by Doc – Owner, Founder, pretty proud of the title of this post
Charles Martinet has been the voice of Mario since Mario had a voice – somewhere in my basement I have Nintendo Power VHSes of Spaceworld 2001 where Charles Martinet makes his first appearance voicing Mario. But, as of this morning, Nintendo has announced he’s becoming a “Mario Ambassador”.
It’s really quite the accomplishment to have voiced such a wide variety of characters for so long. Never in history has a man been paid so much to say the word “Yahoo!” so many times.
I’m curious to see how Nintendo will handle this going forward. I don’t imagine they’ll want the ridiculously expensive Chris Pratt to take over the role, and they’ve probably pre-recorded thousands of hours of Mario voice lines for when Mr. Martinet eventually quits or kicks the bucket in preparation.
It’s interesting to me to see that he’s becoming a “Mario Ambassador”, whatever that means. I imagine he’ll still attend trade events doing his Mario series voices, but surely there’d be more to the role than making real life cameos.
Amiibo Doctor 