I’ve really enjoyed his tenure over the years doing Sonic though and I am genuinely going to miss him. He also had a great start with Free Riders and Colors in terms of how the games were written but with the dramatic tone shift in later games, I felt he never really got the chance to show the fullness of what he was capable of. That said, it wasn’t at all jarring, I felt that Sonic had just grown up a bit and deepened somewhat, which felt natural. Roger was unique in the sense that I could tell the voice had changed immediately upon hearing him. ![]() There was a jokey but serious tone to it that resonated a lot with me and still does. He was pretty good at doing effort grunts and shouting though while maintaining the voice, especially later on and for the atmosphere of most games he voiced in, his delivery tended to fit the moment. Someone once described it as unusual over pronunciation of every other word rather than a flowing line and even with Jason being my favorite I can understand where people are coming from with that. Jason came on at the transition point between Sonic X and Shadow so he had two years to get his voice down for the games and from the get-go I thought he did the voice itself pretty well but his delivery could be very off at times. Ryan did fit the tone the games were going for at the time to be fair, having gotten better as the games went on and delivering some of his best work with Heroes but I can see why the voice would grate on someone as they get older. I was born the year Sonic Adventure came out and Heroes was my first in the series so in terms of the key in game voice actors, I grew up with all three. When all is said and done, I’m glad I didn’t have to hear Griffith or Drummond say things like Baldy McNosehair, or B.B.B.E… or anything from Boom. It certainly doesn’t help moving on from old voice actors when the original actors are still available. Travis’s Knuckles when talking seriously still sounded like he’s joking, y’know? Something I think was impossible with Dan Green, which is a shame because Travis, much like Roger is a great voice actor. Putting the different personality aside, I could not picture this Sonic as portraying different emotions accurately, but I had this issue with the other voice actors, e.g. Unfortunately it never worked for me, but it no doubt fit the Boom personality of the character, I mean I would’ve absolutely hated to hear Griffith or Drummond as Boom Sonic, would have felt more bizarre. I tried as much as I could to like his Sonic voice when I first heard his grunts in the DS version of Colors, I thought “huh, this isn’t so bad.” but after hearing him saying full lines as the character it was too jarring, too big of a difference. And given that Sonic himself went through a wide range of stories (from purely humorous to more serious) during Smith’s tenure, he was given plenty of chances to display his range. He could make Sonic sound heroic, or like a goofball. He could play Sonic like a big brother or an immature teenager. Smith brought a wide range of characterizations to Sonic: he could be jokey, sassy, and sarcastic. From Sonic Colors onward, Smith quickly became my favorite of Sonic’s game voice actors, and he only got better from there. I had been wanting someone new for years, and with this announcement, my wish had finally been granted. Ryan Drummond’s performance, meanwhile, was starting to sound worse with age, though I largely chalked it up to the voice acting standards going up substantially ever since Drummond last played the character in 2004. While he improved in his final years, I felt that he lacked range. ![]() I had been left… dissatisfied with Sonic’s previous voice actor, Jason Griffith. This, on top of playing Sonic Colors – easily the most promising Sonic game I had experienced in years – really made it feel like SEGA was working hard to revitalize the character. As I sat in a corner of the convention center and hurriedly typed out an article about it for Sonic Stadium, I was only feeling one thing: excitement. ![]() ![]() I was at E3 2010 when I heard the news that Roger Craig Smith would be taking over as Sonic’s voice actor.
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