My favorite announcer in all of the Street Fighter games is the one from Street Fighter Alpha 3. Most gamers tend to disagree, but love him or hate him, he is a real person. There’s a human behind that voice and for a moment, I’d like to introduce you to him.

Greg Irwin is the man lending his voice to Street Fighter Alpha 3‘s ring, from the inspirational “Beat ‘em up, guy! Go for it, man! Go for broke!” to the “Continue?” countdown. He’s an American musician whose career has been taken across the Pacific pond, into Japan, where he’s lived for the past 17 years.

Greg’s musical career centers mostly around “Doyo”, a style of Japanese music that’s best translated as “children’s songs”, though that may be a bit of a misnomer. These are not songs designed specifically for children, but rather songs that invoke memories of childhood within adults. Greg’s specialty comes from translating and performing these songs in English.

According to his website’s profile, his translations have become so recognized that they’re used in Japanese textbooks.

I wish I could find a more complete list of his voice acting credits, but it’s easy to say that he’s done a little of everything. It doesn’t get weird until you hear his Japanese VO work…to an untrained American ear, I’d swear he was native Japanese.

This concludes my spotlight on the man whose voice has engraved into my mind the words, “Triumph or die!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Street Fighter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.