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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the most beloved instalments in Konami's famous series, and for those of us who grew up with the original 1997 English-language version, Michael Guinn's superb performance as Dracula stands out.
Boasting the iconic "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!" dialogue (which is actually a riff on a line from Andre Malraux's Man's Fate), the original version of the game saw Guinn team up with Robert Begrade's Alucard to deliver some of the most memorable lines in any '90s video game.
Guinn is a talent fellow and has worked as an actor, musician, and writer over the decades. He provided the music for a Sony Walkman commercial in the '80s and has worked on video games such as Silent Hill (Harry Mason), Time Crisis (Sherudo Garo), and Ridge Racer (announcer).
He recently sat down with YouTuber Dongled to talk about his career and that iconic role on SotN, and was asked how he felt about voicing a character who is still quoted to this very day:
"Well, it's a weird twist of fate, more than anything. You know what's so interesting is I did so much music before, during, and after my 10 years in Tokyo. And I always thought, wow, wouldn't it be great if like one of the songs that I wrote or sang or something, took off and was in a movie or something. That didn't happen.
I think the video games were the first really international product [I did] that left Japan, and so there was a chance to reach a much larger audience. So it's fun to have an iconic phrase.
My sister, who is a department chair now at a college down south of LA, is basically teaching 18, 19 and 20-year-olds, and she discovered that there are these [kids] that are huge Castlevania fans... which is amazing because they weren't even born [when I did the game]."
Another treat in the interview is Guinn reading the retranslated script for the PSP release of the game in 2007 – skip here to listen to it.