Mario Ambassador Charles Martinet Nintendo Live 2024 Q&A

Charles Marinet is really cool, can’t go but that’a awesome for those who can!

It could be nice to meet up with what seems to be the most friendly person on this planet. But I have no plans on going to Australia at the moment. Thanks for checking though XD

Make us proud, Mr. Martinet.

It would be cool to attend and meet him in person. Of course I would also want to take a photo with some characters.

This is almost like a soft retirement/ reward for years of service with Nintendo-- He gets to travel and still have fun in the way of Nintendo. Not bad at all.

@Anti-Matter you say that every time Martinet is brought up, you need a new thing big guy

Let's-a-go to the Antipodes!

@N00BiSH
Again, that's my opinion about Charles Martinet.
Not everyone will be OMG I'M SO EXCITED with Charles Martinet voice as Mario.

@Anti-Matter I'm not saying you can't have your opinion, I'm just saying you don't have to bring it up everytime.

I do live south of Sydney, but I'm unsure if it's worth the hassle to go. The website says there are more activities than just games, but is it really just characters walking around and people playing Switch? I might still register.

@Anti-Matter martinet was fine as the video game voice. No problem there. I would probably find it grating if he spoke in full sentences for 90 minutes. I also wasn't a fan of Chris Pratt either as Mario. Everyone but Chris fit their respective rolls well in my opinion. Ill leave it at that.

@Anti-Matter Don't worry! I'll go say hi to Charles Martinet tomorrow especially just for you at Nintendo Live!

Poor man doesn’t realise he’s being used. I see no reason why he couldn’t keep voicing Mario games.

@PinderSchloss He can't keep voicing Mario because he's getting old and it's becoming harder and harder for him to voice the character. That's why they got a new voice actor.

I hate the whole idea of "Nintendo bad, they're replacing him because they don't care about him and only used him!!!!" since it ignores one crucial detail. The fact that voices change when people age. Tom Kenny can barely do the voice for Spongebob because he's getting old. Charles' voices for Mario, Luigi, and Wario and Waluigi are basically blending together because he's getting too old to do high pitched voices anymore. Most of the Mario titles that Charles voiced for before the end of voicing for the character used a ton of old clips from previous games, with very few new clips recorded. All because he was getting up there in age. Luigi's Mansion 3 is a case example of why he's pretty much retiring.

I also hate how people think he got "fired," when he most likely decided with Nintendo to retire from the voice position. People often use the "he didn't know what the Mario Representative role was before he stepped down!" as a gotcha for why Nintendo "fired" Charles- when it was more than likely that they announced the role before he knew the details of what he'd be doing next. He didn't have to accept the role y'know. If he thought it was an insult to his legacy, he could've very well rejected it.

It was a fun day out, and I am grateful for the invitation, but it was an awfully extravagant affair only to appeal to existing Nintendo customers, and without offering anything that wasn't already readily available elsewhere.

There was no way to sample any new games. Sure, there plenty of opportunities to sample many of Nintendo's more recent AAA titles, but that was pretty much it. Even Oz Comic-Con in 2018, which Nintendo attended, featured demos of yet-released games such as Smash Ultimate and Super Mario Party.

Perhaps the most baffling part of the Live event was that there wasn't a stall for people to play Smash Ultimate.

My favourite part was the Mario Dojo, which was a three round competition for 48 players, beginning with MK8D, with 12 players proceeding to Super Mario Maker 2, and a surprise challenge pertaining to a mystery Mario game for the final four players, which was played on stage for spectators to watch. I tried about 5-6 times, but couldn't come first in a round of MK8D, including the particularly Machiavellian final occasion where I targeted a table of single digit-aged children and their non-gamer parents. I lost that one because Smart Steering was (inadvertently) turned on, ultimately costing me the game, and I didn't have the heart to pause the game and turn it off either. 😅

And it annoys me that they keep referring to Celia as some kind of "superfan" when she repeatedly demonstrated that she's barely played any Mario games. She's just some D lister that Nintendo used in a few local ads. Similarly, I very much doubt that Beyoncé would even remember what the hell Rhythm Heaven is if you asked her.

You can also occasionally see a few pixels of moi in the above video as I was sitting at the back row to the right in a red hoodie.

EDIT: They livestreamed the above video and they'll likely livestream today's conversation as well, which should be starting right now.

@PinderSchloss Lol what? If he was being used, then he surely wouldn't have signed up becoming an Ambassador in the first place

Anyways i've been saying this throughout. Nintendo can just re-use his voices that have like 5 million clips archived and it would not make any difference and the new Mario Party game is just proving that point. That said I am happy for him. I cried when the news was revealed that he would not be voicing the characters in the games anymore but Kevin isn't too bad with the voice and his voice is only going to improve.

My only concern is how would Kevin be on this as he seems a lot more quiet than Charles.

Honestly this event was a trainwreck. I wish Nintendolife would cover how bad it was to draw attention what a stuff up it was. :/

@Henchdog : Care to elaborate?

@SillyG the event was really poorly organised. The short version is: infinite queues, no food availability, barely water availability, no place to properly rest, and a lot of tired and annoyed people. I had to wait over 2 hours for my purchases. Some people only left at 7pm due to the backlog. Naturally you can imagine how many people with no water, no food, not allowed to bring in food and tons of queues due to mismanagement caused friction.

@Henchdog : All fair points. You could have left for food and returned, though you might have to wait a bit (I waited about 10 minutes) before they allow re-entry due to (supposed?) maximum occupancy laws. I just accepted that I was going to go hungry throughout (though I had a bottle of water on me)

Lack of seating was an issue though especially for older and/or disabled guests, but I found the queues to move quickly enough so as not to be too great an annoyance.

I think the shop was really clumsily handled though, and I think it could have been handled a lot better if they had stuck only to event exclusive and/or rarer items that can't easily be obtained elsewhere. Why on Earth why they selling packaged games and the like that are so readily available? (and often for less than RRP)

This could have been a fantastic opportunity to sell stuff like BOTW + DLC on a cartridge that Nintendo may not have been confident issuing wider retail releases locally, but everything else... just why?