Did you know that the “let’s go” voice cuts in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was drawn from the 1960s Batman TV series? I certainly did not, and being confronted with this seemingly familiar fact over the weekend caused me to plunge into a rabbit hole of video game testing.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is without a doubt Capcom’s most stylish fighting game with obvious nods to drum-and-bass music and street culture. It only makes sense that one of its most iconic sound effects came from an old-fashioned sample CD known as Datafil towhose content has have been endlessly recycled by musicians for their own projects.
Datafil to is the second in a trilogy of legendary sample collections published in the early 1990s by the British production company Zero-G. While the unlicensed beats and voice clips clearly spread through electronic music, the sound effects have also found their way into video games with surprising frequency over the years given their questionable legality.
See for example if you can hear the very faint “let’s go” sound effect at the beginning of this song from the 1993s Sonic CD.
It can also be found in a classic Sonic CD-based remix that recently appeared in the 2005s Sonic Gems Collection.
Adam West’s unmistakable Batman performance is used repeatedly in the wild intro film for Bas Landing 2a fishing game released in the early 2000s.
1992sR-Type Lion combines the voice clip with a dissonant countdown at the beginning of each step.
And finally the action sequences of the 2012s Rhythm Thief & The Emperor’s Treasure also use the sound effect, and trim it down to just “go” for a quick injection of an urgent nature during robbery.
Despite the rich history of sampling, it can be difficult to find concrete information about both the source of a sample and wherever it has been used outside its original context. Putting the pieces together often comes down to someone hearing a familiar drum beat or voice clip in an old song or TV show, and even then it can be difficult to place with any specificity because of the audio editing techniques used to get it to suit a particular style or rhythm.
It’s fun to think that Batman is lurking in a lot of video games, but the next time you play something, keep an eye out for unwanted voice clips. You might just hear Adam West invite you for a ride in the Batmobile.