 Well, folks, today we have a bit of sad, but probably bitter sweet news in the end, dealing with the voice of Mario and really the future culture at Nintendo, I suppose, or at least the ending of an era. Before I jump in, just a quick reminder that we're on our road to 150,000 subscribers. So I appreciate you dropping a like, subscribe to the channel and wringling that ding-a-ling so you get notified of all of our future videos. But let's just not waste any more time. And we're gonna jump right into this tweet that was put up by Nintendo of America and all of Nintendo's social media accounts because this is a monumental shift at Nintendo. So we say we have a message for fans of the Mushroom Kingdom, please take a look. Charles Martinay has been the original voice of Mario in Nintendo games for a long time, as far back as Super Mario 64. Charles is now moving into the brand new role of Mario Ambassador. With this transition, he'll be stepping back from recording character voices for our games. But he'll continue to travel the world, sharing the joy of Mario and interacting with you all. It has been an honor working with Charles to help bring Mario to life for so many years. And we want to thank and celebrate him. Please keep an eye out for a special video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Charles himself, which we will post at a future date, which is really a nice thing to see Charles Martinay and Miyamoto get together for this. Now, obviously him no longer recording voice lines doesn't mean that we're never gonna hear Charles in a future game. They've been reusing a lot of his voice lines over the last decade, only coming in to record new lines here and there. Well, my good friend of the channel, Paul Gale Networks, I hear mentioning some stuff. He's met Charles personally. And so Charles Martinay is truly a one of a kind. It's been a pleasure hearing him voice Mario, Luigi and more for three decades. When we first met in 2002, it's been nothing but memorable, wonderful memories. Thank you. Here's to your new role. And some people might think that maybe Nintendo shoved him out the door. I don't know that that's necessarily the case. Well, we do know that Charles Martinay is senior in social media looking pretty excited about his new role saying my new adventure begins. You all are number one in my heart, obviously referencing a famous Wario line. I, a Wario? I don't know. It's one of the two anyways. He's voiced a lot of Nintendo characters over the years. And it's truly the end of an era. I think some of us could see the end of this era coming for starters, Charles Martinay isn't young. He's been doing this a long time and it was always inevitable that his voice was gonna end up being replaced for Mario. Now, is it likely who's ever doing, who's gonna be recording new lines in the future? Is they're gonna try to mimic what Charles Martinay set up? Probably because that's what happens. Voices have changed in a number of key roles over the year. As an example, the voice of Kermit is not the original voice actor, right? But the people who voiced Kermit today, Kermit the Frog, mimic the original voice so you can't really tell the difference. So I do think that we're gonna see that sort of be the direction so it still might sound like Charles, but not. And this also might be put out there because Super Mario Bros. Wonder is coming out later this year and Super Mario Bros. Wonder has voice acting in it. And while we haven't really heard the Mario characters talk yet, we've only heard them, the flowers and the bells or whatever talk. I do think that the characters might talk a bit and with them talking a bit, the voice might sound a little different and Nintendo wants to get ahead of that because it's probably somebody else voicing the characters. Now obviously nobody can replace Charles Martinay outright. The pure joy he brought to the role was infectious and anyone who ever met him at various conferences and cons would know that Charles Martinay, he just brightens the room when he walks in. So you're never gonna be able to replace the true love of voicing these characters that Charles Martinay brought, but you can still honor him by doing your best to mimic or maybe they decide to take Mario and his friends in a new direction with the voices. That's obviously up to Mario. We saw them do a new direction with the Mario movie where they had Charles Martinay in their voicing his father, but Mario's voice by Chris Pratt and it was just a very different direction for all of the Mario characters. And maybe Nintendo is deciding it's time to get a new voice. So maybe Mario is gonna end up sounding different moving forward because maybe they want Mario to talk more. That could be something as well. Maybe Mario is gonna start having full voice acting at some point. Maybe we get a sequel to Mario RPG someday and it's full voice acting. And yeah, maybe Martinay wasn't the best person for that role. I don't know, but I am both saddened today but also happy to watch one of the greats basically ride off into the sunset. They're not firing Charles Martinay to be clear that he is moving into a new role as basically a brand ambassador. If you don't know what that is, it's pretty much what Shigeru Miyamoto does. Shigeru Miyamoto essentially runs around and is just a marketing arm for Nintendo. Now obviously Shigeru Miyamoto is a bit of a bigger name than Charles Martinay, but a huge chunk of the Nintendo fan base knows who Charles is, will recognize him and he's just gonna be keep doing what he's been doing for the most part, I feel. And that's traveling around various conferences and various Nintendo events. He'll do the voice here and there, but he's just there to really advertise Nintendo and bring a smile to people's faces. And that's really what Shigeru Miyamoto does a lot. Now, I don't wanna diminish Shigeru Miyamoto. He was directly involved in Pikmin 4's development. He also was directly involved in the making of the Mario movie. So obviously Shigeru Miyamoto still does more than just being a brand ambassador, but it's what a majority of his day-to-day is, right? He's there to be a marketing arm for Nintendo. And look, I'm not gonna sit here and beat around the bush. I'm gonna miss the guy. I know he's not dead or anything and probably gonna be around for many, many years to come and I'll still hear him do his Wahoo's and all this at various events. I just, you know, it's one of those things that this guy has been voicing Mario since my childhood. And there's something about the voice of Mario himself no longer being the voice of Mario that it just kinda tugs at the heartstrings a little bit. I have a really big appreciation for voice actors in general and Charles Bartonet was truly one of a kind. I mean, to be hired full-time on a lifetime contract by Nintendo, that's what he had, is insane. That just doesn't happen to voice actors, so that's how much Nintendo valued his contributions to Mario and I just, I'm forever gonna be grateful to some of the oral bliss memories that he provided to me through all of the various characters that he voiced. Now guys, I just have to say thank you Charles for everything you've done. Maybe we can reach out to you and try to get you to come on the podcast sometime and share some of your fondest memories of voicing Mario over the years or voicing any of the characters and other games that you've also voiced them in. And I gotta say, I hope Nintendo announces who the new voice is at some point. Maybe it's gonna be multiple people voicing these characters. We're not gonna have like the same person voice, you know, Wario, Waluigi and Mario. Maybe it'll be other people along the way. I don't know, but I hope that Nintendo at least gives attention to the new voice actors and I hope that as fans, if Nintendo does eventually give attention to these new voice actors for the role that we treat them with respect. These voice actors are not the reason Charles Bartonet has essentially been retired. It's he's getting older and he obviously agreed to this change and this is what's gonna have moving forward. So I hope that we give the same respect we give Charles, you know, to these new new voice actors. I know they're gonna have to earn our respect through their work, but I just wanna make sure that we're being fair and not being overly critical of it not sounding like Charles because at some point when they do eventually stop using Charles's lines and start re-recording everything, you know, you're gonna have to get used to him maybe not sounding quite the same and that's okay. Life is full of change. Thank you guys so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.