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Every sports game played in the world always has one man or woman who plays the role of the announcer, whose job is to tell the spectators the scores, which team is entering the field, who the winner is, etc. Some announcers may add their own wit and charm. Video games also have some form of announcers that give short phrases or announce things during the game. While it can enhance the gameplay, if the announcer talks too much, it can become irritating. NOTE The chance of there being an in-game option to turn off or at least lower the volume of Announcer Chatter almost always goes down in inverse proportion to how obnoxiously loud and intrusive the commentary is. Generally, announcers in video games announce character names and who the winner is.
Compare Combat Commentator, who talks even more.
Examples:
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Action Games
- Smash TV had an announcer you would end up fighting in the end, in a rather creepy manner.
Fighting
First Person Shooter
- Blood had a memorable announcer for the Blood Batch gamemode, who also did the voice of Tchernobog. The voice was done by Monolith Productions' then-CEO and featured such immortal lines as "Disemboweled!" "Anal justice!" and "Rectal redemption"
- Some server-side Counter-Strike mods are designed to play the UT announcer sounds.
- Halo has an announcer for multiplayer as well. General announcements such as gametype (Slayer, Capture the flag, King of the Hill, to name but three) exist, and thankfully they only repeat for individual players who might join in mid-game, but other announcements, such as which team has the flag, will play for everyone. Repeatedly. Equally annoying are the kill statements. Thankfully enough the announcer voice is rather good, so the fiftieth time you hear "Killtacular" is just as good as the first time you hear "Running Riot."
- And added alternate announcers. One of the female ones enjoys the carnage a little too much.
- Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries has Solaris announcer Duncan Fisher, a former Solaris champion that would talk while you fight through the Mech dueling circuit, often talking about things other than the fight, like a scandal where a famous pilot threw a match, or on the talent pool this year, and would follow you as moved from the Light Mech catagory to Solaris Champion.
- The team behind the Mechwarrior: Living Legends TC for Crysis Wars actually managed to get the voice actor of Duncan Fisher to record new lines for the Solaris Arena gamemode.
- Modern Warfare matches have a different announcer for each team: Gaz for SAS, Griggs for USMC, etc. all of whom call out incoming killstreak rewards and time limits.
- In Project Blackout, a disembodied voice announces all of your headshots, chain kills, etc.
- Team Fortress 2 has the slightly psychotic female announcer, The Adminstrator
 , who runs both sides. When a checkpoint is captured, she's more encouraging to the successful attackers and scornful to the failing defenders, and, if the round ends in a tie, dismisses both sides with a frustrated "You failed!!". She doesn't keep her contempt for both teams a secret and it's hardly surprising that she has the same voice actress as GLaDOS from Portal (and the Combine Overwatch in Half-Life 2).
- Time Splitters Future Perfect announces how a kill was carried out (Lobotomy!!).
- Tribes has one of these. "Team Inferno... SCORES!" "15 seconds... five, four, three, match begins, now."
- The announcer from Unreal Tournament has plenty of phrases:
- For kill streaks, in multiples of five: "Killing spree!" "Rampage!" "Dominating!" "Unstoppable!" "Godlike!!" and, depending on the game, "Wicked Sick!" and "MASSACRE!!"
- For kills in rapid succession, there's the progression of "Double Kill", "Multi Kill", "Ultra Kill", "Mega Kill" (post-UT'99), "M-M-M-Monster Kill", "Ludicrous Kill", "Holy shit!"
- "Head shot!" after the player scores a headshot.
- "Denied!" whenever a Redeemer gets shot down or a flag retrieved a few feet from the capture zone.
- Score X kills with one weapon, get an award title, i.e. "Rocket Scientist!" for 15+ kills with the Rocket Launcher in Unreal Tournament III.
- ''Quake:
- Quake III Arena would announce "Humiliation!" when a player scored a kill with the melee weapon to both the killer and the dead player.
- The announcer also yell Holy Shit as well. They'll do it in CTF games if you're the flag carrier and die just a foot away from your flag/capture point.
- Quake Live adds a "Denied!" message for when you miss picking up the Quad Damage powerup within a step or two of an opponent picking it up. Which typically results in you dying a (sparkly-) gibbed death.
Hack and Slash
- The arcade dungeon-crawler Gauntlet may have been the first game with an announcer, featuring ongoing commentary tailored to the player's actions. The disembodied voice praised and criticized the player's actions, offered hints and advice, and sometimes challenged the player ("Let's see you get out of here!"). Some of its catch phrases, like "Wizard Needs Food Badly" have become part of the pop culture lexicon.
- MadWorld has two announcers, and one of them is Bender! And the other is Whose Line star, Greg Proops! Naturally, their characters serve as comic relief throughout the game as card-carrying pervert Howard "Buckshot" Holmes and Kreese Kreeley, a former competitor and fellow Testosterone Poisoning victim. An example of their dialog is as follows:
Howard: You know what that title means - Bloodbath Challenge time!
Kreese: I'm really embarrassed to admit that I can't read.
Howard: Really? That's pathetic.
Kreese: I blame our schools!
- They also help lampshade videogame breaks from reality:
Howard: I still don't understand why a city has giant sawblades in the middle of the streets.
Kreese: Are you a city engineer?
Howard: No, I'm not a city...
Kreese: Well then, SHUT THE FUCK UP! They don't come up here and tell you how to be a commentator!
- They even provide commentary over the credits ("commentary" meaning "insulting every single member of the developers")
Howard: The animators are the guys who bring the action to life!
Kreese: You mean they're the guys who get NO action their whole LIFE!
Howard: After everything I've seen, I think the designers should be fired!
Kreese: All part of their grand design!
- Even better when you consider that Proops is/was the voice of children's TV show character BOB THE BUILDER.
Party Games
- The announcer in Fusion Frenzy 2 is notorious for chattering non-stop. One can press the A button at least ten times before any minigame starts or after any minigame ends and the announcer still wouldn't be finished commenting. Even within a game, he has the compelling need to eradicate silence with incessant commentary on every player's current status.
- Mario Party 8 has a talking hat host who makes lots of nonsensical noises in lieu of actually matching the text. He talks so much though, that the hat even comments on how much is being said.
Platformers
- In Jak X, Pecker and G.T. Blitz provide commentary on your races.
- Ratchet And Clank
- Sonic Colors
- Eggman does this for background chatter in , over the park's PA system. Alternates between taunting Sonic and parodying common amusement park sayings.
- There's also an actual announcer who announces when you get combos during tricks ("Good! Great! Awesome! etc.") and whenever you get a Wisp power-up (Spike! Rocket! Frenzy!). This announcer was reused in the Planet Wisp stage in Sonic Generations.
- Super Monkey Ball, especially from Super Monkey Ball 2 and onwards, as the most insane announcers you'll ever hear. The guy is constantly yelling in the hammiest way possibly. And sometimes speaks Engrish. It's amazing.
Racing Games
- Hydro Thunder. Hydro freaking Thunder. "Fire the booster! Fire the booster now! Booster at max! Booster at 50%! Booster running low! Hit the ramp! Traffic up ahead! You're in 3rd place! You're in 2nd place! No, seriously, fire the booster! Detour up ahead! Watch yourself! Hit that other ramp! Get that icon which refills your booster, which is really important! Right turn up ahead! Left turn up ahead! No wait, a right turn then a left turn!"
- In Mod Nation Racers, Biff Tradwell and Gary Reasons fill this role as commentators. Generally though, their conversations are limited to their personal lives and you only outside of career mode cutscenes hear them speak immediately before and immediately after each race (During the race, you only hear the player character's crew chief). One of Biff's post-race lines lampshades this by saying that he fell asleep midway through, with one of Gary's pre-race lines saying that Biff usually takes a nap during the actual race. Biff also doesn't seem to care one way or the other about his job, evidenced in lines at the end of the race where he ponders ways to get his own show, expresses happiness at the fact that he is on overtime pay as a result of said race, and laments the fact that despite being one of the commentators he doesn't get a copy of the broadcast free of charge.
- Teammates in Need for Speed: Carbon often fulfil this role.
- Need for Speed: Pro Street had a few people venting their anger on forums after having to listen to the race commentator chatter on and on about Ryan Cooper (the player character), with undiminished enthusiasm from the first to the last race.
- This is the main complaint done to Loudmouth Larry's comments by fans of Rock 'N Roll Racing.
- Ridge Racer 64 has a terrible, over-enthusiastic announcer saying what's going on during the race. Thankfully, he doesn't chatters too much. Ridge Racer Type 4, meanwhile, has a calmer, much better announcer with a deep echo added to his voice..
- Destruction Derby offers a commentator with maybe 30 things to say, mostly focusing on the car carnage. Two of the memorable lines are "It's like rush hour in LA!" and (in the hot-potato Bomb Mode) "Get rid of that bomb!"
Role Playing Games
- Played Straight in Dark Sun: Shattered Lands... at first. The game starts with the main characters in an arena fighting to the death. The announcer is an arrogant jerk who taunts and belittles the party constantly - except for when an enemy or a player character dies in combat, which is probably the only way to weasel a compliment out of him. Later, after the party escapes and ends up in the wilderness, you can encounter the announcer and threaten him to get some good items, then kill him to get more goodies.
Announcer: Ooh, good hit!* In Dragon Quest VIII, and in particular in the UK English dub, Morrie's Monster Arena features a verbose announcer who announces each team "In the blue corner we have... OUR HERO'S MONSTER TEAM!!!" and "In the red corner WE HAVE... THE SLIME FAMILY!!!" and introduces each fight with a not-so-witty stock phrase, typically ending in "ITS A HIGH MIGHT FIGHT THAT'S BOUND TO EXCITE! Let's get it on!" Round three starts out with "The moment you've all been waiting for!"
- The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion contains an arena in the Imperial City in which a player character can become a contestant and fight a series of battles. Despite the game having a fantasy setting that is generally medieval in nature, every fight is preceded by an announcer giving a brief speech about the contestants, followed by the phrase "Let the battle... begin!"
- That's just making use of the talent, since Wes Johnson is the Washington Capitals' PA announcer, working in America's Imperial City, no less.
- In Knights of the Old Republic, you have the chance to earn some credits in the duelling arena, where you can fight with no chance of death. The announcer, speaking to your audience, describes both you, going by the handle "Mysterious Stranger", and your opponent like it's a professional wrestling match, hyping you in the first two duels as having "No history, no past, and no name!" He seems to be enjoying himself each time, but he really, really enjoys announcing the one and only deathmatch.
Rhythm Games
- Dance Dance Revolution has an announcer announce combo benchmarks, and combo breaks when he gets to ya. Then there's the general chatter he says during gameplay. The newest version of the game has one talk almost all the time over and over. Did we mention that the announcer sounds like a Mexican gangster?
- And then there's the announcer for the DDR emulator Dance with Intensity, a bizarro-world version of the real thing. For example, where the 'real' announcer would say "You're like sunshine on a cloudy day!" the DwI announcer will say "You're like sunshine on my Raisin Bran!"
- The announcer can also get real abusive if you're about to fail in the "Hottest Party" games. As if we weren't under enough pressure from doing bad...
- "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
- Dance Dance Revolution X got a new announcer, who was much more restrained
- Other Bemani games (besides Dance ManiaX) generally keep the announcer in the menus.
- In most of the games after a certain point, you can turn off the Announcer's commentary (sometimes called "praise" in the options menu), but he'll still call out combos. In 2010 Dance Dance Revolution (Hottest Party 4 in some areas), this option was removed. Plus it seems like he comments every third arrow.
- The DJMAX series is generally good about keeping the announcer restricted to menus. But then came DJMAX Trilogy. If you have Live Mode enabled, songs will have a cool reverb effect when you achieve x3 Fever or more...but you'll also have the announcer shout your combo at set milestones ("100 Combo extend!", etc.), and make comments every time you activate a Fever gauge:
Sports Games
Shoot Em Up
- The early arcade game Berzerk, one of the first games to have speech, is also one of the first games to have commentary, as the voice of robot leader Evil Otto urges his robot minions to attack and destroy the player-controlled humanoid. He also taunts the humanoid, calling him a "chicken" if he leaves a room without destroying all the robots first.
- This was largely the gimmick of Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius.
- The Thunder Force series has an announcer call out the item you obtain.
- Thunder Force AC, an arcade port of the console game Thunder Force III, extends this: in addition to the usual weapon-calling, there's a second, male announcer (for reading out the stage number and announcing the end of a stage), and the usual female announcer says the name of the stage.
- Thunder Force VI's announcer reads out the stage name and warns you of approaching bosses...in Tangut.
Strategy
- The Mahjong Fight Club series has a female announcer who tallies up yaku (hand points) for winning hands, announces the parameters and tells you what wind position you are at the start of each hand, and speaks in the menus — she's silent during actual gameplay.
- Meanwhile, MJ4, a similar Mahjong game, has a male Large Ham Announcer who comments on the game. Each player can only hear announcer comments about his/her own hand, and any game status that all four players would know. Which is a very good thing, as if the other players heard the announcer excitedly yelling "YAKUMAN TENPAI DA!" talking about your hand, they'd know you have a big hand, which would severely hamper you chances of actually winning with your big hand.
- Pokémon Stadium has an announcer voice that says which Pokémon came out, current standings, etc. The announcer also has a habit of getting very excited and becoming overenthusiastic when the action gets tense (such as "TAKEN DOWN WITH ONE HIT!"). There is an option to turn the announcer off.
- The announcer never shuts up if you stall your turn due to taking a break or whatever. He'll spew lines like "What's the matter, trainer?" and the like over and over again until you take your turn.
- Strangely enough, the announcer is absent when you fight Mewtwo after clearing the entire stadium challenges and Gym Leader Castle.
- It's even worse in Pokémon Battle Revolution. The announcer constructs sentences out of Mons' names, attacks and stock phrases, but the gaps between pieces and changes in inflection make it painfully obvious the voice actor read each piece separately without the director notifying him how they fit together.
- Additionally, the Battle Revolution announcer is quite a lot chattier than his Stadium counterpart, and there is no way to turn him off.
Third Person Shooter
- s4league: "CRITICAL-CRI-CRI-CRITICAL!" "Amazing! Is it Possible!?" "Excellent! You the max!"
- On a side note some of the quotes were probably taken from DJ Max.
Wide Open Sandboxes
- The original Grand Theft Auto 1 & 2 had a parody game-show announcer to voice pick-ups, bonuses, special feats, and the player's death. Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 had an announcer with a rowdy Cockney accent.
- Dead Rising 2's Terror Is Reality has TK as the host introducing the games, but then has two other commentators who actually comment during the games themselves, including a very funny ex-player as the color commentator.
Non Video Game examples
- Throughout The Warriors, the radio DJ keeps up a running commentary on the events of the film, including taunting the Warriors for getting themselves into trouble. She provides the same service during the video game adaptation - after every mission, stand by the radio for a moment and she'll recap what's gone down. (If you die, she mocks you for it, as well.)
- In Real Life, this sometimes happens near the end of a blowout. For example, near the end of a Wisconsin-Michigan St. game on ESPN had Captain Obvious himself, Brent Musburger and Steve Lavin killing the final two minutes rambling about everything from YouTube (including a brief mention of sideline reporter and resident Ms. Fanservice Erin Andrews) to Sylvester Stallone using human growth hormone for one of the Rocky films (causing an audible groan from Musberger, who had a cameo in the second movie).
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