Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 173: The Many Voices of Mario

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

When Mario debuted in 1981's Donkey Kong, he entered a gaming landscape devoid of voice acting, so Nintendo never stopped to think, "Hey, what's this little guy supposed to sound like?" Over the years..., though, as Mario entered the world of cartoons, live-action TV shows, and movies, someone had to sit down and decide on the voice of this formerly voiceless character. And decide they did! On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert as they explore the many voices of Mario, and trace the roots of his current, Nintendo-approved vocal interpretation. Mama mia!

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey folks, it's Bob from Retronauts, and I'm here to let you know that Jeremy and I will once again be at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year in Portland, Oregon. It's happening this Sunday, October 19th at 21st, and on the 21st, that's a Sunday, at 3.30, we'll be doing a panel on full motion video games. This will be our sixth year in a row at the show, and we really hope to see you there. And if you're a fan of Talking Simpsons, I'll also be doing two live shows with my pal, Henry Gilbert, in Portland that weekend. On Saturday, October 20th, we'll be doing two live shows at Kelly's Olympian in Portland, Oregon, and that'll be happening at 426 Southwest Washington Street. We'll be covering the greatest hits of the Simpsons Halloween episodes with a 2 o'clock show and a 5 o'clock show, and our 5 o'clock show we'll have as a special guest, Bill Oakley, former Simpsons writer and showrunner. Tickets are going fast, so if you want to attend either of the Talking Simpsons live shows, go to tiny URL.com slash Talking Simpsons, how. That's tiny URL.com
Starting point is 00:01:02 slash Talking Simpsons Halloween. Once again, you can see us Sunday, October 21st at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo at 3.30 p.m. And you can see Talking Simpsons Live on Saturday, October 20th at 2 o'clock p.m. And again, go to tinyurl.com slash Talking Simpsons Halloween to get tickets. That's three big live shows, and I can't wait to see you folks there in Portland. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts Micro. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie, who is here with me today. Here we go, Henry Gilbert.
Starting point is 00:02:03 And I promise from this point on we will do no more Mario imitations. Each of us is a loud one because it can get very annoying. I'm doing this for the sake of our listeners. That was a good one, though, Henry. So this topic today is what I call the many voices of Mario,
Starting point is 00:02:16 just something that sort of floated into my head, and I thought it would be a good episode, and you will decide at the end if it was via voting process that I have to establish. This subject is close to my heart because new listeners may not know Miami, mega Mario
Starting point is 00:02:30 fanboy at my old job, when I had a desk, I had quite a collection of Mario's I had set up that really impressed people. Now they're all boxed up or have been sold on eBay, but... You still have some services in your apartment. That's where we're recording this, by the way. I could see, just
Starting point is 00:02:45 line up Mario's all along your 4K TV. Well, I do have on that shelf down there, it's somewhat obscure, but that's where my favorite Mario's are, if you see, including some classics from like 1989, gosh upon machines. I really like the Hammer Brother plushy Mario. That's good. Yeah. It was back when they didn't have official as strict rules. So like Braun Pesto is just like, here's how we'll make it. This is what we think Mario should look like. That's actually not a tangent because a lot of this episode is dealing with what other companies do with Nintendo's characters when they still let that happen. Now Nintendo's like these are our characters. We treat them with so much respect, universal. You can have them, but we will be watching you like Hawks. Yeah. No. It. I was reminded of when they announced the Mario
Starting point is 00:03:31 Plus Rabbits game, which was so much better and I thought it would ever be, it's X-Com with Mario in it, it's great. It's surprisingly difficult for being X-com for Babies. Yeah, but when they talked about the, when they announced it, they said that what really impressed Nintendo was when they, Ubisoft showed the demo to them, they got Mario and all the other character
Starting point is 00:03:52 character designs down to a T. And Nintendo was like, wait, how did, you must have just taken something from one of our games, right? They're like, no, we designed it. They, because Nintendo has such strict, specific guidelines on how any Mushroom Kingdom character looks. I still hate the Rabbids. I say, go back to Europe. But it was a good game. I still need to play through all of it. But yeah, Henry, you're also on this podcast because we do two animation podcasts. We often do more than that, but right now we're doing Talking Simpsons, of course, and what a cartoon. And what a cartoon is our weekly look at a different episode of a different
Starting point is 00:04:25 cartoon every week. And a lot of these voices of Mario we're going to look at are from cartoons and other animated things. So the first one I want to talk about is from the series I was far too young to watch. It was called Saturday Supercade. It was a CBS series with a lot of different segments based on popular arcade games of the time. Have you ever seen this, Henry? It aired
Starting point is 00:04:45 before I was born and also I think due to some, or right when I was born, and I think due to some legal mumbo-jumbo with it, it was one of those cartoons that didn't get re-aired eight million times when we were kids. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't aired a ton of times like later Mario cartoons would be. So I never got to see it. It wasn't until I was a professional and doing research for things that I ever looked up the terrible VHS recordings of Super K that you'll find on YouTube. That is true. Actually,
Starting point is 00:05:16 I don't think I knew about it until maybe like the early days of the internet, but definitely retronauts because people like Jeremy and Scott Sharkey were old enough to have seen this. I was like to, and my mom probably sat me down in front of it, but I don't remember any of this. It was indoctrinating you in other ways. And it's also, I mean, I'm sure all of it is available somewhere, but it's not as easy as a quick Google search to find
Starting point is 00:05:37 these episodes, especially the Mario stuff. So I want to talk about this series, two-season series on CBS Saturday mornings, and Mario is played by Peter Cullen, and I'll tell you what. So we'll hear a clip from the Donkey Kong segments, one of them. And Peter Colin is great, by the way. He's
Starting point is 00:05:53 fantastically talented, but he's not really doing a voice and cartoons of this era you were very much doing a voice it wasn't like you were the main character on regular show or whatever just speaking in your speaking voice everyone was doing a crazy voice well because you usually cast in roles like a specific snork or a specific smurf or you were told like yeah it's cartoon voice i recall the guy who did brainy smurf he joked about how everybody else on the show did eight voices and he was only brainy smurf because he was just like an entertainment lawyer who was just hired for that one voice. Boy, I think they're making fun of him by making him brainy smirk. Maybe. You could be the know-it-all asshole on this show. But yes, Peter Cullen, of course, all of you 80s kids and possibly 2000s kids know him as Optimus Prime. He played him in the new awful movies and also the old probably still awful cartoons, but they were anime, so we give him a pass, right? Yes, yeah. No, I, for a time, Peter Cullen was one of my favorite. Optimus Prime is my favorite Transformers. So I have a lot of respect for old Peter Cullen still with us
Starting point is 00:06:55 He is and I think he's like in his early 70s but he is the quote unquote New Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh and by new I mean from the last 35 years Yeah well now in the recent Christopher Robin film he was replaced by Brad Garrett Boo come on man that sucks They're planning for the future they can't
Starting point is 00:07:12 I guess so but Brad Garrett is also a voice actor That feels that feels rude to me They should have gone with a younger Honestly he's a voice actor He's probably early 50s or late 40s So they should have cast a guy in his late 20s to be E. Orr. They should have cast Stephen Wright.
Starting point is 00:07:28 Well, that's also the age problem there, too. That is true. That is true. So some of his main roles, of course, like I said, Optimus Prime, Eeyore and Monterey, Jack from Rescue Rangers. But if you check out his IMDB, he has done everything. Not a lot of huge main characters outside of the ones I mentioned, but he is just a legend. He's a go-to guy
Starting point is 00:07:45 like your Frank Welkers of the world or your Rob Paulsons. He's been doing it for a long, long time. And I'm sure he was on GI Joe, too. Yeah, I would bet he did a one-off voice. In video game land, I also know that he, on the Pac-Man animated series, covered in previous podcasts of Retronauts, he did Pac-Cat, I believe. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. What a memorable character that was. But I want to go over some of the segments, or all of the segments, rather, from the Saturday Superk to tell you what they were in case you don't know,
Starting point is 00:08:15 and then we'll wrap up this segment with Donkey Kong. So Frogger, so a lot of these, I've seen that one. That's the worst. I mean, arcade characters of this era and arcade games of this era did not have a lot of story to them. The story, if it existed, would be three sentences on the arcade screen, like on the overlay, on the over the monitor. So Frogger is an ace reporter for some reason and that all of his stories don't really involve crossing the street. It's more about getting scoops. We'll see. So happy days wrapped up around this time.
Starting point is 00:08:47 It was a very popular sitcom from the 50s, and we'll see a lot of happy days rubbing off on cartoons of the 80s. So Cubert is basically happy days, but with the Cubertaverse, which was the style at the time, as I said. This also happened in Donkey Kong Jr. So in the Donkey Kong Jr. cartoon segments, he teamed up with the greaser named Bones to find his dad. At least in the case of D.K. and D.K. Jr., they had a actual story to start from because Viamoda wanted to have some sort of story. meanwhile like Pac-Man Pac-Man Kubert, Frogger
Starting point is 00:09:24 like they have nothing they have no story and they also don't even wear clothes That is true I think they gave Kubert like shorts or a jacket or something
Starting point is 00:09:33 Frogger definitely has a jacket Yeah it's so weird I just remember in research for something I watched the Cuberd episode where it's a beach it's a surf competition
Starting point is 00:09:45 basically yes Yeah it's that bad So pitfall is pitfall. I mean, they just do the pitfall things, which is fine. It's just Rip off Indiana Jones. Easy peasy. Space Ace is just Space Ace, although I couldn't find any of the clips from Space Ace, but I guess it was kind of a rude awakening to go from Don Bluth animation to Ruby Spears animation. Oh, God. I mean, because Don Bluth made like 20 minutes of fantastic animation for those full motion video games, but that's all he made. So he could
Starting point is 00:10:13 put as much work into them as possible. And meanwhile, Ruby Spears was sub-Hanna-Barbera animation. And I think they prided themselves on not outsourcing. One of those companies, I think it was Ruby Spears. It could have been filmation. Outsourcing to Japan is what made animation in the 80s great, by the way. So, kangaroo. Who cares about kangaroo? I don't know what the lore of kang is. I don't care. I mean... Do that. They already have Donkey Kong. They don't need the Donkey Kong rip-off kangaroo. No one really cares about kangaroo. So let's move on to the final installment. Donkey Kong, so this follows the kind of lore of Donkey Kong Jr., actually. So Mario and Pauline are the villains who are trying to capture Donkey Kong who escape from the circus.
Starting point is 00:10:51 And in this series, Donkey Kong is stupid and he ends up being tricked by criminals repeatedly. And in the end of most of these episodes, Mario and Pauline have to realize he was being tricked and then team up with Donkey Kong to defeat the criminals. Every time. That is so funny. Like, well, that's, that way they can play it both ways. It's like, well, Mario has just reasons for doing this, but Donkey Kong also isn't wrong. either. So everyone gets to say innocent. It's the series
Starting point is 00:11:20 of the most moral ambiguity. I'm guessing there's a lot of children's cartoon crime going on here like Diamond Heist and smuggling. I'm sure it'd be like cake thieves or something like that. So in this series, they actually got a pretty big TV star to play Donkey Kong.
Starting point is 00:11:36 So I'm guessing the old men writing this show, or rather the middle age people writing this show grew up watching this guy. Donkey Kong is played by Soupy Sales. What? Yes. Oh my God. So there you have it, folks. That's a huge get for Saturday mornings. And I'm sure a lot of parents were like, that's soupy sales. And the kids are just like, I don't give a shit. I get away from me. It's the early 80s, man. I'm living it up. I didn't watch all these kinescopes of soupy sales. I'm sorry. At least they were given. I would bet soupy sales was like living in the gutter at that point. Maybe. He was a huge TV pioneer. I'm sure he was treated somewhat well. Well, those guys didn't save their money. That is true. So I have a clip coming up here. This is Peter Cullen as Mario with Pauline discussing their plan to get Donkey Kong.
Starting point is 00:12:19 Don't worry, Pauline. My pit trap never fails. What's going on here? Hey, you can't dig that here. I was here first. Dig yours someplace elves. Why should I? Cause my traps better than yours.
Starting point is 00:12:37 I'm putting glue at mine. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm putting fathers in mine. Okay, so that was Mario, by the way. Wow. So the first voice was, those are basically the same voice. Yeah, I mean, so Mario is competing with another hunter to capture Donkey Kong. But Mario sounds just, compared to the other voices we'll hear later, Mario sounds just like way too young. And this guy is not even doing any sort of Brooklyn tinge to his voice or any sort of. He just like, I'm going to get Donkey Kong. Well, the New Yorker descriptors weren't really there for him at the time. He just was a construction man named Mario. I wonder if that came about with Super Mario Brothers, the whole. Brooklyn plumber angle. Yeah. Well, and also there's not heavy emphasis on his Italianness, which it was, it's funny that in like four years, they would go so hard on it in the next thing. And
Starting point is 00:13:28 this one, they're just like, he's just a guy. I don't know, just an American accent. And his mustache is too long and droopy. It's just weird. He's way too skinny, too, in this one. Yeah, well, Mario's character design was all over the place back then. His jump, I mean, he was squat little jump man. And then he'd just be drawn. differently on all these different arcade cabinet art, which is the closest thing to official art you had then. So you either had like the kind of lanky, weirdly posed Mario that's chasing after D.K. on the arcade original box art. Or you have the incredibly like squat basically like spherical Mario with his whip on the cover or on the art for Drunkie Kong too. That era of ours
Starting point is 00:14:07 my favorite. I love how fleshery that looks. Yeah, he's very cute. But this is also this Mario isn't particularly cute. They kind of just turned him into like how the Smurf's humans were drawn. I'm just like just a boring kind of human. I think too they just weren't that interested in Mario because this was before Donkey Kong was replaced by Mario as the true mascot of Nintendo.
Starting point is 00:14:29 Like Donkey Kong is the star here not whoever this dumb mustache person is chasing after him. And the biggest sin is his nose is fairly small too. It's so weird. Like Mario has a giant bulbous nose and that's like one of his defining traits along with his stash. Even in the Donkey Kong arcade game, he's got like a huge schnaz. In fact, the villain he's fighting in this episode looks more like Mario than Mario does. And his hat isn't even
Starting point is 00:14:51 like the baseball hat. It's just this weird, I don't know. He's way too floppy and weird. I don't like it. It's all over the place, though. It's unsettling. I wonder if that was just Ruby Spears deciding what's the easiest to animate to design wise, too. So up next is the next Mario voice in the timeline. It is from an anime. We're finally hitting anime. Oh, no. One of the rare Mario animations. And this is all. all on YouTube. There's a very high quality subtitled rip of this movie. It is called Super Mario Brothers, the great mission
Starting point is 00:15:19 to rescue Princess Peach from 1986. And it's kind of bad, but it's also a huge novelty to see an interpretation of Mario this early that is way better looking than the Ruby Spears thing and many of the cartoons to come. Have you seen this anime? I've watched
Starting point is 00:15:35 bits and pieces of it. It's really interesting in that it was produced during the like 80s anime film. boom that was going on then but it was totally in the kids cartoon movies type style and it but it has so many things i've seen in like a million animas based on arcade games or video games which includes it starts with the character playing the game that stars himself yes actually so the game uh the movie starts off with Mario playing a famicom game it's it looks a lot like Mario it's like a guy
Starting point is 00:16:08 with a baseball bat and then something like static hits the TV and he sees princess peach being chased by Bowser, and she's screaming, help me, help me. And they jump out of his TV, and they have a confrontation, and then Bowser escapes with Peach back into the TV. And Luigi thinks Mario is crazy for telling him all of this stuff. It's rather similar to the Mega Man anime that was made as like, we're really just tourist videos for Japan. I don't know if you've ever seen that one by. Yeah, he like explains how the trains work and everything. Yeah. He's like, and this was what happened in the showgun era. They expected that that would be just shown to children all over the world to tell them what Japan is.
Starting point is 00:16:46 But I was just buying an ADVVHS to just see Mega Man adventures. You didn't know you were learning. But Luigi's all off model in this, too. I kind of like he's blue and yellow. And I have no idea why they went for that. Luigi had established colors in the Super Mario Brothers 1 and 2 by this point. Maybe when painting it, they're like, if he had white overalls in a green shirt, that's just like two electric. coloring. Yeah, maybe.
Starting point is 00:17:11 It's a fun off Luigi. And in this movie, Luigi's trade is that he's greedy. He wants gold. But also, there's so much weird stuff happening with the canon in this movie. Mario and Luigi run a grocery store. So after that confrontation with Bowser happens, they're working in their
Starting point is 00:17:27 grocery store. Mario is daydreaming about Peach. He's in love with her. And this weird character that's not in any game, this kind of weird dog made out of spheres leads them away to the mushroom kingdom. And a lot of this movie, I would say there's probably like four to five pop songs about love that just sort of act as filler. And it's like they're just marching across the landscape and they're just fun 80s J-pop song playing about falling in love.
Starting point is 00:17:49 Well, you gotta sell the cassette to kids. That is true. It's a fun bubble gum soundtrack. I do wonder, you know, the skeleton of this is not dissimilar to the live action film of a decade later, or eight years later. I wonder if in both cases it was just Miyamoto in the first meeting or some other Nintendo person in the first meeting saying, can we have one where Mario gets called to the Mushroom Kingdom? And then they both just kind of grew out from that suggestion, but in different direction. Yeah. And the live action movie, it's Luigi who falls in love with Princess
Starting point is 00:18:22 Daisy. And the movie is really just about Luigi. It's so odd. What a bad movie that is. So in this anime movie, Mario is played by Toru Furuya. And he also played Mario in the three other anime things that exist in the Mario universe. They are three OVAs, original video releases. that would tell a Japanese fairy tale but with Mario characters. Like Cantaro versus the Tengu or some such? I know Momotaro, Peach Boy, is definitely one of them. And another one is sort of like the Japanese version of Tom Thumb or Thumbulina. Yeah, I only know those because those were also plot lines in Uru Se Yatsura,
Starting point is 00:18:58 one of my all-time favorite manga slash anime. They also did that a lot in Dr. Slump, where it's like, let's just do this Japanese fairy tale with our characters. And then after learning that, you think of all the video games that reference. that you never realized like oh that was all peach boy stuff you know they can count on japanese school children their primary audience to at least know these references so it's an easy an easy way to go and also public domain to work in fairy tales no one's getting paid for that not even mother goose uh so uh toru furuya played some pretty big characters and he is still voice acting today so uh get get this he played amoro ray in all the gundom crap oh my god yes he is like
Starting point is 00:19:37 That's one of the biggest characters in all of anime. It sure is, man. I love that. Some people like Sharmore. I'm more of an Amorogai. He's great. And he also played Yamcha and Dragon Ball. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:19:48 Yes. And Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon. Wow. So he's played some huge characters. Wow. That is giant. And his Mario voice is closer to what it would eventually be sort of like high-pitched and whiny and not as, after this era, we'll get into the gruff American Mario voices. But this is more closer.
Starting point is 00:20:07 to Charles Martinet's version. So, yeah. Well, if you want Mario to be Mickey Mouse, then he should have a high voice that's friendly. That is true. And I'm glad you pointed that out, Henry, because Mario's current voice is a lot like Mickey Mouse and that everyone can do it,
Starting point is 00:20:23 but only Charles Martin A can do it right. It's something that everyone can imitate easily, but he has the best possible take on it. Yeah, when I saw the most recent English trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3, which has the new Mickey voice in it, Which, like, look, the old Mickey died. We get it.
Starting point is 00:20:39 It can't be. But even though it is, it is clearly just Mickey and it's right. It's not the Mickey that I grew up with for 30 years in my life. That it just sounds wrong. But there's no way around it. The guy's dead. It's true. And I believe Wayne Alwine was the last Mickey.
Starting point is 00:20:54 But he was like the third or fourth Mickey probably. Yeah. And when I would hear like 70s Mickey and stuff, I'm like, that's not Mickey. No. It's the Mickey imposter. But yes, so here's a clip of Mario talking to a gum. The Gumba has the much higher pitch voice, of course. This is Japanese, and unless you speak Japanese, you won't know what they're saying, but that's fine.
Starting point is 00:21:37 So, yes, that's Mario. And again, much closer to the Charles Martinette one. Sorry, Martinet, it's Martinet. Yes, yeah. I have to keep, I want to say Martinette. I don't know why. It's the French pronunciation. Yes.
Starting point is 00:21:47 But, yeah, how do you feel about that voice, Henry? It's cute. I also like it because it's just going to come off very differently because of how 99% of anime is produced, V.O. is done afterwards. And especially back then. so he's reacting to the stuff that's on screen a little bit and I think you can feel that more in the performance of like oh this is how you guys drew it okay Mario's a little looser in here
Starting point is 00:22:15 that's how he's going to feel like bent over talking to somebody yeah and he's like a little fun character who runs around you know and jumps around I can see the voice actor thinking about like oh yeah he'd be like a fun little like high energy high voice character also at the end of that movie I believe they make up a prince for they do yeah so Mario doesn't even get the girl in the end And there are, like, sexy mushroom ladies in this movie, too. I believe...
Starting point is 00:22:38 It's something for daddy. The non-cananical first appearance of Toadette. So, yeah, check that anime movie out. It's only an hour long. It's just fun to watch once for the sheer novelty value. But it's also just silly and, you know, campy. I enjoyed it for what it was. But I'm sure Nintendo does not want anyone to know about it and is probably actively
Starting point is 00:22:56 trying to bury it. Likely so. At least, I think they have less to be ashamed of with it than some, some episodes of the Super Show. Oh yeah, and that's next on the list, actually. So Henry did a lot of research for this, but the Super Mario Brothers Super Show was a 1989 syndicated series starring the famous wrestler Captain Lou Albano or Albano. Abano. Albano. As Mario and Henry, all I know is that he is possibly Cindy Lopper's dad? Yeah, well, so Captain Lou, he is in old school Carney of the highest degree. Like, he started wrestling in the
Starting point is 00:23:34 60s, but he did not have an athletic build and wasn't the greatest wrestler, but he was a great talker, and you needed that especially back then because a guy who looked really good as a wrestler maybe couldn't do the interviews, which really interviews are what talk people into coming to buy tickets to see a show. So he became an evil manager of so many people, including evil Asians, evil Russians, and evil Canadians. And he was for decades. Captain Lou, along with Freddie Blassie and the Grand Wizard of Wrestling, they were the top three professional wrestling managers in the WWF, which was what WWF was beforehand. Was his aesthetic just Hawaiian shirts or what? Yeah. The top
Starting point is 00:24:24 group that he managed was the head shrinkers, who were evil Samoans who basically just eight chicken and ate chicken raw and didn't speak so they needed a island style guy backing him up and so that's who he was and he also he had a ton of gimmicks as they would call it well as in his his specific calling card as a carney and it was a shaggy shaggy face shaggy hair with a goatee a open shirt to show off his fat gun and the rubber bands and pins like clothespins through his face. Wow, wow. Which if you're a little kid, you're like, oh my God, this is such a scary guy.
Starting point is 00:25:10 I want to see him and his team lose. But then he made a turn to become this fun-loving, like, boisterous actor-style guy. How did that happen? Well, so as his career was kind of winding down, and meanwhile, as the WWF is trying to transition into a global power in the 80s, Captain Lou was in the right place at the right time, and he was on a light with Cindy Lopper. Cindy Lopper really enjoyed silly old wrestling like he was a part of. And she was like, you know, you have such a specific look.
Starting point is 00:25:42 I need somebody to play my mean father and girls just want to have fun in the music video. So get in it. And at the time, nothing, 1984, nothing was bigger than MTV, nothing with the kids. And so Captain Lou, through being one of the most popular music videos of that year, was introduced to tons of kids. And so, Vids McMahon, knowing a good thing when he saw it, the next music video,
Starting point is 00:26:09 one of the next music videos Lopper would do, for Goonies are good enough, is full of tons of professional wrestlers. It was of the era of music videos and that before the video starts, there's like three minutes of story without music to set up what will happen in the music video. They're like raising money for something.
Starting point is 00:26:26 Their gas station is about out of money. And so... They made an 80s movie. I can't believe that. And there's actually like a to be continued in the music video as well. It's so silly. So at the same time he was doing that, though, he was a heel, which back even in the 80s, bad guys were bad and good guys were good and you weren't supposed to act outside of your character in public.
Starting point is 00:26:48 But here he was playing the good guy in this with Cindy Lauper. So they decided we're going to turn him into a good guy and team him up with Cindy Lauper. They do this whole thing that was the rock and wrestling connection on a guy. MTV where him and Cindy Lopper are, he are presented with like a certificate of like you guys did a great job. And then out comes Roddy Piper
Starting point is 00:27:11 who's like, hey, screw all you. This music sucks. I hate you, Cindy Lopper. He even like threatens to attack Cindy Lopper. Then Hulk Hogan runs out to save the day. And that sets up the first WrestleMania. So without Lou Elbano befriending Cindy Lopper,
Starting point is 00:27:27 there would be no WrestleMania. That's amazing. Yes. So Captain Lou, I got to say, this cartoon is awful, and we've talked about it on this show before. What makes it bad is, of course, it's made by Deke, and they have done a lot of bad stuff, and they have a bad reputation. But what they did is sort of similar to what those Japanese OVAs did, and that they're taking public domain stories and retelling them with Mario characters. Yeah, very poorly. And for Lou, after the first WrestleMania, he realized he had an inn in Hollywood.
Starting point is 00:27:58 And so he's like, you know, I'm just going to be an actor. And so he shaved off, he started applying for jobs, and around the time of the soup, Mario getting huge, he shaves off his goatee to play Mario, which you never shave off your gimmick. It was him completely giving up wrestling and just going on like, fuck it, no more wrestling for me. And his version of Mario is the most realistic, as if Mario was a real guy, he would look like Captain Liu. Yeah. And it's very well observed that the Canadian actor, who also does a great job, Danny Wells, by the way, both these guys are dead. RIP. They did a great job. But Danny Wells is like a skinny beanpole, and Mario is more of a chunky guy. And I don't know if that was the official Nintendo can. Of course it was, yeah, because of dokey, dokey panic, Super Mario, too.
Starting point is 00:28:42 Luigi was canonically defined as being skinnier, but they did follow that lore. And I have to say, I'm going to play a clip from the live action segment. So in case you've never seen the Super Mario Brothers Super show, it was sort of framed in the way like an old-timey kids cartoon show would be in that there are a live action hosts. I sort of throw to a cartoon, but sometimes there will be a story told within those bumpers. And that was the most entertaining part of this show for me. Even now, like, I was digging into these and watching them. And they're goofy and silly and stupid, but Mario and Luigi, Lou Albano and Daniels are having a lot of fun. There is no shame on their faces with all of the goofy stuff they're doing. In fact, in this episode, they have to dress in drag and seduce a football player at the end,
Starting point is 00:29:28 a real football player who's also dead now. This is all happening at their regular, like, plumbing set? Yes. Oh, my God. Yeah, by the way, there's only one set. So in this episode, they get a phone call from their cousins, Marietta, and Luigi, or something like that. And they found out this football player is going to come visit Mario and Luigi, and they're man hungry and they want to meet him. And in the second part of this live action show, they both show up in drag.
Starting point is 00:29:54 And they're like, they're incredible as these. super broad drag characters like touching the man's leg and pawing at him and it's clear that Lou Albano did not shave his mustache off to play Marietta
Starting point is 00:30:08 so it just sort of bleached and plastered to his face this is that is ridiculous I completely forgot that one I know that happened because I watched all of those 800 times in a row I associate these with eating
Starting point is 00:30:20 a lot of fish sticks frankly oh yeah or fish sticks or armor hot dogs yes I'm the kind of kid who loves armor hot dogs but yeah Like the live action stuff, it's not like pie art or anything, but it's just fun to see these two actors goofing it up, having fun for the kids.
Starting point is 00:30:36 And I think if you want to have a good time, watch like five of these and just think of how great Lou Albauno was when he was still alive. I believe he passed in 2011. It also brought me down when, as the reruns continued, they then replaced the Mario and Luigi live action things with just a couple of dudes in the Nintendo Fun Club or something like that. A bunch of weird other Canadians. But here's a clip of Mario taking a phone call from his and Luigi's cousins. And you can hear how great Albano is. Hello, Mario Brothers Plumming. You clog him, we clear him.
Starting point is 00:31:10 Hello, yes. Hey, Marienne. Marienne and Luigi. I know, hang up. Yes, Marienne. Guess what? Yeah, yeah, Lail Zadis coming over here. That's right.
Starting point is 00:31:23 I'm serious. He fixes his kitchen sake this morning. Yeah, that's right. So we invited him over here for lunch. Marien. Hello? You know, so. So there you have it.
Starting point is 00:31:35 I love how manic his performance is. He's just like waving his hands around. I assume with the name Albano, Albano, he's a very Italian man. So he's really Italianing it up by using his hands and just like moving around frantically. That's how all Italian people act, by the way. Well, and as a trained performer in wrestling, you act for the back of the rafter. It's something like when you see actors go into a wrestling. ring and they have to perform like a wrestler. They don't get the level you're supposed to play on
Starting point is 00:32:03 their like, okay, time for my regular acting. No one's reacting to this. It's like, no, you have to, you have to scream. The people in the bleachers have to be like, wow, that guy's angry. Danny Wells is very good as Luigi. He's not as high energy, but I have to imagine he was probably playing like King Lear before this and like Canada's Shakespearean theater troupe. No, he's great, though. I think he was actually on some WWF programming too. And they did some terrible skits as well. Oh, really? If you'd like to see Captain Lou Albano do some terrible skits with Vince McMahon laughing his ass off on their own version of the Tonight Show,
Starting point is 00:32:39 then on the WWE network, watch Tuesday Night Titans, TNT. You'll get to see it. I've seen a few of those and they're so bad, but I love them. So they were playing Mario and Luigi on that talk show? No, it was him and his Albano character with Danny Wells playing a different character. And I got to say to this point before Martinette, Martinet. Danny Wells is my favorite, Luigi. And this is the first time they're leaning into the Italian thing. I mean, you can't help it with Lou Albano. But this cartoon is full of references to pasta. And in the live action segments, they're always talking about Italian food. In, I have to say, it's, at least it gives them some real character. But in rewatching it as an adult, I love the super show more than anything as a kid. But rewatching it as an adult, I'm just like, I get it. Spaghetti. I get it. Linguini. It's food. It's funny. They just had an Italian cookbook next to them when they were writing these episodes.
Starting point is 00:33:30 One, and it also, it bugged me, too, that it was so much more about Mario 2 than Super Mario Brothers, because I get that they gave them more things to play with, and more worlds and everything. But they also rarely even use, like, power-ups or anything, like fireflowers or stars. And then some were just like, no, we're in a sumo world now, and everyone's a sumo wrestler. They would just make up their own. They're in a rap world, and now they're all rappers. Yeah. It was bizarre. But yes,
Starting point is 00:33:58 check, like I said, check out those live action segments. There are a lot of fun in a super goofy way, and it will show you just how great Lou Albano was when he was alive.
Starting point is 00:34:06 Yo, you're in for a treat, so hang on to you see. Get ready for adventure and remarkable feats. You'll meet coopers and troopers, the princess and the others.
Starting point is 00:34:14 Hanging with the plumbers, you'll be hooked on the brothers to the bridge. Hey, folks, take a word of advice from your old pal Bob. It's never a good look when you untuck a long and bulky dress shirt. You may think it makes you look casual, but you end up looking like a total mess. That is why untuck it makes shirts specifically designed to be worn untuck. That's right.
Starting point is 00:34:53 A casual shirt that's not too long and not too short. It's just right. These shirts are designed so well, GQ Magazine calls them perfection. Untucket shirts are a go-to for any occasion from casual to dressy, and not only do they look good, they feel great. And if you're a woman wishing you can have one of these, well, Untucket now make shirts for women, too. Shirts for her that are casual, versatile, and designed to last. If this sounds good to you, log on to Untucket.com and check out all the new arrivals. And you can use the promo code Retronauts for 20% off your entire purchase.
Starting point is 00:35:25 And if you'd rather do your shopping in person, you can also. visit one of Untuckett's over 25 retail locations across the country. So stop hiding your shirt with your pants. And your pants with your shirt, it's disgusting. Go to untucket.com, your solution to perfecting casual. Use the promo code Retronauts for 20% off savings if you were a first-time customer. That is, UNT-U-C-K-I-T-I-com and the promo code Retronauts to get 20% off if you're a first-time customer. If you like Retronauts, you're going to love the Jordan Harbinger Show on Podcast 1.
Starting point is 00:35:57 Along with Jason DePhilippo, Jordan taps into the wisdom of the world's top performers, from intelligence operatives to legendary musicians, iconic classic writers to visionary changemakers, to teach you the strategies and insights of the most successful people to use in your everyday life. Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show every week on Podcast One or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service. Watch more than 100 TV channels and thousands of movies on demand all completely free. Pluto TV never asks for a critic. card. You don't even need to sign up to watch for free. Pluto TV is the easy and
Starting point is 00:36:30 completely legal way to watch your favorite TV shows and hit movies for free. So what are you waiting for? Never pay for TV again by downloading Pluto TV. You can download Pluto TV for free on all of your favorite devices today, including your phone, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, smart TVs, PlayStation, and anywhere else you stream. Hey guys, it's never a good look when you untuck a long bulky dress shirt. You may think it makes you look casual, but more than likely it makes you look sloppy. That's why Untucket makes shirts specifically designed to be worn untucked. It's a casual shirt that's not too long and not too short.
Starting point is 00:37:02 It's just right. Their shirts designed so well, GQ calls them perfection. Untucket shirts are a go-to for any occasion from casual to dressy. And not only do they look good, they feel great. Ladies, you're in luck too. Untucket makes shirt for women now. Shirts for her that are casual, versatile, and designed to last. So log on to Untucket.com and check out all the new arrivals.
Starting point is 00:37:21 Use the promo code Retronauts for 20% off your entire purchase. You can also visit one of Untuckets more than 25 retail locations across the country, so stop hiding your shirt with your pants and your pants with your shirt. Go to Untucket.com. U-N-T-U-C-K-I-T-I-T-I-T-I-T-I-T-C-I-T-R-E-R-E-T-R-E-R-E-T-R-E-R-E-T-S for 20% savings if you're a first-time customer. Holy Canoli, kids, I'm Mario, and I'm telling you, if you're not watching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, you're going to turn into a gumba. Don't be the last on your block to be playing with pasta power.
Starting point is 00:38:03 Tune in for the wildest weekday fun in the universe. Join me, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad. We're going to kick some Cooper. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Afternoons before in Channel 43's Kid's Land. With Domino's week-long carry-out deal, you can carry out large three-topping pizzas and now, medium-thre-topping handmade pan pizzas for $7.99 each.
Starting point is 00:38:27 It's Pantastic news. Cut, cut. Puns? You mean pans? Calling all panatics for two layers of cheese on crispy golden crust. So grab your panty packs, because Domino's large three-topping pizzas and medium-thropping handmade pan pizzas are $7.99 each. It's pandemonium.
Starting point is 00:38:44 Fantastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Price's participation and charges may vary. The next cartoon is called It is the most advertorial title for a cartoon ever. The Adventures of Super Mario Brothers 3. It's like the Adventures of Product. Yes. The Adventures of the product we want you to buy. But I was rarely ever more excited for the premiere of a Saturday morning cartoon
Starting point is 00:39:43 than this one. because the ad like because they took a year off between not it didn't take a year off but because there was a year break between the Japanese and American release of Super Mario 3 they could plan a huge ad campaign for the launch of it and that involved at the same time the game was launching with tons of ads in my face I also got this cartoon show ad and the McDonald's food so I was just like oh my god Mario 3 is the ultimate thing that has ever happened and in that one they've changed I definitely noticed Mario's voice was different, but I really, what I like for the better was that they finally colored Mario's hair to be brown instead of matching black with his mustache as they did in Super Show. This is probably my next to call him my least favorite Mario because he, I mean, he doesn't okay job, but he's just sort of like, yeah, Luigi, let's do this. Yeah. And it's not even, it's actually not even that New Yorkie. There's like a little tiny bit of it. But this guy actually, his name is Walker Boone. He's not really a voice. actor. I was looking at his IMDB. He mainly just does TV roles. Weird. Yeah. So I don't know how he fell into doing this. I also feel like they just cheaped out and we're like, hey, we're not paying for this celebrity Lou Albano anymore, especially if he's not on screen and live action. Yeah, that's true. Boy, I wish they would have kept him, but you're right, he was probably too expensive.
Starting point is 00:41:01 I mean, we didn't even mention, do the Mario. His song, like that is in children's of the 80s minds forever. You can watch him getting whacked in the crotch with his own tool belt over and over again. It looks very painful. But yes, I think this cartoon is the quote-unquote best of the American cartoons because it was pretty faithful to the games themselves, although all of the Kupa kids have different names because they didn't know what the names would be because they were made up by the American localization team. So people weren't talking to each other when they were making this cartoon. But, oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah, but I mean, Deek did their best and they knew what all the worlds were in it. So it felt very much more like my instruction manual came to
Starting point is 00:41:41 life watching that show, especially in the opening credits, the digitized effect they put over it to make it look 8-bit. I really like that. The title card would always be over footage of a world map from the game. And as a kid, that was a huge novelty. Like, they're showing a game on TV for like three seconds. So, yeah, Walker Boone would also play Mario in the Super Mario World cartoon, which is, I mean, they're just like, let's just do the Flintstones, but worse.
Starting point is 00:42:06 That was so bad. That was finally when there was a Mario cartoon that was too bad. for me. I was, I also just, NBC was not my Saturday morning spot. Well, that was their last year of having Saturday morning cartoons. Yeah. Well, you, how can you, they were so stuck in the past with their Saturday morning programming compared to the sexy and 90s Fox Kids. Yeah. This Mario in Dinoland with Yoshi basically being Dino. No, actually, not even being Dino, being the original Dino who speaks. I forgot about that. That's gross. I don't like that. But here's Walker Boone. talking with Luigi, and I don't know who does his voice either. You're not taking over any land, you box of Cooper. What? I'm my friends and turn Prince Hugo to Poodle back into Prince Hugo to Huge or else.
Starting point is 00:42:54 Or else what, plumber? Just let him go, and I'll come back Tuesday and tell you. Grab them, Kupelings. So that was Mario talking to Kupa. I got to say the Kuba voice was consistent across all three American cartoons, and I love it. I think it's my favorite Kupa voice. He is great. just recently passed away. Harvey Atkin, I believe his name was. Oh, that's a set, man, it's a real, like, death. This episode is a graveyard, by the way. It's haunted. But, yeah, no, that Mario is just so like nothing. It's just like, hey, I'm the star. I got nothing interesting. And there's not enough of the, of the authentic Italian that Albano brought to the role. Yeah, and that he had lived as much of a life either. Like, you could tell, you can, you can, you can hear the miles of living that Lou is done. You can hear all the booze that's travel.
Starting point is 00:43:41 down his throat and the cigarettes that have passed his lungs. But that's why we had great voices in cartoons back then. Now they're all dead. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, in the lessened cigarette consumption of people, you just don't get as many good Selma Diamond-type voices. It's true. Or your Doris growls of the world. Okay. So speaking of inauthenticity, here's a question for you, Henry. What if we got a man with a strong cockney accent to play Mario in a movie? And the answer is Bob Hoskins in the Super Mario Brothers movie, which he can considers also he's dead, which he considers his great, his worst role ever. Greatest shame. It was, there's been a million great stories told about how terrible that
Starting point is 00:44:22 production was and what a mistake it was. One of the best is that Bob Hoskins didn't know was based on a car video game until his kid said like, oh, you're Mario? Yeah, he didn't do it for his kid, by the way. He was, obviously he was trading in on his Roger Rabbit, you know, prestige. And like, oh, he can be in a kid's movie. And also, he is so good in Roger Rabbit. It wasn't until someone told me that I found out he was not an American. Although, if you go back, his accent in that movie is like no accent that ever existed. But it's great. Pay five, five cents to ride the trolley. Roger. Yeah, no, it's, he's one of the greatest actors ever. I loved him and everything. Like, for example, he actually kind of plays a evil Mario type guy in Brazil. Right, yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:08 It's the plumber and fix it guy. Maybe that's where they got the idea. Yeah. I mean, in Roger Rabbit, he is just sort of this sort of straight man to Roger. But at the end, when he has to do that whole slapstick routine, it is so good. I want to watch Roger Rabbit now. Well, and so it was, that's a bankable star you cast in there since they couldn't get Danny DeVito. But they couldn't get Danny DeVito. But Tom Hanks wanted to do Mario. He wanted to be Mario. But this was pre-Philadelphia Tom Hanks. And they're like, your career's in the gutter, Tom Hanks. Get out of here. Get out of your bosom, buddy. You'll never win anything. And Philadelphia would come out that year, 1990. But let's hear Bob Hoskins as Mario, and again, he's sort of doing his Eddie Valiant voice. Luigi, we got a broken dishwasher at the Riverfront Cafe. You know what that means? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:54 We got Mike. Oh, Mario, Mario, right now, a miraculous world. This guy just found out that he was in another dimension. The only thing miraculous I know is that we're still eating. So that's Mario. You know, not bad. I mean, he's doing it. Also on that set, he and John Liguizomi.
Starting point is 00:46:11 were drunk a lot because that's the only way to soothe their misery of being in this awful movie they knew would fail and embarrass them. Well, then he broke his hand during the movie. They have to hide a cast on his left hand through a lot of it. That is true. So look for that in your 4K Blu-ray. The funniest thing to me and posthumously for him is that when they've interviewed John Likizamo, who seems like a nice guy, but also rather annoying, but he seems like a good guy.
Starting point is 00:46:38 I mean his character, at least in the 90s, was a very annoying one. So he'll do interviews for just about anything. And so I've seen him like twice do a sit-down thing for fans of the Super Mario movie to celebrate some anniversary. And he is having to be so nice about it. Oh, Bob, me and him, we were great friends. And I'm sure he loved to see all you guys celebrating this. And I just am thinking like, no, he doesn't want. to be remembered by anyone.
Starting point is 00:47:10 So even though John Leguizamo is a nice guy, I'm sorry, even though he's annoying, he can also be nice to Super Mario Brothers movie fans. And there are fans of this movie somehow. I mean, there are lots of people that have websites devoted to it. I believe online, you can actually, the that clip was from a cut of the movie
Starting point is 00:47:26 like redone by fans. So I'm not sure if it's better. In fact, we did a movie episode about this movie in like 2012. If you search the archives and archive.org, you find me talking about it six years ago. But yeah, we talked a lot about this, But the next voice is from the cursed CDI deal, where Phillips was allowed to sully the good reputation of Nintendo characters.
Starting point is 00:47:45 And we've all seen the, I'm so hungry, I can eat an Octarok and all of that garbage from these Zelda games. But I think the Hotel Mario ones don't get enough play online in terms of being mean. YouTube poop needs to do more. Yeah. I mean, they do a lot. I think the YouTube poops, and even those are old now, but they did a lot with Hotel Mario, but I still don't see that reference as much. So Mario's voice in this one is pretty bad, but it's done by a real voice. actor. I just assumed it was like a Phillips employer, an employee of the company who made this game, because those Zelda voice actors don't sound like voice actors to me at all. But this guy has not done anything super notable. His name is Mark Grau. But if you look at IMDB, he's done a ton of voice acting roles in video games since 2002. So it's really weird. 1994, he does Mario and Hotel Mario. Nothing. And then 2002, he's in a ton of games even up till today. So I don't know what happened in that eight years. Maybe he needed a time to heal.
Starting point is 00:48:38 But let's hear, let's hear his take on Mario, and it's not good. Nice of the princess to invite us over for a picnic, eh, Luigi? I hope you made lots of spaghetti. Luigi, look. It's from Bowser. Dear pesky plumbers, the cooplings and I have taken over the mushroom kingdom. The princess is now a permanent guest at one of my seven Cooper hotels. okay that's great so way way too deep like hey luigi hey well it also feels very first takey
Starting point is 00:49:15 yes it's true i'm guessing they phillips was probably like wee's paid for two hours of studio time get this done now but i mean even though uh lu albano was a big guy his mario voice is like thin and reedy and like like high not high pitch but he was kind of screechy you know and a non-insulting way, by the way, but it's like, hey, Luigi, it's off-putting. Mario should be, like, this fun little, like, happy guy. Yeah, well, I think, I think most casting directors, they didn't see past the Brooklyn thing. When they see Brooklyn Plummer through the American psyche that has a specific sound to that. Oh, yeah, Mario cuts off people's thumbs. Which, now that just feels like such an old school thing. It's just like, hey, I'm de plumber here. What do we do? Like, you'd never meet a plumber
Starting point is 00:50:03 who sounds like that. That's not that person, if they ever existed, hasn't existed for a long time. It is funny. One of the few times I actually had a layover in New York or was in New York for something. I would at least hear one guy like that in the airport like, hey, you busted my balls over here.
Starting point is 00:50:19 Like, where did you come from? There are still people like you? That's awesome. So yeah, that was Mario from Hotel Mario. And now we get into... Toast, toast. And now we get into the modern era of Mario, which started in 1995. So let's talk about Charles Martinette.
Starting point is 00:50:37 Sorry, Martinet. It's going to be a brain fart for me whenever I say this. But he has been the voice of Mario for 20-plus years. And he actually lives in our fine city of San Francisco. And actually, we live in Berkeley. But he went to UC Berkeley. Hell yeah. So we can probably find him in the city if we look hard enough.
Starting point is 00:50:55 The next time I see him, I'm going to be like, I love Berkeley. What's your favorite part to Berkeley? Where'd you'd like to eat at? And then make him answer in the voice of Waluigi. it. Well, I also do like that Martinet, you would think he would keep his opinions to himself on Twitter representing Mario, but he has
Starting point is 00:51:11 had some very, like, strong political anti-Trump tweets as well. So he's living out loud that Charles Martinet. Nintendo can't fire him. He voices all of their characters. So he auditioned to play Mario at trade shows in 1990. And normally, at
Starting point is 00:51:27 a trade show of this era, there would be a costume character that a person would get into, like a giant Sonic or a giant balk. But Nintendo was ahead of the game and that they had a sort of CGI motion capture puppet that it would be a floating Mario head on a screen and Martinet, Martin A, would be
Starting point is 00:51:43 hiding somewhere and he can control the character and talk to people and there'd be a little video capture so you can see who's walking by and you can look at footage of old trade shows and see him and actually I've been to E3 quite a few times and he was there as the floating Mario head and people would ask him where Luigi was and he'd answer them so it was cool to see him doing that like 20 years later
Starting point is 00:52:01 Yeah, the stories he told of that original one where they're like hey where's Luigi like he's it just off a screen make the spaghetti and I was I was also treated to that one year I believe it was the last three I went to in 2014 I was Nintendo didn't do their it was their first year not doing their traditional press conference so instead every all the press people are there at the booth two hours early and then to kill time before Reggie would come out and say like it's all about game Before he did that, then a digital Mario was on one of their screens, and it was Martin A, like, off the world saying, like, oh, who's it there? Oh, that's a Brian Cresente. He does a good writing about to me. Hey.
Starting point is 00:52:47 It is kind of weird. We'll hear a lot of this in these upcoming clips. It's kind of weird to hear Mario say more than Let's Ago or Mamma Mia. When he's saying, like, full sentences and giving you his opinions about things, you're like, well, this is Mario's voice, but he doesn't really talk this much. Mario doesn't think this much about things. So when auditioning for this role, Martin A was like, well, I'm going to be talking to children. And I don't want to do like the gruff plumber voice that most people do for this character. I want to do like the high pitch voice. So that's what he went with. Nintendo liked it. And it was kind of cool that they were like, this guy is at all our trade shows.
Starting point is 00:53:21 He should just be the voice of Mario. And that is what happened. So before Mario 64, where it's presumed he debuted as Mario an official video game for him, He was actually in two edutainment titles as Mario. Good Lord. Talking a lot. The first one is called Mario's Game Gallery. And this is not very edutainmentical, if you want to call it that.
Starting point is 00:53:41 It is really just like a collection of, again, public domain games like Checkers, Parchizi, Backgammon. Sorry, not Partcheezy. That's way too complicated for this. It's Checkers Go Fish, Backgammon, Dominoes, and Yacht, which is a dice game, I guess. I've never seen it before. Playing, I mean, playing games on your computer. was quite fascinating in the mid-90s the idea that my computer could play a card game
Starting point is 00:54:06 against me? And in all of these games you're playing against Mario so Mario is doing a lot of talking and here is him in the go-fish segments and again this is the first time Martinet debuted in a video game as Mario. I'm gonna go first. Do you have any Ouijis? Isn't that great? Wow, that's great. It's slightly lower
Starting point is 00:54:27 than he normally plays him but you definitely hear he is Mario right there and we also have in this game Leslie Swan who was the first voice of Peach and she's not a voice actor I think she was like a manager at Nintendo Treehouse the localization department but her her Peach
Starting point is 00:54:44 voice is very like Mario come to this I'm captured Mario it's very very like airy and high pitched and low energy but she is in she is in the Go Fish game as well and it's definitely her do you have any little toddies Mario go fish
Starting point is 00:54:59 I'm a guess I'm a fish And he really plays up the Italian I'm a guess I'm a fish Yeah, yep, yeah I'm inside Hey listen there's a meme on the internet And it's true You can always do it
Starting point is 00:55:12 An Italian accent It's never racist It's true And Prince approved From Beyond the grave One of many dead people In this episode by the way Martin A still alive
Starting point is 00:55:21 And doing doing okay from what I hear Wishing you well And here's a clip of Mario at a bar Please give me your big booze There you go Whoa It's you know the ghosts Obviously
Starting point is 00:55:33 Oh okay You fooled me there I know I know And I really I really like this message Because it's sort of what you hear At the end of Mario 64 I'm really enjoy playing with you
Starting point is 00:55:44 And watching these videos It made me think of all the latchkey kids That are just Sitting with a fake version of Mario Mario's like I enjoy being your friend I like hanging out with you And it just kind of makes me sad a little bit Oh, it's sweet, though, in a way, too.
Starting point is 00:55:59 Mario accepts me. He'll hang out with you. Yeah. So the other game, it's sort of debuted at the same time as Mario 64, is called Mario Teaches Typing 2. The first one had no voice acting as far as I know, but this one actually integrated the floating head stuff from the trade show. Oh, even before 64. Yeah, yeah. So they got the official capture of Martinet doing some bits for them, and they'd be
Starting point is 00:56:27 little fun videos that would play before the typing segment. So you'd see him doing all of the head material like him like pretending to be like Pong. I mean, he's had 20 years to think of floating head material at these trade shows. So he does a lot of those. But here's a few of them. And a few of them are like this, did you clear this song? Did you get the rights to this? Um, no. Let's hear one of them. I have, I have a few of these actually. Let's hear this one first. Can I sing a song for you? pizza pie that's amore when an eel lunges out and he takes a bite of your snout that's amoree get it amore ill i say it funny he's kind of more like elmo in this in this game he's getting closer to like you said uh the last game he was a little lower register this is sort of the higher
Starting point is 00:57:19 register mario sixty four maria i also love that he's just he's an old he's an old jokester There's a little bit of vaudeville And Martinet's Mario But he still knows all the hip references, listen Oh no I'm a fallen And I can't get up Oh God
Starting point is 00:57:35 That is my impression Of American advertising Thank you very much Thank you Thank you It's cute I mean If you grew up in the 90s
Starting point is 00:57:44 You I mean everything referenced The medic alert bracelet Or whatever The Life Alert thing That was extra funny to me Because that breaks A Nintendo rule
Starting point is 00:57:51 Of him Recognizing a country or just like American advertising. Like Mario doesn't isn't aware of those things. He lives in the mushroom kingdom. And I think I don't have any more close, but I think I forgot to play one of the, one of the clips from the Go Fish game. It's very cute.
Starting point is 00:58:06 I'm going to go first. Do you have any Ouijis? I might have played that already, but I like him, I like him saying Ouijis. Weeges? That is the creation. I think his way of saying that is what created the Ouija meme on Twitter as well, like calling Luigi Ouigi WEEGE W-E-E-E-G-E-E-E-E-E.
Starting point is 00:58:25 And I believe that's actually represented in the Mario and Luigi RPGs where when you switch between them, Luigi would go Mario and he'll go Luigi. Yeah, well... By the way, I lied, we're still doing Mario Impressions throughout this episode.
Starting point is 00:58:37 Well, that, in the Mario and Luigi RPGs, that's one of my favorite Martinae acting. I don't want to get too ahead of things, but that's my favorite of his acting because it's not even words. He doesn't say words. Yeah, and in some ways you can view it as insensitive. It's just like, well,
Starting point is 00:58:50 Italian's a bunch of garbage. gibberish, but it's like, I like that it's like, it would feel wrong if these characters just spoke full sentences, so they do the, uh, the gibberish version of Italian. Or in Rabbids, they're very, a previously mentioned rabbit's crossover, rabbits characters talk all the time, but Mario and Luigi just go like, hmm, yeah, ooh, they just make sort of the non, non-word reaction noises. Same with Peach going like, oh, yeah, I think there was probably some sort of contractual rule, like these characters will not speak in your game.
Starting point is 00:59:22 Yeah, though that does make me wonder, like, what about it universal? Because they're going to need to have Mario give safety instructions about how to properly put on a seatbelt and watch after your kids. It might be Wario doing it then. Mario talks a lot more. But, yeah, that's sort of the end of our episode.
Starting point is 00:59:38 I have to say, though, it was fun to trace the history of the timeline of how Mario's voice changed over the passing decades. But I like what they settled on. And I said on an episode of Retronauts, I think, like, three years ago, the Mario 64 episode, that when I heard Mario's voice for the first time, Mario's video game voice, I wasn't like, well, this is wrong. Well, this is a weird choice. I was like, oh, that's what he sounds like now. I don't know. How did you feel about that, Henry, when you first heard it? I was very accepting of it. For some reason, I could compartmentalize of like, well, that was the animated series Mario voice, but this is Mario in the game. Like, so I think it helped that at least with my exposure to it. I'd never heard Mario in a game. have any other voice in Charles Martin A, so I was very accepting of it. And it also, I think,
Starting point is 01:00:26 helped that my introduction to his voice was Mario 64. So I'm just so dazzled by one of the most important video games ever that it also makes me just accept like, yeah, this is Mario's voice. And I also am really impressed the Nintendo of Japan loves him too. So that's Mario's international voice. In every region, he's that Mario. That is great. I mean, it helps that Mario doesn't speak a lot of English, but also Nintendo, whenever I play a new Mario game, it's like, oh, you re-recorded new you can't just go back to
Starting point is 01:00:56 the library, I guess. Another of my favorites, well, one of my least favorite Martin A uses was when they remade the games for advance and they had to end up Mario. But one of my favorites, when they announced 3D World and showed off 3D World
Starting point is 01:01:12 for the first time, they said how like they to Japanese people, a cat goes nighon yon yon and so then they hear martinay they told martinay and the other actors okay do cat noises and so he's like meow meow meow and when they heard meow miymodo and the directors of the game they're just like we love that meow that's so silly say meow all the time so then they like they would pose for things with charles martin and do his meow meow sound with the cat costumes were so much fun in that game yes it's still a good
Starting point is 01:01:48 game folks check it out the greatest they got to put it on switch since so few people played it i i am anti uh put everything on switch but i i will agree with you there just put all put all the we you stuff on switch all we you gave should be on swish all the we do stuff that doesn't need a second screen which is most of it yeah it's most of the game so yeah thanks for joining us folks hope you had a good time with this fun little idea i had and uh to wrap up i've been one of i've actually been your only host hunter you're just a guest on this episode second class citizen damn i've been your host bob mackie uh you can find me on twitter as bob Servo. And I'll tell you what, this entire podcast Retronaut is supported by Patreon and great listeners like you give us money to do this. And it supports everything we do from storage space to rental space to our studio. Everything we do is fan supported. We make a little on ads, but it's mostly fan support that helps us do this. And we've been doing it for almost 13 years now. So thanks a lot for helping us out. And if you want to help us out, go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And for three bucks a month, you can get every episode a week ahead of time and ad free. I know some of you. I know some of you.
Starting point is 01:02:48 you like my underwear ads, but not all of you. So you can pay money and still listen to those ads. It's completely fine. Ads for Bob's underwear. Yes, I will not touch your underwear, by the way. But yes, that is the ideal way to listen to Retronauts. And you'll get the, you know, advanced episodes, they'll sound better, no ads. It's the best way to do it.
Starting point is 01:03:04 And you can get in on the great conversations happening on Patreon. So, yes, check it out at patreon.com slash Retronauts. And I also do a ton of podcasts with Henry, which you probably know about. But if you don't, Henry, it's a mouthful, but we do Talking Simpsons. What a cartoon. have the Talking Simpsons Patreon. Can you tell the Retron's listeners about all of that? Well, at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons
Starting point is 01:03:24 if you sign up for $5 a month, you can hear every episode of those a week ahead of time and ad-free. You could hear our upcoming episodes of Talking Simpsons, and you can hear our upcoming episodes of What a Cartoon, where we have covered such wide range of things as King of the Hill, Stephen Universe, Cowboy
Starting point is 01:03:40 Bebop, Batman the animated series, Spider-Man the Animated Series, and tons more stuff, and even G.I. Joe, with Retronauts co-host Jeremy Parrish. Yes, Jeremy has been on a few episodes of ours, including Talking Futurama. And there's an older exclusive interview on our Patreon that I would love to send people towards which, if you like licensed games talk in hearing how acclaim made their trash back in the 90s, we talked with Paul Provenzano about his work on the Simpsons video games in the early 90s and to mid-90s, as well as he even talks a bit about working on Alien vs. Predator and the, acclaim television show
Starting point is 01:04:20 the power hour, I believe it was called. Oh, video power. Video power. That was it, yes. So, check that one out and a ton of other cool stuff on our Patreon. If you don't want to sign it for the Patreon just yet, at least check out Talking Simpsons or What a Cartoon on wherever you listen to podcasts, and I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter.
Starting point is 01:04:38 That's right, Henry. Doctors recommend you support both of our patrons. It's the healthiest way to live. But yes, we'll see you on Monday with another full-length episode of Routronauts. Thanks for listening, folks. Now I'm set up in business with my brother Luigi. Parmins that trade into ways easy. We started having trouble back in 81 when I first ran into it don't get calm. So to help me to relax and lengthen trim, I work on tennis and I go swing.
Starting point is 01:05:09 When we y'all walk more, can I say Super Mario and the U.S. of A. With Domino's week-long carry-out deal, you can carry out large three-topping pizzas, and now, medium-thre-topping handmade pan pizzas for $7.99 each. It's PAN-tastic news. Cut, cut. Puns? You mean pans? Calling all panatics for two layers of cheese on crispy golden crust.
Starting point is 01:05:44 So grab your panty packs, because Domino's large, large, three-topping pizza. and medium three-topping handmade pan pizzas are 799 each. It's pandemonium. Bandastico. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Crisis participation in charges may vary. The Mueller report.
Starting point is 01:06:00 I'm Edonohue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it.
Starting point is 01:06:25 In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder.
Starting point is 01:06:56 I'm Ed Donahue.

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