Japanese · b. 1952 · 1980s – 1990s
Shigeru Miyamoto created Mario, but he was never the character's voice. Mario's early voices came from actors such as Peter Cullen and Ronald B. Ruben before Charles Martinet made the role his own; Miyamoto's own voice is familiar instead from Nintendo presentations.
It is sometimes assumed that Mario's creator also gave him his first voice, but the record does not support it. Mario was voiced by Peter Cullen in the Donkey Kong segments of the 1983 Saturday Supercade cartoon, by Ronald B. Ruben in the PC game Mario Teaches Typing (1992), and by Charles Martinet, who began voicing the character at trade-show demonstrations in the early 1990s and became his regular game voice from Super Mario 64 (1996). Miyamoto's own voice is known to players in a different way: as the designer and spokesman who has appeared in Nintendo presentations and Nintendo Direct broadcasts for decades, usually speaking Japanese.