Voice of Mario: Gamescom Interview

Audio transcription

"Hello to all my friends at Gamereactor, it's-a me, Mario, woohoo, you guys, you number one, wahoo! Wait a minute, wait a minute, it's Luigi's here, Gamereactor number one, hoho, thank you."

"Might be the happiest man in this business, I have to say.
How are you doing, sir?
I'm great, thank you very much.
Thrilled to be here at Gamescom, thrilled to be doing the voice of Mario for now, I think, almost 23 years."

"It's fantastic.
And you still got a smile on your face.
Yeah, every day.
You know, it's the greatest gift to do what you love to do in life, and to have people recognize you for that work is incredible."

"You know, people love Mario games, and to be a part of that, although I'm a small part compared to all the years that go into creating a game, it's a tremendous honor and a tremendous joy every day.
We were just talking before the interview started there about how you're skipping all over the world over the next week, and I mean, we see you in New York, we see you in Japan, we see you in the UK, and everywhere in between."

"Such a hard job.
No, it's so great.
I absolutely love it.
You know, I really, my life is like being Father Christmas after, you know, Unboxing Day."

"People are so wonderfully gracious and so grateful and kind and thoughtful and considerate, and it's just wonderful.
I do what I love, and people smile and enjoy it, and to receive the gift of their smiles in return is tremendous."

"I'd say then that the air miles versus the jet lag, the air miles wins out, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, you know, I absolutely love traveling because when I'm not actually working, that's what I'm doing anyway, so I get on a plane and fly."

"Is there anywhere in particular that you haven't actually been, if not necessarily on the business side of things, but somewhere in the world you wanted to go personally?
You know, there's a lot of the world I still want to explore.
I want to explore the Greek islands."

"I'd love to go to Ibiza.
I'd love to go to, let me see, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma.
I'd love to see lots of parts of the world.
I love, you know, the greatest part is you're so lucky you live in Europe because you're so close to so many different types of food and light and architecture and language and completely different art or, you know, varieties of art and things."

"How lucky to hop on a plane and an hour and a half later, ta-da! When you're actually doing this with the job and stuff, do you have a chance to actually step out and take in the sights around the city or is it just so rigidly organized you can't unfortunately see anything other than a booth?
Well, it depends on the event."

"Sometimes it's like in the city, out, you're gone.
Other times I have the great pleasure of flying in a few days earlier, staying a few days afterwards and seeing things and I always have the most wonderful, gracious hosts.
So I get to see the inside story, you know, in Switzerland or in France or in Germany or Spain."

"It's so, wow, you know.
Not only that, sometimes I'll want to order something and my host will say, don't order that, order this.
And all of a sudden, oh my goodness, the most amazing meal."

"You're getting the best of the city.
It's not necessarily the traditional tourist places.
It's somewhere that symbolizes what the city and what the food is about.
Yeah, absolutely."

"And I have to say, I absolutely treasure Mario fans in every single city that I've ever been in.
Everyone is so gracious.
Everyone is so kind.
Everyone is so thoughtful."

"So it makes any bit of travel extra joyful for me.
I was going to say, I mean, what's the biggest attraction of these different places?
You've mentioned food a couple of times.
So is it the food or is it the sights?
You know, I absolutely love food, you know."

"Going to Italy and tasting pizza in Napoli or, you know, having a meal from northern Italy or southern Italy or anywhere is amazing.
And going to Germany and eating German food.
I love German food."

"It really is.
To me, travel is food, people, light, art, culture.
Absolutely fantastic.
I love it.
If you weren't in this particular job, I mean, where would you see yourself instead of here?
I mean, would you be a travel journalist then?
Well, I don't know."

"That would be a fun job.
I'd love to do something like that.
I wanted to be a flight attendant when I first left school and I was too tall.
And I went and I walked in the door."

"I said, I want to apply for a job.
And the guy looked at me and goes, you're too tall.
You'll never work in the airline business.
Because in those days, the galleys were like, you couldn't be as a man over six feet tall."

"So that was the end of that career.
Complete opposite to the roller coaster thing where you have to be over this size.
I'm a firm believer though, too, that if you're focused on happiness, the thing that you should be doing in life, your destiny, will come to you."

"The key is to let go of your own doubts and ifs ands and buts and what ifs and what ors.
And be happy and be joyful and express your joy in your work.
And if you're living your dreams or if you're seeking to live your dreams and you're living your passion and living with your heart, you're open to the resonance that brings in whatever it is that you're looking for."

"I may think, okay, I'm going to be a film actor.
But I want to be happy and joyful and da, da, da.
And all of a sudden, look what happens.
It's me, Mario."

"Or you don't know, but you want to be happy.
Well, focus on that happiness and life has a great way of working.
Where did that personal philosophy come from?
Was that just through adversity, so to speak, or is that something just inherent you feel in yourself that that's just always been your outlook?
It's a lifetime of experience."

"You know, everybody, every human being has the same emotions.
We have more in common than anybody knows.
And it's an interesting thing.
I think the newspapers have everything backwards, you know, showing the trauma and tragedy in life and showing the worst side of people because people are good."

"People are wonderful.
People are loving and caring and life that we have is so terribly short, you know, that you have to enjoy every minute of it.
It's going to be gone one way or another."

"So like the great gift, you don't know what's in it, but you better open it up and enjoy that process the whole way.
So that's what I do.
I think it was Bill Hicks said something along the lines of if they ever just went for a news report that was good stuff, it would just be very much like it's all going to work out."

"Here's the weather.
I think that's a very nice version of life.
And it is, you know.
It is.
Life has a great way of working out, you know."

"Aside from the tours, with the actual recording process, I mean, I'm not asking you what you do 365 days a year, but I imagine the recording process for the various Mario games would be a small sort of starter production type thing."

"You're sitting in the recording studio and just running through the lines?
You know, it's actually a tremendous blast.
I get to work with the most creative people at Nintendo.
When I fly up to Seattle or to Japan, we eat incredible sushi lunch and watch videos of new actions and new possibilities."

"We have a script and then we go in and we start recording.
And we spend about four hours per character, you know, depending on what game it is, of course, because some games have lots and some have just a little bit, you know."

"And we go in and watch the video and do things to time sometimes.
Sometimes we just go at the script.
And sometimes, and always though, whatever we do, we improvise afterwards.
And working with so many great creative people, there's just all kinds of fun things flying around the room."

"So it's a lot of fun.
I was going to say that about the sort of creative process and what you put into it.
I mean, as being the voice of Mario, as you have been for so long now, do people look to you to be the person who says, this would be a Mario thing to say or I think you should be saying this?
You know, we look to each other, you know, because the guys in the treehouse that work on the localization, on the creation of things, they really have a handle on it."

"This is their life and their job.
And this is my life and my job.
So, you know, I don't think we've ever disagreed.
We always just push, can I go this far?
No, no, you can only go that far."

"What if we go this way?
What if we go that way?
You know, so it's a dance.
It's a really fun dance of creativity and fun and laughter."

"And, you know, I think the thing about Nintendo games is that everybody who is in Nintendo that I've ever met in 23 years loves video games, loves making them, loves playing them, loves talking about them, you know, eats, drinks, breathes video games."

"And so it's natural that the best games ever are made by people who love making games and love playing games.
And, you know, that's what it's all about.
I think that Galaxy 2 was made because the engineers and designers and creative artists that were doing Galaxy 1 still love doing it so much."

"They kept coming up with other ideas and, you know, spending their free time drawing and writing and, oh, what if he did it?
Oh, what if this happened?
What if that happened?
And so Mr. Miyamoto says, well, let's make a Galaxy 2, you know, and just like that, woo-hoo, you know, welcome to my new galaxy."

"So, I mean, you know, that's passion.
That's passion and that's love.
That's what I'm talking about with me.
That's the joy and the happiness and the passion."

"Living that in your life, in your career, in your family, in your friends, that when it reflects in your career, you get great fun, and in your life you get happiness.
I was going to say, so it's a positive effect."

"I mean, obviously Mario has a positive effect, but embodying that role and having that, living with you for so long, that just warms the heart still.
Yeah, it really does."

"Every day of my life I wake up with a, woo-hoo.
If not, if it's a, I try to calm down, more Mario, less Wario.
It's a great philosophy right there.
It is a good philosophy, particularly in traffic, you know."

"Put Waluigi in the glove box, put Wario in the boot, the drunk, and let Mario drive.
Well, so many years and such a great legacy to draw from, but have you got any personal moments for you as a favorite, not maybe necessarily the games themselves, but from having and living this life?
You know, I have so many wonderful experiences and so many wonderful memories."

"The whole process for me, doing the voice in the game and then coming to great events like Gamescom and meeting people and talking with people about life and about games and about playing, and then seeing Mario fans in the booth."

"We just did a show over there and then I just signed some autographs and seeing the love in the people's eyes for the character when he walks on stage with me.
It's just really profoundly touching."

"And having the opportunity to meet fans here or at an in-store event on a game launch, it's really great.
I see people at all of our best, you know, when we're doing something that makes us happy."

"So it's great.
And all that process of my life makes me happy, so the number of great moments is incredible.
Charles, thank you very much indeed for talking to us."

"Thank you very much.
And thank you very much for playing my games! You're welcome."