Charles Martinet, the voice of everyone’s childhood, is stepping away from his role as Mario. He may not be the highest-earning actor in the world, but it’s pretty much a guarantee that anyone would recognise his voice if they listened to it; it’s one of the most iconic in gaming and it’s pretty much ingrained into the heads of everyone under the age of 40; even now I can hear him saying “Let’s-a-go.”
It will be strange hearing another person lending their voice to the character, after all, Charles Martinet has been there from the very beginning. So what do we know about Charles Martinet? And how long exactly has he been associated with the Nintendo mascot?
We couldn’t expect the legendary voice actor to be Mario forever, the man is 67 and will be turning 68 in just under a month, so perhaps he’s looking to start winding his career down. Although there’s no word on whether he’s retiring fully, his work on Mario projects makes up the large majority of his acting portfolio with a few other memorable roles here and there such as voicing Paarthurnax in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Although the first official Mario game that most people remember Martinet providing the voice for the character was Super Mario 64 in 1996, he’d actually played the character five years earlier in the educational video game for MS DOS known as Mario Teaches Typing. The game used Nintendo licensed characters but wasn’t actually created by Nintendo.
Mario Teaches Typing came out way back in 1991 and since then Martinet has provided the voice for the titular hero in pretty much all Mario video games since. He’s also been many other iconic characters, including Luigi, Wario and Waluigi. All in all he’s been involved in 150 Nintendo games going all the way up until this year with the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Although some fans were speculating that Martinet had already been replaced due to the voices sounding a little different in the trailer.
That’s 32 years of voicing Mario, that’s got to be one of the longest voicing acting roles to be kept by one guy to date. The man started voicing Mario when he was about 35, that’s almost half his life playing the Italian plumber.
Although Martinet has pretty much always voiced the character in games, he’s often overlooked when it comes to other adaptations. An animated TV show that first aired in 1989 was an earlier example of Mario being given a voice. He was played by Lou Albano who gave the plumber a New York Italian accent. So technically Martinet wasn’t the first to play the character.
That’s just talking about the American actors, way back in 1986 there was an animated movie called Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach which was only released in Japan, so there have certainly been a few Marios before Martinet’s.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie that was released earlier this year also used another voice actor instead and it was initially lambasted by fans for the decision to cast Chris Pratt (who also used a New York Italian accent). However, Martinet was able to land two cameo roles within the film, one of which he played Mario’s father and it kind of makes sense because in a way, he brought the character to life for many in the last 32 years.
