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Cynthia Harrell, The Woman Who Sang ‘Snake Eater,’ Is Ready To Be Heard Again - Kotaku Australia

Cynthia Harrell, The Woman Who Sang ‘Snake Eater,’ Is Ready To Be Heard Again - Kotaku Australia

Cynthia Harrell, The Woman Who Sang ‘Snake Eater,’ Is Ready To Be Heard Again - Kotaku Australia
Oct 21, 2020 5 mins, 14 secs

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about “Snake Eater,” the titular song in the 2004 video game masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Her powerful vocals suffuse “Snake Eater with such gravitas, elevating it from a simple song on a video game soundtrack to something that sees regular rotation in travelling video game orchestra performances and in people’s weddings.

Google her name and the top results are her wiki pages for Metal Gear Solid 3 and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (wherein she’s credited for performing that game’s closing song, “I Am The Wind”).

I didn’t know if she had gone on to do other video game work or not.

I found several hits for a Cynthia Harrell but only one with the picture of a Black woman who looked approximately like the woman on the cover of the Castlevania “I Am The Wind” single.

When we first started our phone conversation, what struck me was that Harrell sounded like one of my aunts.

After defeating The End boss in Metal Gear Solid 3, the player needs to make the protagonist Naked Snake ascend a very tall ladder for three minutes.

Without Harrell, that scene is just Snake climbing a ladder in silence, which wouldn’t be too out of place because Metal Gear games get weird like that.

Harell’s own memories of her career and video games go much further back than that.

Like most Black performers, Harrell grew up singing in church.

“I think at that time I wanted to go to Saint Xavier [University] and I was working while my friends were in school and it was like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m 18.

In her vast body of work, she only has the two video game credits.

Several years later, in 2004, Muranaka once again asked her friend to sing for her, this time on Konami’s newest entry in the Metal Gear Solid series, Snake Eater.

She was like, ‘Cyn, can you come sing this demo for me?’ And I’m like, ‘OK, it’s fine.’ I think I went and sang it, and I knew it was something special about it.

I show up to the studio — we were in Los Angeles — and I walk in and there’s this huge orchestra and that’s when I knew, this was a big deal.”.

After that, she went back to her job, Snake Eater continued development and a few months later, Harrell’s phone rang again.

“The next thing I knew, everything just exploded with Metal Gear.

Though on crutches from a knee surgery, Harrell took the invitation from King Records — the label that released the first few Metal Gear soundtracks — and travelled to Japan to attend the release party for Snake Eater.

I did MTV Japan, the local news, local radio, and it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, what’s going on here?’ These people knew the game, and they knew me from the game and I didn’t realise that anyone knew me or anything about me through that game.”.

He didn’t speak English at all, so we had to have an interpreter that sat with us in order for us to communicate.[…] I remember him thanking me for doing the game, and it was just regular conversation.

Her star treatment in Japan carried over briefly back in the United states, but it seems sometimes that Harrell forgets how important her work on Snake Eater was to the gaming community at large.

And the next thing I knew I had fans on Morehouse’s campus and it’s like, ‘What in the world?’ not knowing that the game was as big as it was.”.

IGN named it as one of the best video games of all time, the second best game for the PS2, and the best game in the Metal Gear franchise.

Kotaku’s own Ian Walker counts November 2004 as one of the best months in video games ever in part because of Snake Eater’s release and Polygon counts the ladder sequence — the moment when you hear Snake Eater” for the first time during gameplay — as “the epitome of why Metal Gear Solid series is so much more engrossing than the other gun-toting spy games it may at first resemble.”.

Harrell played video games with her son mostly to help him out when things got difficult for him.

She likes Sonic the Hedgehog, The Cat in the Hat, and Mario Kart — games vastly different from the tactical espionage action the Metal Gear franchise is known for!

“When they sent the system to me and the game, I put it on and it’s like ‘ok, this doesn’t look like anything I’ll be able to do.’ [At first] It took me probably about six months to get through Metal Gear.”.

Though she plays other games — she also has a fondness for the Batman Arkham series — Snake Eater is like her fall comfort game.

[…] If I feel like it, I will always go back to Metal Gear.”.

Until now, outside of Harrell’s background vocals, commercial jingles, and her performance in “I Am The Wind” and “Snake Eater,” we have not had the chance to hear her voice — to hear this hidden figure of video game history tell her story.

When she told me that she did indeed play video games, my face exploded in joy because it meant that I had found my own personal unicorn; a Black woman older than me who plays video games.

More than that, she worked in video games, on not one but two of the most beloved games ever made — and I, through blind luck, was able to find her and speak to her, and share her story with everyone.

I was wondering if you were going to track down Cynthia after reading your Snake Eater post – I’m glad you were able to get ahold of her

It’s great when piece of video game history like this are captured before they’re irrevocably lost

I’d love to see more articles like this, just recounting stories from the life of people that have worked on games – not even about games, but just their lives – ways to get to know the people behind the games and moments I / we love

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