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Sad news for Mario fans. On August 21st, 2023, video Nintendo released an official statement about the future of the Super Mario franchise and the status of Mario’s actor, Charles Martinet.
Charles Martinet first voiced the iconic video game plumber in the CD version of 1994’s Mario Teaches Typing and has since gone on to voice the character in over 100 appearances. Martinet has also been the primary voice of several other Mario characters including his brother Luigi and their rivals Wario and Waluigi.
Unfortunately, that will be coming to an end soon, as according to a post released on Nintendo’s official Twitter account, Martinet will no longer be recording voice lines for any future Mario games.
Martinet will instead be moved into a new job position labeled as “Mario Ambassador”, what this job position entails was not elaborated in the announcement. With promises that Miyamoto will elaborate further in a later video statement.
Fans of the Super Mario franchise had previously speculated that the beloved actor had been recast after a recent Nintendo Direct revealed two new games: Super Mario Wonder and WarioWare Move It. Due to Mario and Wario’s voices sounding different than usual in these two trailers, people online speculated if the actor had been recast or if Martinet was simply adjusting his performance. Currently, there is no info on who voices Mario or Wario in these games.
While future games will lack Martinet as the voice of Mario, this isn’t the first time the character has been voiced by other people, as in Illumination’s Super Mario Brothers movie he was instead voiced by actor Chris Pratt. Martinet himself cameoed in the film as the voice of Mario’s father Giuseppe.
Even though Charles Martinet won’t be voicing Mario in the future, fans of the actor will likely be able to hear him in roles outside of Nintendo’s franchise as he has a wide resume of other roles including Magenta in the Dragon Ball franchise.
While it is unknown who will be playing Mario in the future, Charles Martinet himself seems proud of the time he had been playing the character as after Nintendo’s announcement he released a tweet of his own thanking fans and Nintendo for the years they allowed him to play the character.
