Dr Sbaitso 2.20

Creative Labs 1992
Language: English
Licence: Freeware
System: PC
Views: 18230
Review by Mr Creosote (2004-03-21)

Dr Sbaitso is the perfect psychologist: strictly confidential and without any emotion. A cold machine which analyses your personal problems without judging you. You can tell him anything, he won't call the police or mock you - because he's just a computer algorithm!
This program came with the original Sound Blaster, the classic sound card by Creative Labs. The main point was to show how the internal synthesizer can produce speech - revolutionary for PCs then! You'd type in what you want to tell the doctor and he'd reply not only in text, but also in a mechanical voice coming from your speakers!
It's quite fun for some time to pretend this would be a real conversation. The answers you get aren't previously recorded phrases which are just played, but they're built dynamically with reference to what you said. That means the voice directly comes from the synthesizer. Shows the technical capabilities better, but no appropriate voiceacting of course. The answers are somehow fitting in one way or the other, and they're written in the style of stereotype psychologists. They keep repeating themselves after a short time though. Dr Sbaitso just can't stay on topic.
On the whole, still a fun program for a short break, even if the technical aspect isn't that fascinating anymore. But at least it's more interesting than the old 'Talk'-program on the Amiga ;)

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