In his review of Transformers: War for Cybertron, Dan Stapleton referred to “the tingly nerd-joy of hearing original Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen’s authoritative dialogue”. Every time the character appeared on screen, as he did many times in videogames like Transformers: Devastation and Fall of Cybertron or the middling movies, it was thrilling to hear him and realize, yes, they got the “real” Optimus Prime.
As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, Cullen has died at the age of 85. He joins a string of particularly beloved celebrities to have died in recent days, including Dolly Parton, Yayoi Kusama, and Red Alert 3 star and camp icon Tim Curry.
While most famous for his recurring role as Optimus Prime, Cullen also voiced Venger in Dungeons & Dragons, Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, Monterey Jack in Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and provided the menacing clicking sounds for the Predator.
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His connection to videogames goes back to the first TV show based on a game, Pac-Man, in which he voiced Pac-Man’s pet cat. As our Chris Livingston said after his recent viewing of the show, “What a waste of an S-tier set of pipes!” A year later, Cullen voiced Mario in Saturday Supercade, an anthology series with episodes based on videogames including Frogger, Pitfall, and Donkey Kong, making him the first actor to portray Mario in English.
Cullen also portrayed orcish warchief Orgrim Doomhammer in Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, a point-and-click adventure that Blizzard cancelled in 1998, but which has since appeared online in a playable form.
