Jon St. John AKA Duke Nukem Text Editor Sounds

The other day I posted about something to do with a remake of Duke Nukem 3D as a mod using the Unreal Engine 3. I went back to that same thread over at the official Duke Nukem forums on GearBoxSoftware.com. Needless to say the topic was still going strong.

But it was on the last page that I saw something interesting. Somebody posted a link to this website and said that there were some recordings of somebody doing Duke Nukem’s voice.

So I went over to the site, only to see that the place was entirely void of content – except for an mp3 playing in the background. So I took Orbit, which is a program that is quite adept at capturing flash and media playing on a site, and downloaded the file. While I did this, I was listening to the phrases being said as the clip played. I’ve heard people try and do Duke Nukem’s voice before. Some have come close, and others have been pretty piss poor. This was Duke Nukem’s voice. This was the Jon St. John.

Having downloaded the file to my HD, I listened to the entire clip, which ran for about just over 3 and a half minutes. Jon was obviously reading the text that appears on the menu trees on a text editor. Open up any one, like Microsoft Word or something and you’ll see what I mean. It was actually pretty funny. Weird, but quite hilarious.

The guys over at the GBX forums were debating on this bit of off-topic wonder; some betting that it was Duke’s voice, whilst others were doubtful.

Like I said: I’ve played enough friggin’ Duke Nukem 3D and Manhattan Project to KNOW that is Jon. But I wanted to know how this site was found. So I did what anybody would do. I Googled it. The phrase was something like “Jon St. John Text Editor”. One of the first hits that cropped up was Jon’s wiki page. Upon going to it, lo and behold: under “external links”, there was a link pointing to that very same site, saying that it was Jon reading some menu trees for a program.

I was curious as to what the program was and who hired Jon. I gathered from the phrases in the audio recording that it was for a program called Text Edit.

I mean, in the end, Jon is a voice actor among other things (musician, former radio DJ), and has worked on other games - most notably Half-Life: Opposing Force. He is essentially for hire. At one stage I actually remember Jon offering to do voice work for something like $1 per word. He said he would even do Duke’s voice and people could dub it in to Left 4 Dead, replacing Zoey’s voice, or some weird sh1t.

If that was his going rate, then by my calculations, including conjunctions, it would have added up to about $159 just for this job. I should get in to the voice acting business…

However, I was reading, again over at GBX forums, and some poster said this:

“Get a personalized, custom recording of Duke for your voicemail, ringtone, answering machine, whatever! You write the script, and Duke will say anything you want. Your message(s) must be no more than 30 seconds total, and for private use only. Available file formats include: WAV, MP3, and AIFF. The price is just 50 bucks and payable via Pay Pal. So what are you waiting for...Christmas? Come Get Some!”

Some person over at the GBX forums also said that he “so wants Jon to do the voice for his GPS now.”

Sources:

GBX Forums
Jon St. John menu trees recording
Jon's Wikipedia page

Jon St. John AKA Duke Nukem Text Editor Sounds

Duke Nukem 3D Dukeism HD Recordings and new Grabbag Remix

Duke4.net reports that Clint Basinger has made some a sound pack for the Duke 3D HRP (high resolution pack) or Duke Plus (mod for Duke 3D HRP). It's a HD replacement of Jon St.John's samples that are played throughout the game. Some are quite good, and others are just funny and make you blush. I'd say it's a good attempt, but there was too much blowing into the microphone sometimes. I wonder if the original files, which are VOC, can be converted and clarified a bit. I've seen it done for other games, but it might take too much time or be too hard.

There have been numerous covers of Lee Jackson's Grabbag, and an artist known as Liquid has updated one of his mixes. This one isn't so good. To me, it sounds little to nothing like Grabbag at all.

Among some other artists that have covered this song are Gigadeth and Megadeth. Megadeth's one is used in the Duke Nukem Forever Demo Reel, and it's excellent.

Sources:

http://www.duke4.net/news.php
http://www.duke4.net/download.php?view.73
http://www.duke4.net/download.php?view.14

Duke Nukem 3D Dukeism HD Recordings and new Grabbag Remix

Duke Nukem Trilogy Voice Recording Session Outtakes

Apogee Software LLC reported recently that they have finished recording all new Dukeisms for Duke Nukem Trilogy. Dukeisms? You know, like “Damn, I’m good!”, or “Nobody steals our chicks and lives!” etc.

Now people who have far too much time on their hands are asking for some funny Jon St. John outtakes from the recording session. Apogee’s reply is, “I've seen a lot of posts asking for the outtakes of the Jon St. John recording session. The session went really well. So there are none.”

If you want outtakes from other another Duke Nukem game, you can find them here. These ones were for the Playstation version of Duke Nukem 3D. Jon does an excellent impression of Mr. Burns and Smithers from The Simpsons.

Duke Nukem Trilogy Voice Recording Session Outtakes