If you look up who voiced the Street Fighter II character Cammy in the 1996 arcade game X-Men vs. Street Fighter you’ll find a large number of websites claiming Susan Hart to be the voice of the character and implying that her performance was later reused across various games. This includes games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK, and Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.
But recently, while talking to Hart, she surprisingly couldn’t remember whether or not the voice was actually hers, suggesting her performance as the character was either a total accident that she was completely unaware of or that the real identity of Cammy’s voice actor may not be a closed book after all.
Hart, in case you’re unaware, was the voice director on X-Men vs. Street Fighter and later went on to work on a bunch of other Capcom titles like Resident Evil 2, Dino Crisis, Onimusha, and Devil May Cry. Her name appears in the credits of X-Men vs. Street Fighter under the list of voice talent in the game. But, similar to the rest of the cast, her credit isn’t specifically linked to any one particular character in the game’s roster, leaving things slightly open to interpretation.
Despite this, though, she has become widely known online as the voice of the character, with the main argument for this being that Cammy and herself are the only possible actor and fighter combination left after matching up the rest of the voice cast.
Speaking to Hart, she said she does remember doing some voice work for the game but stated that there weren’t that many lines and that she wasn’t paid anything extra for this. Her work on the project was purely intended to be as a voice director, and
She, therefore, believes that what happened is either Capcom hired someone else to do the voice of the character and, for some reason or another she had to step in and finish the recording, or that Capcom ended up using a guide track she had recorded and pitched up the voice to be more “high and thin” than her own natural speaking voice.
“I remember going into the booth, but I didn’t do very many lines,” Hart tells us. “There were mostly action lines that I recall doing. I don’t recall doing dialogue. So I’m wondering, and I say that with all honesty — because it’s been a while — but I wonder if they had already had some of the Cammy stuff recorded by someone else, and then they had perhaps needed me to fill in some of the blanks. I recall doing very few lines. Like, I don’t recall a session. And I don’t recall ever thinking, ‘Oh, I’m Cammy’. I don’t remember that at all and I think that would have imprinted on me.”
She continues, “99.9% of the time, directors do not do voices. Directors are directors. They’re not voice actors. So I’ve never set out to do voice acting ever. I’ve always just been directing my shows. At times I’ll do a guide track. I’ve done that a lot, but that typically never gets broadcast.”
If you want to read the rest of our conversation with Hart, you can do so here.
