The casting director Susan Hart had been working in TV and film for several years, on shows like Are You Afraid Of The Dark? and X-Men The Animated Series, when she was offered her first ever voice directing job on a video game.
The game, in question, was Capcom 1996 arcade fighter X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and ended up being the first of roughly 21 titles that Hart would work on over the space of a decade with the legendary Japanese developer, later being joined by the likes of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Resident Evil: Zero, Dino Crisis, Devil May Cry, and Onimusha (to name just a few).
Many of these games have since gone on to become widely regarded as landmark titles in their respective genres and have generated considerable followings in the West. However, in spite of that, we're betting there are still a ton of people out there who have never heard of Hart or are, at the very least, unaware of her involvement in bringing these games to life. As a result, we wanted to reach out to the voice director (and some of the notable actors she worked with) to try to rectify that and learn more about her important contributions to these classic titles. Fortunately for us, she agreed.
Hart was able to tell us more about what it was like working with Capcom on some of its biggest hits, starting with the story of how she landed the role on X-Men vs. Street Fighter.
"I was visiting an agent friend of mine," Hart tells us, "Just sitting in the lobby, chatting, having a coffee, and they got a call to say that they're recording X-Men The Animated Series, and the script assistant was sick and didn't show up — 'Do you have anybody who could just come down and work for the day?' I was sitting there, and I said to my friend, 'Sure, I'll go down, no problem.' So I went down to the recording studio [and helped out].
"As a singer, I'd been behind the glass when recording and had the director on the other side," she continues. "But here I was sitting on the other side observing what was going on inside the glass [and] it really felt like home. So I said, 'You know what? This is where I need to be. This is my calling.' I think I did a couple of more days of record on it. But I had no idea of 'How do I get into this? What do I do?' Then I got a phone call out of the blue from the scheduler at the studio saying, 'We just got a call from Capcom, they're in Japan and they want to do a video game of X-Men. Is this something that you think you might want to be involved in?'"
As Hart tells us, she immediately jumped at the chance to make the move into voice directing and relished the opportunity to work with the X-Men cast again, who she had gotten to know during her time on the animated series.
For the X-Men vs. Street Fighter, the voices were to be recorded by two separate teams situated on opposite sides of the globe. A team in Japan was responsible for recording the majority of the Street Fighter characters, collaborating with a group of Japanese actors, whereas, in Toronto, Hart was responsible for the second unit, which comprised the stars of the X-Men animated show.
"The studio was great and we had a plethora of fabulous actors from here in Canada," Hart tells us about the experience of working on the game. "Their background was not only film, television, voice, and theater, but everything. I think 99%, of the actors were from Stratford, which is a very well-known classical theater location just outside of Toronto where actors go and the productions are just incredible. That made up most of the X-Men cast."
Tony Daniels, who voiced Gambit in X-Men The Animated Series and X-Men vs. Street Fighter, was among those who Hart directed on these sessions and later went on to collaborate with her on various other projects, including Devil May Cry. He enjoyed working with the voice director, telling us, "Working with Susan Hart was always a great experience. Susan would always get that little more out of an actor, especially me. She would make actors feel comfortable and I've never seen a better casting director and voice director work with young actors."
99.9% of the time, directors do not do voices. Directors are directors. They're not voice actors. So I've never set out to do voice acting ever. I've always just been directing my shows. At times I'll do a guide track. I've done that a lot, but that typically never gets broadcast.
Over an undisclosed number of sessions, Hart ended up working closely with the actors to make sure she got the performances the developers wanted (which in this case mostly included a bunch of grunts and shouts). However, her involvement with the game didn't stop there.
During the recording process, she also ended up picking up an unexpected role after a temp vocal track for the Street Fighter character Cammy was selected by Capcom to be used in the final product. Today, she doesn't exactly understand how this happened, only that she never really considered herself to be the official English voice of the character and that she certainly wasn't paid anything extra for her performance.
"I don't recall ever thinking, 'Oh, I'm Cammy'," she admits, speaking to us about the role. "I don't remember that at all. What happens is sometimes we have to do a guide track. A guide track is when they need to have a guide of the voice and the performance so that the animators can get started on the animation. And I remember going into the booth, but I didn't do very many lines. There were mostly action lines that I recall doing. I don't recall doing dialogue.
She continues, "99.9% of the time, directors do not do voices. Directors are directors. They're not voice actors. So I've never set out to do voice acting ever. I've always just been directing my shows. At times I'll do a guide track. I've done that a lot, but that typically never gets broadcast."
After X-Men vs. Street Fighter was released in the arcades, it went on to become a hit for Capcom, particularly in North America and Japan. Because of this, it was later ported to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation and garnered a bunch of additional sequels, which added new fighters from the Capcom and Marvel universe. Hart went on to receive credits for the next title in the series, Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Superheroes, but at the same time found herself working on a bunch of other Capcom-developed projects too, including the eagerly anticipated sequel to the 1996 title Resident Evil.
You'd have to say to yourself going in, 'This is my job, this is what I do, and I'm gonna embrace it for everything that it is, but I'm not gonna allow it to affect me when I leave'. It was all about doing the best that I could within the realm, and communicating to the actors, 'What is the purpose of this show?'"
Resident Evil 2 represented a rather larger tonal shift for the director, marking a turn away from straightforward action into the world of survival horror. This is something, she admits, took some getting used to.
"There were a lot of death scenes and there was a lot of killing and stuff like that," remembers Hart. "And you'd have to remove yourself from that. You'd have to say to yourself going in, 'This is my job, this is what I do, and I'm gonna embrace it for everything that it is, but I'm not gonna allow it to affect me when I leave'. It was all about doing the best that I could within the realm, and communicating to the actors, 'What is the purpose of this show?'"
According to Hart, the gruesome content wasn't the only change either, with the director also being given a much larger role this time in the casting of the characters, as a core group of actors had yet to be established. How this process would work, she tells us, is that she would hold auditions in Canada, giving actors a breakdown of the character (essentially, a set of notes going over their various relationships and goals). Following that, she would then record their performances to a tape, before sending the audio along with a shortlist of the best over to Japan for final approval from Capcom. This explains why so many of the actors on various Capcom projects over the years were Canadian, as Hart would typically pull from a lot of the local talent that was in the Toronto area.
"When I was casting for voice, I would often just close my eyes and see if I could see the character in front of me. I would then listen to how they expressed their words and if they were able to bring an emotion out.
Capcom would fly out from Japan for the first while and quite a few people would come out. I think once like eight flew out. So you've got the translator, you've got the executives, and you've got the directors. Thank goodness we had a good space where they could be sitting in the back
"[After that] the process was very secretive," she continues. "You'd receive the script and it was not in order. The scenes are not in order, nor are the players in order. So I'd get that ahead of time and I'd break it down as to how many lines the actor has. And from that, I'd schedule the actor for six or eight hours. I'd do all the union paperwork and book the studio. And then Capcom would fly out from Japan for the first while and quite a few people would come out. I think once like eight flew out. So you've got the translator, you've got the executives, and you've got the directors. Thank goodness we had a good space where they could be sitting in the back."
On Resident Evil 2, Hart would find herself collaborating again with the voice actress Alyson Court, who had previously voiced Jubilee in the X-Men show and as a guest character in X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes. Court had been cast in the role of Chris Redfield's sister Claire, alongside Paul Haddad, the voice of the rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy.
Hart had a great time working with these actors, summing up her experiences by saying, "Both those actors were young and experienced and expressive. They were in tune with their craft and in tune with what they put out. We would allow them to explore and we would occasionally put them across from one another so they could actually have that visual connection with one another."
Following her work on Resident Evil 2, Hart became the English voice director of choice for several Resident Evil and Resident Evil-adjacent projects, including Shinji Mikami's dinosaur-themed spiritual successor Dino Crisis, the samurai action-adventure Onimusha (which was originally conceived as a ninja-themed Resident Evil-style game), and the hack-and-slasher Devil May Cry (a project that similarly began life as the fourth entry in the Resident Evil series). It was while working on Devil May Cry that she would discover Drew Coombs, the original voice of Dante, who was a relative newcomer to the scene but effortlessly managed to nail his audition as the silver-haired demon-slayer.
"I always liked to present to my client, 'Here's some new sounds, here's some new people,'" she tells us. "And Drew just came in eating that role already. He was just eating it up. He delved right in. And you could hear the passion. You can hear when the person is not just reading a script but has fully embraced the character and is bringing that character into a living, breathing form. And Drew did just that. He really took it to a more personal space and made it his own. And it came across on a small tape cassette that was done in Canada and sent to Japan."
We contacted Coombs to see if he had any memories of what it was like being directed by Hunt, and he was delighted to be able to share some thoughts.
Speaking to us over email, he says about the director, "Susan was a huge part of the casting, directing, and overall creative process. She had already been working with the Capcom Japanese team on other projects so it was a fun and easy environment for sure. She worked on A LOT of games for them over the years. She was a total pro and a very cool director and person to work with. For the time that we took to record that game's dialogue, we had tons of laughs as she also has a great sense of humour and is just really excellent at her job. I have nothing but mad love and respect for that lady."
According to Coombs, Hart had a huge part to play in helping to craft many of the game's memorable moments, including one particularly notable scene that has since gone on to generate thousands of memes online.
"Although there are so many classic lines from that game, the all-time fan favorite (for good and bad reasons) was the line: 'I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO FILL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIGHT!'" Coombs elaborates. "Everyone, and I mean everyone! The directors, R&D team, myself, whoever else was in the room, AND SUSAN cracked up like crazy and were killing themselves laughing after that take. And it was just so brilliant in the way it grew after many many directed takes and metamorphosized into its final form. An over the top, heartfelt cry. But simultaneously and ultimately, so perfect and hilarious too. That line would have never happened without Susan pushing and directing me."
Hart's final credited project for Capcom, according to MobyGames, was Resident Evil 4 in 2005, which she only partly directed, as from that point on, Capcom moved most of its English voice recording to the States, leaving Hart to primarily focus on her work in the world of kid's TV and children's animation. She wasn't bitter at all about the end of this relationship, instead thanking Capcom for the amazing number of years they worked together and for being open to listening to her ideas.
"Capcom were very, very kind," she tells us. "Very generous. Appreciative, Respectful. I worked with them for years, and I always delivered to them with pride. There was always constructive criticism on both ends. I listened to them and they listened to me. It was a really good relationship that we had, and it didn't end. Games just kind of went into a different zone, and they decided to go to a different country. I really can't pinpoint what was going on but you know, I was getting into directing animation stuff at that point"
I'm glad that they are coming back because there was something very authentic and very real about them. It's very human and very tactile, whereas some of the newer stuff can feel like it's been driven into a machine. There were people working day in and day out to pull these things together.
Today, Hart is still extremely proud of the work she managed to do with Capcom, expressing delight when we informed her that Dino Crisis had recently been released on GOG, and excitement upon hearing the news that the Onimusha series was also set to return with the release of Onimusha Way of the Sword in 2026.
"That's great to think things are coming back," she tells us. "You know, they're gonna go in a whole different direction. Who knows, are they going to go back to like the way the way the scripts are written, the way they were shot, or are they going to be adding more sis-boom-bah? I don't know, but that's nice to know. I'm glad that they are coming back because there was something very authentic and very real about them. It's very human and very tactile, whereas some of the newer stuff can feel like it's been driven into a machine. There were people working day in and day out to pull these things together. I think sometimes you can hear that energy and feel that soul."
Reflecting on all the success she had working with Capcom, she attributes much of it to the collaboration between herself, the actors, and the various creatives at the video game developer — something which allowed the team to create iconic performances that struck a chord with audiences.
"I think the success of the shows was based on having everything in order," she says. "It was about leaving the ego at the door and working together to create something tangible and entertaining. It takes a team to put something like this together. And I felt that as the director, my small part of it was guiding the actors and giving them boundaries.
"As far as going out and speaking about this," she continues. "I think the fans are probably more driven by wanting to see who's voicing it, but I do think it's interesting you guys are so curious about the process. Because it allows you to appreciate it even more. You go, 'Wow, there's all these hard-working people behind the scenes and people who care. And that is what makes it special.'"