I have a memory of a Spectrum game playing some sort of synthesised speech through the speaker that seemed incredibly ahead of its time. I believe the game was called iBall. And the sample said something like “Fight iBall!” Have I misremembered that? Was this a fever dream?

Robocop was another game with sampled speach, not yet mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy8kZcGz98U

There were a few games (in later years) with speach/audio. But Robocop was one that stands in my memory for the good music.

Another Speccy game with digitized speech is Chase HQ:

https://youtu.be/yjrbcLm78I8?si=GMIqDdL31hq4ik72&t=87

Although tbf apparently that's done via the AY sound chip of the 128k, which is a lot easier than through the on/off beeper of the 48k since the AY can do digitized audio via CPU-driven volume modulation.

The 128k version of Nodes of Yesod had some speech, albeit I think it was just the name of the game. My older brother told me a kid in his class got paid big bucks - like, I dunno, £50 or something? - for coding it. Almost certainly bollocks.

For high quality speech, you could get the Currah μSpeech! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currah#Currah_%CE%BCSpeech_for...

I swear there was one symbol it pronounced "flea bleep".

I remember "Rocman", how hearing a human voice coming from a 1-bit beeper sounded like sorcery: https://youtu.be/iuT0hxjLCzc?t=95

I remember the "Codemasters Jet Bike Simulator". I always found it impressive

(And there was a "Get ready!" which I didn't remember)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRW9vW3_M3o&t=8

You might be right! I had a copy of 'Slightly Magic' which had some speech synthesis. Great game. Never completed it though

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