Now that we're living in a post-Chris Pratt Mario world, it's easy to get worried about the voice of the Italian plumber going forward. Some feared that the casting choice in the upcoming Mario movie was a sign that long-time voice actor, Charles Martinet, was ready to step back from the role. Or even worse, Nintendo was ready to leave him behind in favour of some younger blood, as other companies do with iconic roles such as this.

Thankfully, neither of those scenarios appear to be the case. In a Q&A at Fan Expo Canada (thanks Game Crater), Martinet reassured fans that he has no intention of stepping down from the role at all, saying: "I want to voice Mario until I drop dead".

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Martinet was responding to a fan who asked him how long he would like to keep playing Mario, and it's a pretty confident answer. It also gives the impression that he's confident Nintendo will keep him around, and the movie-swap is a one-time thing.

The 66-year-old voice actor did, however, add on that this isn't guaranteed. "If someday I think I am no longer capable of doing it, I will tell Nintendo to look into finding someone else", he said. This at least suggests that the future of Mario is in his hands, and won't be taken away from him without his agreement.

This puts Martinet and Mario in a very unique position in the gaming world. The mascot's longtime rival, Sonic, has cycled through numerous voice actors over the years, with Roger Craig Smith tapping in back in 2010. Much like Mario, he got recast with a celebrity in the movie adaptation (Ben Schwartz), but Smith still retains the role for the video game output.

The Q&A also gave fans other little Mario tidbits, spanning Martinet's three-decades in the role. He admitted that Mario's voice - which is hard to imagine him without - was invented on the spot for the audition, as he wasn't even scheduled to attend. Instead, his friend told him it was going on, and he gatecrashed it before the team could pack away. In the audition, he didn't know what to say, and just started listing Italian dishes that popped into his head. That turned out to be exactly what they were looking for, as the casting director apparently said to Shigeru Miyamoto, "we got our Mario".

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