Cross Dressing Voices / Video Games

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• Japan seems to like giving female voice actors to male characters who originally sounded more masculine when dubbing foreign games, perhaps to make them sound cuter and more childish. Such examples include Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet from Ratchet & Clank, and Daxter from Jak and Daxter.
  • While Spyro was voiced by a woman in the first two games, he is voiced by a male actor in Skylanders and Crash Team Racing.
• Roger L. Jackson voices every character in American McGee's Grimm, including women and children, combining this trope with Acting for Two.
• In Assassin's Creed III occasionally when you fight large groups of British soldiers you will hear female grunts and screams coming from them, or it could be a case of women masquerading as men so they can fight for their country.
• Most boys in the Backyard Sports series, with the exceptions of Achmed, Amir, Marky, Pablo, Ricky, and a few of the pros, are voiced by women.
• Cortex from Crash Twinsanity was voiced by Debi Derryberry in a flashback to his school days. His appearance as a baby in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped is an aversion.
• In Cuphead, King Dice gets a Creepy Jazz Villain Song by Alana Bridgewater; she gives King Dice an awesome Louis Armstrong growl full of Evil Sounds Deep and Evil Sounds Raspy. Also, we have Sally Stageplay, who is voiced by the same man who also voiced Werner Werman.
• Laharl from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was voiced by a woman in both the Japanese (Kaori Mizuhashi) and English (Barbara Goodson) voiceovers.
  • Averted with Taro, but only in the Japanese voiceovers, where he's voiced by Hiro Shimono. For the English voice overs, he's voiced by Wendee Lee, who also provides Rozalin's English voice overs.
  • Mao's Japanese VA is Hiromi Hirata.
• In Divekick, female Mortal Kombat pastiche Kung Pao is voiced by Mike DeBonis. However, Kung's spoken dialogue is nothing but Kiais, so the dissonance isn't noticeable.
• In the Japanese version of Drakengard, the female Red Dragon is voiced by Peter, who also provides the voice of Caim under his real name, Shinnosuke Ikehata.
• Speaking of Super Smash Bros., Ness and Kirby are also voiced by the same woman.
• Fallout 4 has Dogmeat, a male dog, voiced by River, a female dog.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, David Anthony Pizzuto voices Lily Bowen, a hulking, schizophrenic Nightkin grandma with No Indoor Voice. Fred Tatasciore voices the insane female Nightkin Tabitha.
• Final Fantasy X: Child Tidus is voiced by Cree Summer and the child Fayth who became Bahamut is voiced by Debi Derryberry.
• An unusual example that incorporates Vocal Evolution can be found in Jason Spisak's performance as Bartz between the two Dissidia Final Fantasy games.^note For context, Bartz is a Ditto Fighter who mixes and matches the moves of his allies, owing to his status as a 'mime' character. On top of this, he takes on a different tone of voice whenever he uses certain attacks; for instance, he uses a more gruff tone when copying one of Squall's moves, and takes on a more gallant register when copying the Warrior of Light or Cecil His voice holds a slightly deeper tone in the first game than in the prequel, which means that, while slightly jarring given that all of the cutscenes from the first game were reused in Duodecim (alongside his new battle lines), he gets the voices of the newly-added female characters down to a startling degree of accuracy when mimicking their attacks.
• In Fire Emblem: Awakening...
  • Played straight with the Japanese voices for Ricken, voiced by Yuki Masuda, and Henry, voiced by Akemi Okamura (who also voiced Emmeryn in the Japanese version) respectively. Averted for the English dub, as Ricken was voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, while Henry was voiced by Bryce Papenbrook.
  • In BOTH the English and Japanese versions, Libra was voiced by female voice actresses Megumi Yamato (who also voiced Kjelle in the Japanese version) and Cindy Robinson (who also voiced Aversa in the English version).
  • Averted by the Avatar. There are more than one prospect voices to choose from when you're customising a male Avatar's looks and builds, with said build including an Adorably Precocious Child... but none of these voices are by women. (In Japanese, we have Yoshimasa Hosoya and Tohru Ookawa; in English there's David Vincent, Christopher Corey Smith or Brandon Karrer).
  • And now that we can talk about it without spoiling too much, subverted with "Marth", who is voiced by a woman in both versions because "he" is also a woman; namely, Chrom's daughter, Lucina.
• Friday Night Funkin': Girlfriend is voiced by Kawai Sprite, the game's male composer.
• The voice acting cast of the otome focused Goes! is all female despite most of the cast being male (only the heroine is female and she doesn’t have a voice). This is also the first Otome game that features an all-female voice cast.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, several young male characters such as Koichi and Narancia are voiced by women. Mostly averted in the anime with a few exceptions like Hayato and Emporio. In Koichi's and Narancia's cases, Romi Park and Yuko Sanpei were replaced by Yūki Kaji and Daiki Yamashita, respectively.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising and Super Smash Bros. Brawl have Minami Takayama as the voice of Pit, as well as Lani Minella in the English version of Brawl. Averted with Uprising's English dub and the dub of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which cast Antony Del Rio as Pit (he was in his twenties at the time, but has a very youthful voice).
• Klonoa is voiced by Kumiko Watanabe, except for the English voices of the Wii remake of the first game, in which he is voiced by Eric Stitt (see the "Exceptions" section).
• Link in The Legend of Zelda is voiced by a woman whenever he's under 12-years-old. In Ocarina of Time, it was Fujiko Takimoto. This continued until The Wind Waker, when she was replaced by Sachi Matsumoto, whose lines were reused in most subsequent games. Sachi passed on the baton to Yūki Kodaira in Spirit Tracks, who is slightly more pleasant to listen to most time, but her (slightly too high-pitched) voice can get annoying when Link takes a lot of damage in a short-time span. In a Real Life case of Meaningful Name, Yūki is Japanese for "Courage", the attribute most commonly associated with Link. In A Link Between Worlds, he's voiced by Mitsuki Saiga, despite appearing a bit older. Adult Link is always voiced by males. Of course, "voiced" is a bit of a stretch, since Link doesn't actually talk beyond a few grunts and "Come On!".
• LEGO Dimensions:
  • Some of the male Goonies have female voice actors.
  • Like in Back to the Future Part II, Michael J. Fox voices Marty's future daughter Marlene.
  • Nonbinary actor Kaitlyn Robrock voices Abby Yates.
• The main character of LocoRoco is supposedly male, and voiced by young actress Melody Chubak and Alex Yamato Flaherty.
• Surprisingly averted in the first Mega Man Legends game, in which Mega Man was voiced by a 14-year-old boy. Played straight in the sequel, in which he had the same actress as Sailor Jupiter (Susan Roman).
  • On the other side of the Pacific, Rock Volnutt shares the actress of Luffy.
• In Mega Man 8, the titular character was voiced by a girl/woman in both English and Japanese. The same actress (Ruth Shiraishi) from the English version went on to voice X in Mega Man X4; which is the reverse take on this trope, since he is voiced by a man (Kentaro Ito) in the Japanese version.
• In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Raiden's son, John, is voiced by Jennifer Hale, who also voices Naomi Hunter and Emma Emmerich.
• In MySims, there's only a few voice types that characters can have. As a result, a few characters have this; for example, Goth Boy shares his voice type with Yuki and Poppy, and Annie Radd has Buddy's voice type.
• Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- has an all-male cast, so even the resident smurfette Ashuku Nyorai (who may or may not be trans) is voiced by Yūsuke Kobayashi, a male actor.
• Oracle of Tao has most characters played by females, with the exception of one bit part (Bakamaru). God and Estheriel is voiced by actresses, but both roles are androgynous, since angels are generally considered sexless. On the other hand, Nevras is actually cast this way, which is possibly ironic, since the character is a Wholesome Crossdresser in the game. There is also a scene in the ending where the actress playing Nevras is doing this and playing an older character without it sounding weird.
• Ma-San, a female character from the PaRappa the Rapper series, is voiced by Ryu Watabe.
• Most of the male cast with voices in Patapon (like general Gong) have female voice actors.
• In Persona 5, Morgana, a male cat, is voiced by Ikue Otani in Japanese and by Cassandra Lee Morris in English.
• Luke in the North American versions of the Professor Layton games (except for Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) and Lucas and Pit in Super Smash Bros. Brawl are voiced by Lani Minella — the same woman who voiced Rouge the Bat, until she was replaced by Caren Manuel (who herself was eventually replaced by Karen Strassman).
  • That same voice actress also voiced one of the male characters in Evil Zone on the PS1. She also voiced pretty much every female character, but considering the game was from the late 90s, you probably could have guessed that on your own.
  • She also plays four of the seven Koopalings (Lemmy, Larry, Wendy, and Morton), only one of which is a girl. Most impressive is that she voices Morton, who has a deep, gruff voice and sounds NOTHING like a girl.
  • She also did all of the English voices (excluding Non-Dubbed Grunts, that is) in Astal, including the title character and even the Big Bad Gerado (where her voice was slowed down to give it the bass effect). The Japanese version averted this with Gerado, but still adhered to this trope in part by casting Ai Orikasa as the title character.
• Psychonauts:
  • Dogen (Nika Futterman), Elton (Christina Pucelli), J.T. (Jeannie Elias), Maloof (Brett Pels), Nils (Colleen O'Shaughnessey), Quentin (Sherrie Jackson), Vernon (Faith Abrahams) and Little Oly (Amber Hood) are all boys voiced by adult women.
  • Linda, the Hideous Hulking Lungfish of Lake Oblongata and Bonita Soleil are both female characters played by men, creating a case of intentional Larynx Dissonance. It's justified in the case of Linda because she's a mutant lungfish, but Stephen Stanton as Bonita doesn't even try to do a falsetto.
• Jack from Red Dead Redemption II is voiced by a woman throughout the main story as a 4-year old. However he’s voiced by an actual kid after the eight-year long Time Skip in the Playable Epilogue.
• The Samurai Warriors has the male (but feminine) Ranmaru Mori voiced by Naomi Shindo in the Japanese version of the series, with Wendi Jewers and Tara Platt in the English dubs of 2 and 3, respectively. Averted in the first game's English dub, where Tony Oliver does his voice.
• In Sengoku Basara, Otomo Sorin is voiced by a woman in the English version likely due to his status as a Sissy Villain.
  • In Japanese, Uesugi Kenshin is voiced by Romi Park. This could be a subversion of the trope, though, considering that there are theories that the real-life Kenshin may have actually been a woman.
• Of the few times the roles have been reversed, in Shadow Hearts: From The New World, the Mega Neko Mao is voiced by a man. (In the English version, it's the same actor as Frank.)
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic's sidekick Tails has been voiced by a young boy in most of his earlier appearances... and as of Sonic X and Shadow the Hedgehog, he has been voiced by women to avoid any further voice changes (Tails has had a lot over the years), and they took it well. His voice was done by Amy Palant from Shadow the Hedgehog to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. His voice was done by Kate Higgins as of Sonic Colors, which has been generally been received as more boyish and an improvement over Amy Palant's voice. Starting with Sonic Boom, Tails is now voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey, who also voices Charmy. Tails has been voiced by the female Ryō Hirohashi in Japanese starting with Sonic Heroes; he was voiced by two young boys in the Dreamcast games.
  • Charmy also fits here, having been voiced by a female in every voiced incarnation of him (In English, Emily Corkery in Sonic Heroes, Amy Birnbaum in Sonic X onwards, and most recently, the aformentioned Colleen O'Shaughnessey).
• Super Mario Bros.
  • Starting with the Nintendo GameCube era, Toad has shared a voice actress with Princess Peach and Toadette (The first one being Jen Taylor and the current one being Samantha Kelly). Before that, Toad was voiced by a Nintendo employee named Tomoko Maruno for the Japanese version of Mario Kart 64, the first three games of the Mario Party series and Mario Kart: Super Circuit. Some time between Jen Taylor giving up her roles and Samantha Kelly replacing her, a woman named Kelsey Hutchison filled in as a temporary voice actress for Toad for the first two Mario Strikers games.
  • Ever since his debut in Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser Jr. has always been voiced by a female voice actress, the first one being Dolores Rogers and the current one being Caety Sagoian.
  • Starting with Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour Birdo is voiced by Kazumi Totaka, who also voices Yoshi.
  • Starting with Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Princess Daisy is voiced by non-binary voice actor Giselle Fernandez.
• The voices of all of the playable Inklings and Octolings in the Splatoon series is provided by Yuki Tsujii. This means he not only voices the boys, but the girls as well (including their iconic "Woomy!" and "Veemo!" exclamations).
• Slippy from Star Fox was voiced by a female in Star Fox 64, the first game in the series that had voice acting. Not only did that voice help his scrappiness, it also caused quite a few people to think that he is female, or at least make jokes about it. Female voice actress Kyoko Tonguu voiced him in all of the Japanese versions, though, and her cutsey voice for him actually made him popular in Japanese.
• Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has an early boss that the player fights: the "Chaos Advent" is voiced by Chris Sabat, the voice of Garland in Dissidia Final Fantasy. In truth, however, the Chaos Advent is actually a young woman named Neon, voiced by Alejandra Reynoso: the "Chaos Advent" was a form Neon took on in her own attempt to save the world from the threat of Chaos.
• Tail Concerto's male protagonist Waffle Ryebread is voiced by Lani Minella. She also voices Panta, a minor character who helps Waffle with saving his data.
  • Even in the original Japanese version, Panta is voiced by the female actress TARAKO.
• Colleen O'Shaughnessey plays Genis, a 12-year-old boy, in the English-language adaptation of Tales of Symphonia. In the sequel, the 14-year-old Genis is voiced by the still-female Tara Sands.
  • In the Japanese version, Genius is spoken by Ai Orikasa. Big Bad Mithos is spoken by Minami Takayama in Japanese and Brianne Siddall in English.
• In Tales of the Abyss Ion/Sync/Florian are voiced by Ikue Otani (Yumiko Kobayashi for the anime) in the Japanese version and by Erin Fitzgerald in the English version.
  • Mieu as well (Miki Maruyama in Japanese, Sandy Fox in English) to the point that he was mistakingly labeled as a girl at first.
• Every arc in the Trails Series has consistently had at least 1 playable male member of the main cast be voiced by a female voice actress in Japanese, even into adulthood:
  • The Liberl arc had Joshua Bright, who stands out from later examples by being the arc's male lead. It doesn't help that he's pretty enough to convincingly pass as a girl, much to his chagrin.
  • The Crossbell arc had Wazy Hemisphere. In his case, some NPCs have actually questioned his gender, which he finds amusing.
  • The Erebonia arc had Elliot Craig.
  • The Calvard arc had Quatre Salision. During his first meeting the protagonist, he's questioned as to whether he's a boy or a girl, and he's not happy with this.
• In Triangle Strategy, the English dub has Xanthe Huynh as Narve and Rosie Day as Quahaug.
• The child narrator from Uncle Albert's Adventures is voiced by a Marie Viennot Sanchis, but the official Uncle Albert website calls the child Uncle Albert's grandnephew, meaning he's a boy.
• Maddie Blaustein, mentioned above in the Pokémon entry, also provided the voices of four Valkyrie Profile characters: the deviant, nerdy Stalker with a Crush Lezard Valeth, noble Bishōnen Lawfer, undead king Barbarossa and Big Guy Arngrim.
• The Wii U game The Wonderful 101 has female voice actors voicing the younger males. The 14-year-old Wonder Green is voiced by Kari Wahlgren, while Debi Derryberry voices elementary student Luka Alan Smithee, as well as young Will Wedgewood during the flashbacks of his father's death.
• The Xenosaga series has Jr. as a notable example, quite obviously voiced by a woman (Brianne Siddall, to be exact, who voices a lot of young boys in English dubs of various anime series).
• Series Mascot Jibanyan from Yo-kai Watch is voiced by a woman in most languages (except Italian) despite being a tom cat. Several other Yo-kai are voiced by women as well, though Whisper (the second most important Yo-kai) averts this.

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