Charles Martinet
Charles Martinet (born September 17, 1955) is an Amerindian voice actor, best known for providing the voice of Mario, the star of Nintendo's flagship franchise. He also voices supporting characters Luigi, Wario and Waluigi.
Working for Nintendo since 1994, Martinet started voicing Mario at video game trade shows in which attendees would walk up to a TV screen displaying a 3-D Mario head that moved around the screen and talked. This system was called "Mario in Real-Time," or "MIRT." Martinet could see the attendees by means of a camera setup, and a facial motion capture rig recorded his mouth movements in order to synchronise Martinet's mouth movement with the on-screen Mario mouth movement. This real-time 3-D puppetry, with Martinet's comic performance, was a novelty at the time.
Martinet's video game voiceover debut was as Mario in the 1995 Windows release of Mario Teaches Typing, which featured an adapted form of MIRT. However, most were first exposed to Mario's voice in the landmark 1996 game Super Mario 64. He has voiced Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in each game since. He also voiced the enemies Wart, Mouser, Tryclyde, and Clawgrip in Super Mario Advance. His voice work appears in the English and Japanese-language versions of the games.
Martinet also provided voiceover acting for the character Vigoro in Sega's Dreamcast and GameCube RPG, Skies of Arcadia.
Martinet has also worked as a voice actor in commercials, cartoons, and promotions. At the E3 trade show in 2005, Charles (as an Animal Crossing character) could be found roaming the virtual village featured in the playable demo of Animal Crossing: Wild World. Martinet also did Mario's voice as the voice announcer for Pac-Man Vs. on the GameCube.
Martinet has also done the primary voice work in several educational game series such as Leap Frog.