American Girls Premiere: Text-To-Speech Mayhem
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
effluviah
It's sad that the biggest girl's game at the time was this. I mean, they couldn't even be bothered to create a new game for little girls to play, they just recycled old crap and slapped a new label on it. I'm willing to bet it was only so successful not just because of the branding, but because girls had so few options to begin with. This and Barbie were legit the only two franchises that 90s girls had, as far as I remember. Meanwhile, boys had about ten butt-trillion games to pick from. I'd be kinda seriously pissed off if I had to pick between like, GI Joe and Ken, and that's it. I feel bad for girls that had to grow up getting boxed into choices like this. ): Edit: I mean, I can see how the game could be super fun, especially with the weird synth voice effect you can jam in there, but this still sucks for options for girl-oriented games. I mean what, they had doll maker games, this, and like, Barbie stuff. That's it. That sucks.
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It's sad that the biggest girl's game at the time was this. I mean, they couldn't even be bothered to create a new game for little girls to play, they just recycled old crap and slapped a new label on it. I'm willing to bet it was only so successful not just because of the branding, but because girls had so few options to begin with. This and Barbie were legit the only two franchises that 90s girls had, as far as I remember. Meanwhile, boys had about ten butt-trillion games to pick from. I'd be kinda seriously pissed off if I had to pick between like, GI Joe and Ken, and that's it. I feel bad for girls that had to grow up getting boxed into choices like this. ): Edit: I mean, I can see how the game could be super fun, especially with the weird synth voice effect you can jam in there, but this still sucks for options for girl-oriented games. I mean what, they had doll maker games, this, and like, Barbie stuff. That's it. That sucks.
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mspenrice
Why did this not become a whole series of programs that kept running into the present day? I wouldn't have been into the American Girls franchise per se, but having something like this to play around with in my later school days (which a version released around the same time but with different IP would have been dead-centre of) would have been awesome. Even more so for the janky TTS engine. Better still if it was later upgraded with the ability to put your own assets into the engine.
Closest thing I can think of is some kind of hollywood movie theatre management simulation game where you made short scenes as a component minigame. Or that Microsoft Kids Studio thing (or whatever it was called. I never remember the name from one encounter to the next) that we mucked about with a lot at the time.
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Why did this not become a whole series of programs that kept running into the present day? I wouldn't have been into the American Girls franchise per se, but having something like this to play around with in my later school days (which a version released around the same time but with different IP would have been dead-centre of) would have been awesome. Even more so for the janky TTS engine. Better still if it was later upgraded with the ability to put your own assets into the engine.
Closest thing I can think of is some kind of hollywood movie theatre management simulation game where you made short scenes as a component minigame. Or that Microsoft Kids Studio thing (or whatever it was called. I never remember the name from one encounter to the next) that we mucked about with a lot at the time.
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JazzFlute05
I have the original and second edition. Both came with hats. :D We always voiced over with our mic, rather than using text. One of the included sounds. did sound like a shotgun. so I had to make a play with that as well. The plays my little brother made involved Godzilla somehow. The game Write, Camera, Action! Was also excellent for creating -stories- and voicing over with our voices. American Girl Premiere had greater flexibility in what and where the characters could go, where as write camera action was a choice of options that we just voiced over for fun. If you can find a copy of that game you should review it!
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I have the original and second edition. Both came with hats. :D We always voiced over with our mic, rather than using text. One of the included sounds. did sound like a shotgun. so I had to make a play with that as well. The plays my little brother made involved Godzilla somehow. The game Write, Camera, Action! Was also excellent for creating -stories- and voicing over with our voices. American Girl Premiere had greater flexibility in what and where the characters could go, where as write camera action was a choice of options that we just voiced over for fun. If you can find a copy of that game you should review it!
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Marion
Glad I was too old for this. I loved the books when I was a little girl. I never had the dolls, but I had all the Samantha, Kirsten, Molly and Felicity books (by the time Addy came out I was too old. Molly was my favorite, probably because she also had glasses. I also had her plaid dress that family bought for me from the second book, Molly Learns A Lesson, which I wore in my third grade class picture.
But other than the books and dress, I had nothing else, and am kinda glad, especially seeing this game.
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Glad I was too old for this. I loved the books when I was a little girl. I never had the dolls, but I had all the Samantha, Kirsten, Molly and Felicity books (by the time Addy came out I was too old. Molly was my favorite, probably because she also had glasses. I also had her plaid dress that family bought for me from the second book, Molly Learns A Lesson, which I wore in my third grade class picture.
But other than the books and dress, I had nothing else, and am kinda glad, especially seeing this game.
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Xane
This is interesting. I also love the reference at the end. If only the bluescreen-colored anti-aliased -outlines- were edited out by the developers, but I guess it's hard to make real life captures and 3D renders have sharp edges when programs love to force anti-aliasing on you. (I'm looking at you, Photoshop! I also mention 3D renders because some games I've seen that do that have these nasty black outlines like the light-blue ones seen around characters here. Yes, I know they're real-life, not CGI)
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This is interesting. I also love the reference at the end. If only the bluescreen-colored anti-aliased -outlines- were edited out by the developers, but I guess it's hard to make real life captures and 3D renders have sharp edges when programs love to force anti-aliasing on you. (I'm looking at you, Photoshop! I also mention 3D renders because some games I've seen that do that have these nasty black outlines like the light-blue ones seen around characters here. Yes, I know they're real-life, not CGI)
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BelovedDagger
I had this as a kid and would always write crazy stuff with my family like, -Where-s the bathroom? I have to go poo-poo. - The text to speech made everything even funnier. If I wanted a character to yell and typed out, -Aaaahh! - the text to voice would pronounce every letter individually instead of one sound. I liked using Samantha-s world for writing mysteries in particular. On a completely different note, I would love to see the movie The Room acted out on American Girl Premiere.
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I had this as a kid and would always write crazy stuff with my family like, -Where-s the bathroom? I have to go poo-poo. - The text to speech made everything even funnier. If I wanted a character to yell and typed out, -Aaaahh! - the text to voice would pronounce every letter individually instead of one sound. I liked using Samantha-s world for writing mysteries in particular. On a completely different note, I would love to see the movie The Room acted out on American Girl Premiere.
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frauleinfunf
American Girl only had two stores in 1997 in New York and Chicago, and I'm fairly certain the New York one at least was already running the stage musical they used to have at the theater inside the store. I wonder how much of the thought process behind this was -We can sell it right outside the theater and since little girls just saw a stage show with all their favorite characters they'll be more likely to beg their parents for this-
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American Girl only had two stores in 1997 in New York and Chicago, and I'm fairly certain the New York one at least was already running the stage musical they used to have at the theater inside the store. I wonder how much of the thought process behind this was -We can sell it right outside the theater and since little girls just saw a stage show with all their favorite characters they'll be more likely to beg their parents for this-
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HollowedJes
This really hit me in the nostalgia! I owned this game as a kid, and had the box set with all of the goodies-- including the hat! I can't believe though that I never knew that the first disc actually had the tutorial on it until this video! But I always went straight for the game itself, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised! -
Man, I would love for you to check out some other edutainment pc games from my childhood!
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This really hit me in the nostalgia! I owned this game as a kid, and had the box set with all of the goodies-- including the hat! I can't believe though that I never knew that the first disc actually had the tutorial on it until this video! But I always went straight for the game itself, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised! -
Man, I would love for you to check out some other edutainment pc games from my childhood!
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Kris
I was OBSESSED with this game as a kid! Thank you so much for giving me this nostalgia gift. I'll never forget crowding around the speaker with the volume turned all the way down so our parents wouldn't hear us making the robot voice say swears. I also remember a lot of purposefully misspelling words to get it to pronounce them correctly (it had particular trouble with the word -imbecile-. What a gem.
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I was OBSESSED with this game as a kid! Thank you so much for giving me this nostalgia gift. I'll never forget crowding around the speaker with the volume turned all the way down so our parents wouldn't hear us making the robot voice say swears. I also remember a lot of purposefully misspelling words to get it to pronounce them correctly (it had particular trouble with the word -imbecile-. What a gem.
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CosmicCrow
oh god i completely forgot this existed. i sent the newspaper subscription card into american girl years later when i found it again (like 2008) just to see what would happen. they sent back a letter saying they didn't run it anymore (of course, told me about their website, and included a drawstring bag with the american girls logo on it. pretty cool!
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oh god i completely forgot this existed. i sent the newspaper subscription card into american girl years later when i found it again (like 2008) just to see what would happen. they sent back a letter saying they didn't run it anymore (of course, told me about their website, and included a drawstring bag with the american girls logo on it. pretty cool!
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