At guest appearances like E3 2004 and the Nintendo World Store in NYC, MIRT was done with Charles directly talking to guests and patrons as Mario, Luigi and Wario, giving the magical illusion that you really were speaking with these iconic characters themselves. This system used motion capture to display Mario’s face and have him move his lips in accordance to Charles’ line deliveries, allowing him to speak full-on sentences that the games never really called for. and Mario Sports Mix, as well as a system first used in Mario Teaches Typing 2 called Mario In Real Time, or MIRT for short. Fun fact: when Charles had his very first officially Nintendo-licensed Mario role in Super Mario 64, he also provided the laugh sound effects for Bowser and Boo! That plus voicing the male Piantas in Super Mario Sunshine just made Charles Martinet the heart and soul of the Mushroom Kingdom’s denizens.įans everywhere would enjoy even more of Charles Martinet’s hilarious Mario lines through commercials for games like New Super Mario Bros. He had gotten so famous for the role he was getting opportunities to play other characters from Mario’s universe like Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi and Toadsworth. Mario’s Game Gallery, a PC edutainment game from 1995, was where Charles Martinet got his first gig as the little super plumber, and has been playing him in every single game since all the way up to today.
Super Show, Walker Boone in Adventures of SMB3 and Super Mario World, and Bob Hoskins in the 1993 film. Back when video games didn’t have the technical capabilities to incorporate voice recordings very much, Mario’s character through his speech was mostly developed through his past on-screen media appearances, through Peter Cullen in Saturday Supercade, Captain Lou Albano in The Super Mario Bros.
Most of the voice cast had been warmly received in their own right for reasons I’ll get into later, but obviously the most important voice casting was for Mario himself.