Tim Curry, star of timeless Hollywood classics across many decades, has died at age 80. It’s time we remember his lesser-known but equally important contributions to the video game world.
Hollywood outlets are celebrating Curry’s show-stealing roles in vastly varied all-timers like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the original IT, Legend, Ferngully, Muppet Treasure Island, Annie, and Clue. They’re all doing a great job, and I get it that this man had such a rich career that you can’t cover it all, but we at Destructoid just cannot ignore how Curry was the first big Hollywood actor to star in a video game.
1993’s excellent horror point-and-click adventure, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, was the starting point. In the Jane Jensen-written and directed classic, Curry was joined by Mark Hamill, thus marking the video game industry’s first attempt at making voice acting evolve from a mere expository device to a way to immerse players in the fledgling medium.
In a way, Tim Curry paved the way to fulfill Hideo Kojima’s dream of making video games feel like Hollywood movies, which certainly helped the medium grow exponentially in the years that followed.
And though Curry’s performance as the titular Gabriel Knight proved divisive among players because of Knight’s accent, Curry would go on to voice many memorable video game characters, many of which you might not even realize were voiced by him. I’m talking about the likes of Arl Rendon Howe from the Dragon Age series and Emperor Doviculus, the awesomely sinister main villain from 2008’s Brutal Legend.
And, even if you’re a gamer who never paid much attention to Curry’s work, chances are you know him from some great memes, as Curry went on to have the most iconic cutscene in the Command & Conquer series. Yes, he played none other than Premier Cherdenko in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the guy from that campy scene where he talks about leaving the planet to “the only place uncorrupted by capitalism.”
The scene remains just as hilarious as ever, though sadly not as preposterous as it was back in ’08.
Curry’s cause of death hasn’t been disclosed, though the actor had suffered a near-fatal stroke back in 2012 that greatly impaired his movement and robbed him and us of who knows how many more memorable roles. Curry never had children, but it’s safe to say he’s survived by the laughter and nightmares he’ll keep on causing by the impact of his wide-rangingwork.
