Nintendo announces it's got a new Mario

Now, Nintendo has announced the next voice actor to take on the parts, revealing today that Los Angeles voice actor Kevin Afghani has been tapped to play the Mario Bros. in this month’s new Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Interestingly, Nintendo has decided to go with a relative newcomer to the world of voice acting for these key roles, rather than a more established performer; Afghani has only a handful of credits to his name, including small appearances in Genshin Impact, and a few online parody shows, like the Dragon Ball Z-based Dragon Ball R&R. (Of course, Chris Pratt wasn’t exactly a veteran voice actor when he scored the role himself, so…)

Afghani spoke briefly about his casting on social media today, writing that he’s “Incredibly proud to have voiced Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Thanks to Nintendo for inviting me into the Flower Kingdom!” Per Variety, Nintendo has yet to confirm whether Afghani’s role in the franchise will extend beyond this single entry, which arrives on October 20, and which returns the Mario series to its more traditional sidescrolling roots. In contrast to the movie, the Mario games tend to go pretty light on dialogue; for much of Martinet’s tenure on the character, he was restricted to a handful of lines, and a series of “Wahoo!”s, “Yippee!”s and “It’s a me!”s per game.