It’s the end of an era as Nintendo has announced on Twitter this morning that the longtime voice of Mario, Charles Martinet will be stepping down from the role as the actor transitions into the role of “Mario Ambassador” and will continue to “travel the world sharing the joy of Mario,” the company says in the announcement.
“Charles Martinet has been the original voice of Mario in Nintendo games for a long time, as far back as Super Mario 64. Charles is now moving into the brand-new role of Mario Ambassador. With this transition, he will be stepping back from recording character voices for our games, but he’ll continue to travel the world sharing the joy of Mario and interacting with you all! It has been an honour working with Charles to help bring Mario to life for so many years and we want to thank and celebrate him,” Nintendo said in a statement on Twitter.
As one last thing from the post, Nintendo adds to keep an eye out for “a special video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Charles himself, which we will post at a future date.” What we’ll see in the video remains to be seen as it could be a celebration of Martinet, an announcement of the actor’s successor of the role, or a combination of the two; until then we’ll have to wait and see. In response to the official news, Martinet quoted the post saying “My new adventure begins! You are all Numba One in my heart!”
We have a message for fans of the Mushroom Kingdom. Please take a look. pic.twitter.com/L0kjQtwALr
— Nintendo of Europe (@NintendoEurope) August 21, 2023
Charles Martinet has been the voice of Mario for over 30 years dating back to 1991 with the character’s voice being heard initially at trade shows which would later lead to the voice’s debut in 1994’s Mario Teaches Typing but the one that anyone remembers back then was probably hearing Martinet’s Mario voice for the first time in Super Mario 64. Since those early years, Martinet has voiced other characters in the Mario universe including Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, and many other smaller roles including some in the recent Mario movie.
