There are many mysteries in the video game space that we’re not likely to get answered anytime soon. Then, there are the “curiosities” that honestly don’t make sense even WHEN someone in charge explains them. Case in point, Super Mario Bros Wonder was a landmark title for Nintendo both upon its announcement in June and its release last week. But not just because the game pushed the bounds of 2D platforming in unique ways but because there was a key change behind the scenes. Specifically, the longtime voice of Mario, Charles Martinet, was replaced. But despite that big departure, we didn’t find out who was the voice of Mario until MUCH later.
In fact, it wasn’t until Kevin Afghani himself posted on Twitter that he was the voice of Mario that we had confirmation of the new voice actor. That struck many people as odd, especially since it had to be confirmed later on that it was indeed him. Remember, this is the icon of Nintendo, and someone, regarding Mario, who is hailed as one of the most recognizable characters in the world. So why didn’t Nintendo at least do a big video showing off the new voice actor?
Well, according to Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser, they wanted people to enjoy Super Mario Bros Wonder without really caring about who was the voice of Mario:
“We want people to enjoy the gameplay experience, and if they enjoyed the voice behind the gameplay experience, that’s what’s most important to us, not necessarily highlighting [Mario’s actor],” Bowser said to Wired in an interview.
That’s a very weird way of answering things, and if we were Afghani, we would take a little offense to that. Why? Because this is easily the biggest role that the actor has taken in his career. And because of how Mario’s games go, he will be THE voice of the character for the foreseeable future. So the fact that they didn’t want to “highlight him” just because they wanted people to do the gameplay is an odd and arguably insulting move.
That goes double when you realize that Nintendo asked Charles Martinet to take a new role as a “Mario Ambassador,” but no one has really explained what that is. Even Martinet said he didn’t know what it detailed yet. Furthermore, they gave Martinet a “goodbye video” with Shigeru Miyamoto helping “usher in” his new role.
All we’re saying is that if you’re going to pay respect to the one going out, you should respect the one coming in.
