1. A method of electronically simulating voice conversations between at least two talking animated characters, the words of one character being selected by a human player, comprising the steps of: (a) digitally storing a catalog of distinctive voices for at least two talking characters, each in the form of voice sound data representing a plurality of sentences, phrases, word segments or phonemes; (b) digitally storing a preprogrammed branching dialog between a first animated character and a second animated character, each branch comprising a plurality of alternative verbal expressions; (c) generating a video signal representing an image of said first and second characters for display on a video screen; (d) displaying on a hand-held controller apparatus a first set of alternatively selectable verbal expressions describing preprogrammed actions of an animated character, each expression corresponding to a branch in said dialog; (e) receiving from said hand-held controller a manually initiated signal representing a selected verbal expression in said first set of verbal expressions, thereby selecting a branch in the dialog and a corresponding selected action of an animated character. (f) digitally reading from said catalog of voices first voice sound data that corresponds to said selected verbal expression for the voice of said first character; (g) generating an audio signal from said first voice sound data representing the voice of said first character speaking said selected verbal expression; (h) generating a video signal representing an image of an animated character performing said selected action in accordance with said selected verbal expression; (i) digitally reading from said catalog of voices second voice sound data for the voice of said second character speaking the verbal expression that follows next in the selected branch of the dialog; (j) generating an audio signal from said second voice sound data representing the voice of said second character; and (k) displaying on said hand-held controller apparatus a second set of alternatively selectable verbal expressions that follows next for said first character in the selected branch of the dialog.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein said hand-held controller is a portable game system with program cartridge.