Nintendo fans around the world were shocked when they found out Charles Martinet would no longer be voicing Mario, Luigi, and the regular cast of characters he’s been bringing to life for decades now. Of course, as soon as that news broke, those same fans were eager to find out who would be taking up the mantle.
With all the attention and prominence Martinet brought to the roles, you’d think Nintendo would give Mario’s new voice a major rollout. Instead, Nintendo barely said anything about the new voice actor at all. We all found out who was behind Mario and Luigi from the actor himself, and through a simple post on X.
We now know that Kevin Afghani is the voice of Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but fans are still trying to figure out why Nintendo didn’t make more of a fuss with the announcement. Now we have that answer, thanks to a Wired interview with Doug Bowser.
“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].”
We could certainly take Bowser’s words at face value, and it does seem to be a very Nintendo-like approach. To play devil’s advocate, Nintendo may have had more planned for Afghani’s reveal, but once dataminers started digging into early copies of the game to see who got the roles, Nintendo new time was ticking. Rather than letting dataminers steal the actor’s thunder, perhaps they gave Afghani the go-ahead to make the announcement.
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