Plumber emariotus *

"Nintendo" is Japanese for betrayal! Ok, that's not true, it's Japanese for "do your best and leave luck to heaven" or something, but behold:

Above: the grim white on red of a Nintendo announcement.

Also, Chris Pratt is probably hugely expensive
and nobody wants a $90 Nintendo game.

Yup. It was announced today that Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario and Luigi for the past thirty years, is the Mario Bros. no mos. Sorry, like, "no mo?" Rhymes with bro? No? Ok fine. I didn't notice this myself, but evidently the recently released trailer for the next Mario game, Wonder, featured someone else doing Mario's voice. They've not yet announced who's taking on the role, but the good news is that it's probably not Chris Pratt, who voiced Mario in the Super Mario movie. He did a fine job in the film, but they probably need someone who's willing to do mostly this for another thirty years.

And who could forget Kane & Lynch?
Well, everyone, but I'm sure Martinet was great.

Anyway, to be clear, it's not like they fired Martinet, he's just retiring from voicing Mario, and presumably the other character he does for Nintendo. He also voiced Wario, Waluigi, Wart, and a ton of additional voices over hundreds of games for the company, but he also works for other game publishers from time to time. He did a Rachet and Clank game for Insomniac, one of the Lord of the Rings games for EA, and most notably, and something he seems to bring up a lot in interviews, he was a dragon called Paarthurnax in Skyrim. 

Anyway, he will be now be the Mario Ambassador, which is--and I'm no expert in international geopolitics--not an official ambassadorial role. He'll be more like a spokesperson for the company, and that's ok. Still though, it's going to be weird hearing someone else doing all the the "wa-hoo's," "okie-dokey's" and "mama's mia."

Farewell Mr. Ambassador, we hardly knew ye. Well, that's a lie, he's done
like hundreds of interviews. He's a delight, launching into voices like Linda Blaire
possessed by the Nintendo localization team...but best of luck to him all the same.

*like emeritus, but with Mario? I'll...I'll stop now.