Seen@E3: Martinet works hard for the Mario voice money
The man who gives voice to Mario, Sir Charles Martinet (not actually knighted - nor a sir), was on the E3 show floor early yesterday and doing his thing. Speaking of his thing, we wanted to know if after bringing the unmistakable sound to Mario's virtual cords for the last decade if he still gets work at the Big N.
Martinet told us he just recently did voice work for five games (not Super Mario Galaxy 2, yet) and flew out to Kyoto for three and two in Tokyo. He enthusiastically expressed that although the publisher sometimes reuses some of the voice, "most of the time it's usually a new recording." We asked if he has to do different voices for Mario in a tennis game compared to something like Galaxy. He told us, "It's always the same. It's always just right in there. They show me some actions and I go, 'OK.'"
He tells us that most of the time he goes to Nintendo's headquarters in Redmond to do his recordings and sometimes he does it from his studio at home. All in all, over the last decade plus, he's only gone between four and six months without recording the latest "Woo-hooooo" or "It's a me." Check out Martinet's name badge after the break.
