Nintendo announces it's got a new Mario

A couple of months ago, Nintendo announced a major change to its flagship Mario titles: Charles Martinet, the voice of intrepid plumbers Mario and Luigi for the last 27 years, was standing down from his post, switching to a role as a general “Nintendo Ambassador.” Given that Martinet is the voice of Nintendo’s biggest hero across dozens of titles—give or take the franchise’s recent big Hollywood excursion, where he still appeared in a small role as Mario’s dad—he left some pretty massive turtle-smashing boots to fill.

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.