The funny thing about people being performatively concerned about the possibility that people will draw weird porn of Princess Peach as an anthropomorphic elephant because of that one powerup in Super Mario Bros. Wonder is that I'm about 99% sure I saw weird porn of Princess Peach as an anthropomorphic elephant like a decade ago. That particular pachyderm has already sailed!
Nintendo has announced that Charles Martinet, the original voice of Mario, will step back from recording voices for Mario games and move into the new role of “Mario Ambassador”.
Message from Nintendo:
Charles Martinet 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 will 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.
Message from Charles Martinet:
My new Adventure begins! You are all Numba One in my heart! #woohoo !!!!!!!
I don't really expect self-labelled gaming journalists to be well informed about, well, basically anything, but it's kind of wild to me to see all these articles talking like it's a matter of speculation whether the level design of Super Mario Bros. Wonder is in conscious dialogue with the speedrunning community when several of its challenge stage mechanics are direct, 1:1 lifts of the central gimmicks of specific Super Mario World romhacks.