Goodbye Steve Sanders

We are sad today to report the passing of a man whose connection to Wing Commander we didn't know until it appeared in his obituary. Steve Sanders was a Austin-based voice actor who appeared in numerous Origin games starting with 1995's BioForge who died earlier this month. You can read his obituary here in the Port Aransas South Jetty; it's particularly well written and gets across that he was a good person.

Mr. Sanders is credited with three 'name' roles in Origin games. He played the main villains in both BioForge (1995) and Cybermage: Darklight Awakening (1996), the Mengele-esque Doctor Mastaba and the cyberpunk supervillain NeCrom respectively. He did double duty in BioForge as Dane, a cyborg at the emotional heart of the game. He was also credited with performing additional voices in Ultima IX, the credit given to most of the game's cast.

What we did not know is that he also acted in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1995) and at least one of the Crusader games. That's not an indication that he wasn't important; Origin did not always credit their voice actors on projects like the full motion video games that had to adhere to specific SGA-related rules. His work in Wing Commander IV could've included anything from background talk to the comm lines for any of the game's distinctive redshirt wingmen.

We'd love to know more about Mr. Sanders' work in our favorite games and it's so sad to think that we can't get those stories from him. Our thoughts are with his friends and family; from his online presence it certainly seems like he was both loved and kind. We're including YouTube clips of his BioForge and Cybermage characters below; if you have a better ear for human voices than we do, please let us know if you can figure out who he played in Wing Commander IV!

Dr. Mastaba

Dane

NeCrom

(Thank you to OpenBioForge for passing along this news.)