Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 173: The Many Voices of Mario
Episode Date: October 5, 2018When 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!
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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
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.
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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,
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.
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.
Hanging with the plumbers,
you'll be hooked
on the brothers to the bridge.
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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.
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.
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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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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Crisis participation in charges may vary.
The Mueller report.
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.
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.
I'm Ed Donahue.