and that budget is typically very low.
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[quote=“keefer, post:29, topic:2734, full:true”]Almost every actor used in a pinball is professional on one level or another, with relatively few exceptions (Steve Ritchie on whatever he does, Ed Boon as Rudy are some of the most notable). We used, I think, 5 different voice actors on WOZ, for example. They all even went through a tryout and everything.
In my experience, “regular” voice actors are about 10x more than relatively unknown/more obscure talent. A-listers, recently, again IME, have been 10x above THAT.
So, I can get a professional voice actor for somewhere around 1000/game, a Billy West type for around 10,000/game, and a Martin Freeman type for around 100,000/game. These are approximate of course, but most definitely in the ballpark.
There’s no guild of pinball voice actors or anything. It really is all about budget, and that budget is typically very low.
[/quote]
I see. Thanks for the detailed explanations. When I mean “professional,” I mean someone who has had a lot of past roles in narrative fiction and acts as either his or her means of income (like Wendee Lee or Yuri Lowenthal) or as the job they enjoy doing the most (like Monica Rial or Christine Cabanos). I do remember visiting a convention panel hosted by Kyle Hebert in which he said he took a job for as low as $50 (it was for a tiny two-person indie game company), though I take it he’s more an exception than a rule and this is something he wouldn’t do regularly. He also has his own homemade recording studio specifically so he and his colleagues can perform for companies not big enough to have access to one. (And Spike Spencer has gone on record saying he regularly takes on roles he dislikes because he needs the money, referring to it as “whoring out.” Apparently, his best-known role, that of Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion, he really doesn’t like.)
Why it confuses me as such is, as I mentioned prior, companies that make digital pinball like Zen Studios and KAZe will draw from those groups and do it all the time. I take it that the expenses of making physical machines leaves little room to afford these actors.
So has it ever happened, where a pinball machine’s voices are done by these people? I suppose a better word for it would be “dedicated” actors, maybe?
Don’t know that I agree with your assertion that sound package quality has tanked. I think there have been plenty of very strong sound packages from all manufacturers in the post-WMS era. And some bad ones too, certainly (just as there were in the WMS era). Of course the much greater storage these days allows for a larger library of music, callouts, and sound effects, with higher fidelity as well. The speakers themselves are often crappy, but that’s easily fixable.
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Oh, it has? Spider-Man has the best narration in pinball - ever! WMS Indy is perhaps on par. But…
Come on. Game of Thrones. Two actors (at least). One female, clear narration, British accent, acting in character. One male, high intensity, action, acting in character. Does that come by itself? Or by a developement team that don’t bother.
Heard a seminar from Expo (thanks, pinballnews.com), the one on Ghostbuster with Sullivan, I believe. There was a talk on how much sound goes into games these days. Check it out.
The “one male” is Rory McCann, who plays The Hound on the show. Just as a fun fact. 
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Also known as Sandor Clegane.
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I know Metallica had callouts done by the band members and dirty Harry had callouts done by Clint Eastwood.
The ‘one female’ was one of us, a player. Her name is Kate Morris. Cool read on how she got the gig below.
http://www.pinballinfo.com/community/threads/the-sweet-voice-of-kate-morris.27646/
Seems to me that pinball relies less on sound than video games. If I’m playing in a loud location and can’t hear the game, I can still get a high score AND have fun doing it. The display and playfield lights tell me everything I need to know. Are modern video games the same way? No volume needed and still fun?
I think Stern has done an especially good job with the audio on the music pins lately. Games should’ve played the whole song a long time ago. And they’ve done great with how the songs integrate with other audio in the game. The spinner drums on MET make me want to shoot the spinners more. I’m old, white and like all the music, but I can still step back and see that they’ve done good work with the music pins lately.
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That’s a good point–I can see why the companies would put sound-related stuff at a low priority if the intended environment is already loud to begin with.
I actually honestly can’t see why that is impressive, really. What is this in comparison to?
(Bear in mind that what I grew accustomed to is the audio in video games, where even indie companies will typically have a dedicated composer, a dedicated sound effects person who’s different from the composer, and a full cast.)
Let’s not forget about the best work an actor has done doing voice work for a pinball machine…J.K. Simmons in Spider-Man. It’s a huge loss to lose his voice in the VE.
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Hello house, I’m sorry if this is inappropriate but I need help with something. I’m a new-comer to pinball and I’m planning to buy a BK2K as my second game. how do you activate the magnasave if that second button is for the upper flipper?
The red button pictured will activate both right hand flippers (standard and upper).
Yellow button activates magna save