Video games are a young medium. Though Nintendo has existed since 1889, it didn't start making video games until 50 years ago. Which means that when we think of Nintendo, we're only thinking about roughly one third of its existence. Many of the people who made Nintendo into the cultural force it has been from the 1980s until now are still alive. Charles Martinet is one of them.
Martinet has been the one and only voice of Mario in video games, taking the role on in the early 1990s, and voicing the iconic plumber from Mario Teaches Typing through last year's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. So, when Nintendo announced on Monday that Martinet, who is𒁃 67, was transitioning out of the role, it was the most significant development the ch𝕴aracter has seen in decades.
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“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 honor working with Charles to help bring Mario to life for so many years and we want to thank and celebrate him. Please keep an🧸 eye out for a special video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Charles himself, which we will post at a future date.”
It isn’t surprising that that statement mentions Shigeru Miyamoto — after all, he is Mario’s other dad — but it can help to frame how we think about Martinet’s departure. Miyamoto, who turns 71 this November, has similarly been transitioning out of game development in recent years. He had active roles working on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Nintendo World area at Universal Studios, but the last games he served in a directorial role on were 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Fox Zero and Super Mario Run, both in 2016. Since then, he’s worked as a general producer on three games — 1🦩68澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Legend 🗹of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom, and Pikmin 4 — and executive producer on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario Odyssey. But look back to his career a decade or two ago and you see Miyamoto more frequently listed as designer or director. In recent years, he’s taken less hands-on overseer roles on Nintendo's games, while his creative attention has focused on more ancillary projects.
It sounds like Nintendo has similar plans for Martinet. The company's statement talks about Martinet becoming a "Mario Ambassador." Who knows what that means. In all likelihood, Martinet has passed retirement age and Nintendo is giving him a sweet honorary title that commemorates his decades of service. It may now be his official title, but an ambassador for Mario is what Martinet has always been. This role seems like a way of recognizing the hard work he put into defining who Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi were for multiple generations of players.
Conspiracy theorists may speculate that Nintendo is pushing Martinet out. That seems unlikely, and given that the actor we've heard in the trailer for Super Mario Bros. Wonder is clearly not Chris Pratt (Nintendo wouldn't want to foot the bill for the difference in the two actors' rates, anyway) there's no reason to suspect that this is a crass commercial move to make the games more directly tie-in to the movie. There's no reason to suspect anything nefarious. This is just an older guy working less and that seems fine.
Martinet moving on is noteworthy because of that oversized role he played in the Mario franchise. But, it's also noteworthy because, as I've written before, we don't often get to see the people who make games grow old. Martinet isn't a developer in the strictest sense, so he's likely been spared from most of the crunch and burnout that affects workers in the games industry. But it's still worth celebrating that a major figure in video games seems to be going out on his own terms.