This Week in Games

Thank You, Charles Martinet

Welcome back, everyone! I don't know if it's because of summer ending or because our weird heatwave just ended, but it's getting comfortable again around these parts. No Xenoblade 3 has been achieved since I'm still working on a really fun title for a review. Speaking of reviews: Wow, is it vindicating to see so many glowing reviews for Armored Core VI! There aren't even many complaints about it being too dissimilar from Dark Souls! Mecha fans, our time is now!

I've previously discussed Goddess of Victory: Nikke! One of the few gacha games I've played regularly since its launch last November, it at least impresses on a visual level by virtue of its massive Live2D-finagled character models and their tremendous jiggling asses whenever they shoot down the ravenous Rapture robots. Oh, sure, some of the recent characters are a bit more covered up so that the Nikkes have a semblance of dignity and aren't just presenting for the entirety of the many firefights in the game... but there's a lot of cheesecake to be had in Nikke between all of the genuinely heart-wrenching story about a team of women willingly (or sometimes forcibly) turned into cyborgs in an attempt at saving humanity from planet-wide genocide. Seriously, some of the events hit way too hard: last year's holiday event featured Rupee, the resident gyaru (voiced by Amanda Lee, fresh from her role as Marin Kitagawa) in a skimpy Christmas outfit... as well as the touching story of the Nikke Anne, who in life suffered from degenerative memory and who only got to be reunited with her mother by a very heartwarming Christmas miracle.

I lean into the "butts" thing, but Nikke is a very impressive gacha game all the same. It's already had one anime cross-over, courtesy of their recent dalliance with Chainsaw Man, where Power, Himeno, and Makima became recruitable characters. But while there have been special events, Nikke hasn't seen any crossovers since. Now where can we find a character that can fit a post-apocalyptic world and has a heart-wrenching story... preferably a non-human character, moreso if they're a robot and outwardly female-presenting... oh yeah, and bonus points if they have a butt you can bounce a stack of quarters off of...

Well, if it isn't beloved writer Yoko Taro, best known for making people cry buckets as they delete their save files and liking money! And when he's in town, he's bringing a violent white-haired woman in tow!

Pack it in, folks—this is already the best idea for a crossover we'll ever see for Nikke. NieR: Automata is already dead-on with Nikke's vibes, with YoRHa No. 2 Type B (a.k.a., "2B") being a dead-ringer for many of the dead-eyed hard-boiled career soldier cyborgs who nevertheless only wear the top halves of their uniforms. NieR: Automata has had quite a year, courtesy of Nier: Automata Ver1.1a, its animated adaptation. Even if it didn't, it's hard not to get excited about this crossover; we get more NieR, which likely means more of Yoko Taro's bizarre-but-hard-hitting pathos for supermodel gynoid supersoldiers, while Nikke fans get to enjoy an absolutely bonkers crossover. We're talking "Sonic the Hedgehog promo at Sonic Drive-In" levels of brand synergy here.

So far, the collab is scheduled to start on September 1; Nikke is currently winding down its summer event. Anyone who hops in now gets to build up towards the upcoming drop, while no doubt many current players are hard at work preparing for 2B's appearance. The trailer also hints at her antagonist, A2. Because Nikke also does alternate costumes for its cast, I think it's within the realm of possibility that we get an alternate costume for 2B that puts her into her "2P" recolor—though most likely, they'll make a skirtless outfit for her (for reference: Makima got an "alternate costume" that was her wearing her oversized coat, though that does display a ton of brand awareness). I'm also somewhat curious if they'll spring for English voice acting; the NieR: Automata fandom in the U.S. is very defensive of Kira Buckland, courtesy of her stellar performance as 2B, but the Chainsaw Man collab didn't feature any English voice acting for any of its characters.

For now, nothing to do but wait until September 1. Hopefully, we don't need to delete any save files this time.

It's been a bit since we last talked about Tekken 8. This past week, we got a glimpse of a new game trailer at Gamescom, which revealed some promising stuff!

So, first off, we have a confirmation that Tekken 8 will launch with 32 characters. This will include a bunch of new characters (like the coffee-loving Azucena) and old favorites like Lili, Kuma, Yoshimitsu, and Asuka. Not bad, not bad. But the real draw is Arcade Mode—and despite the name, it's not what you think! Using a simple character creator (that makes an avatar somewhere between Xbox Live avatars and Miis), you'll design your own little buddy to lead to a variety of fictional arcades where you'll face off against other little buddies in matches of Tekken 8. The hope is that players will be able to brush up on basic techniques in Tekken 8 or learn to master all of the unique characters—all while unlocking new outfit parts for your actual characters.

I was a bit worried that Bandai Namco was looking to ape the single-player mode in Street Fighter 6, but it looks like they're going in a much different direction. I appreciate it; it's a good way to let newcomers to fighting games get a grasp on the game without having to get pummeled to oblivion by people who've been playing these games for multiple decades. That, and unlocking costumes feels good. As we all know, fashion is the true meta.

Finally, we have a release date for Tekken 8: it's set for January 26, 2024. It's a pretty great start to the new year if you ask me. You can now pre-order Tekken 8 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. There are tiered pre-orders, which is a concept I absolutely hate. The $110 Ultimate Edition nets you a ton of extra costumes and avatars, but I wonder if a bunch of skins and avatars is worth $40 on its own on top of the game itself. It also brings the Character Year 1 Pass (read: a season pass), but let's find out what those characters are before we line up for them.

Back in May, we covered Sony's PlayStation Showcase and the reveal of Project Q, their new handheld option for the PS5. I'll be honest: I'd completely forgotten they were making the thing. Imagine my surprise when I saw it discussed earlier this week! It has a name and a price point!

... I said it had a name and price point, not that they'd be great. "PlayStation Portal" sounds pretty neat, all things considered, but that $200 price tag... woof. Not great, especially when you consider a PS5 starts at $400. And the problems keep rolling in from there; the Portal can be used to play PS5 games wireless on its portable screen... and nothing else. I would hope you could use the Portal as a spare controller, but even if you could, it wouldn't be very comfortable—while the screen has a 1080 resolution and can stream at 60fps, it's also 8 inches wide. Many people bellyache for bigger screens on handhelds (like the Switch) until they actually handle them. The thing about portable solutions is that they need to be comfortable to use. The Switch has a 6.2-inch screen but doesn't tire your hands while playing it. And if it does, you can separate the Joycons from the Switch and set the screen down in your lap. You have options. Steamdecks, which people keep claiming is a competitor to the Switch (it really isn't), is only marginally wider than the Switch with its 7-inch screen. An 8-inch screen? With non-removable controllers? And all the components needed to stream at those high resolutions? I'm going to start worrying about ergonomics.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Comparisons have been drawn between the PlayStation Portal and the Nintendo Wii U—and not favorable ones. The Wii U already had significant issues with how it was marketed to audiences, leading to its famous failure for Nintendo. The Portal isn't positioned much better; on the one hand, it's just the controller (which people thought was the case for the Wii U's tablet). On the other hand, the controller itself is useless without a PS5—and as we said before, PS5s are already really pricey. Sony's banking on the claim of convenience: a home with limited screens can stream games directly over the console with a PS Portal. That's fine and dandy, but I'd posture that any home that has a PS5 likely isn't going to be struggling with screens anytime soon. Anyone who insists on a PS5 likely isn't going to want to add on extra latency issues with their hardcore gaming sessions brought upon by streaming from their console via WiFi. And remember: few as they may have been, the Wii U had games. Good ones, too, despite what people might tell you (and thank goodness, the only one left in Wii U Prison is Xenoblade Chronicles X, bring our boys home!). The PlayStation Portal doesn't even have that going for it—it's effectively just a portable screen for the PS5.

This isn't the first time Sony has experimented with this formula; there was a great deal of connectivity between the PS Vita and the PS4 via Remote Play. But the PS Vita also had its own dedicated software—and again, what little it had was pretty sweet. Many people have pointed this out: there isn't much excitement for the PS Portal from its pricing, value proposition, or engineering. Sony has cut itself on its attempts at being on the bleeding edge of tech, such as with the failed PS Go, a digital-only handheld. That one was hilariously bad in Puerto Rico: most people would set the console to Spanish only to find that doing so set the console's location to Spain, converting any currency on the console to Euros (and causing no end of headaches to Puerto Ricans trying to buy games with US dollars).

Sony is also announcing a new unique set of headphones and earbuds (each sold separately), intended to offer high-quality audio to users and thankfully usable on your PCs as well as your PS5. This is also meant to sell people on their "PS Link" service, which should ideally make any accessory to the PS5 work really well. You might as well call it "Blast Processing," as far as I care; I'm not horribly excited about any of these new gadgets, and it seems many other people aren't either. There is no solid release date yet, but look forward to the PS Portal "later this year."

Oy, this really sucks.

For a very long time, Denuvo has been maligned as some of the worst copy-protection available for PC games—and that's not an easy contest to win, considering how maligned copy-protection is. With how invasive Denuvo's solutions have been, as well as their negative effects on performance, utilizing their services is guaranteed to be a downer for anyone interested in any game at all. And now Nintendo is offering their services on their developer portal.

The reason for this is simple: Nintendo is cracking down on piracy. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. A lot of Nintendo's more boneheaded decisions come from their concerns about their games getting pirated. While the decision for the Nintendo 64 to remain a cartridge-based system was definitely because of manufacturing costs, cartridges being more complicated to pirate than CDs had to have been a plus in their eyes. While there are valid reasons for Nintendo to be concerned, like the SX OS suite that could completely brick your console if you didn't kiss their ring, the main problem with copy protection like Denuvo is that it ultimately ruins the experience for folks playing your games legitimately. As a wise man said, the only thing that happens when you make a 35-foot wall is you make a market for 36-foot ladders. And regardless of what Denuvo might insist, it can't even keep a game safe from cracking during their much-claimed two-week timeframe. That so many games patch out Denuvo support during their lifespan should tell you everything.

We'll see how this deal works out for Nintendo, but it isn't one of their better ideas. I look forward to seeing it wither on the vine. Also, Denuvo apparently used AI art for their announcement, which is a bad look for anyone, especially those claiming to be against online content theft.

It is disheartening to talk about departures in the videogame industry, and this one... well, it led to an emotional Monday. After 30 years of defining the voice of beloved brothers Mario and Luigi, Charles Martinet has officially stepped down from the role.

Nintendo definitely had me extremely worried with this one: the format gives the impression that they're announcing an obituary (I was lucky enough to see this retweeted by Martinet himself, at least). But the news is no less emotional. Charles Martinet is one of the few in the industry who has voiced his character for thirty years. How much Martinet defined Mario is no less important. Sure, before the Super Mario games featured voice acting, we had on-screen appearances of the Mario Bros.—"Captain" Lou Albano defined the character in his own way for an entire generation, and like it or not Bob Hoskins brought "Mario Mario" to life in his own way that stuck in people's heads. But these were on TV, and while being a plumber from Brooklyn has been an undeniable part of Mario's charm, Martinet took Mario and made him his own.

The story of how Martinet became Mario was one I learned from, of all places, an old video from a YouTube Poop maker that is no longer: Martinet had crashed an open audition for the character at the very last minute. With the vague bio of voicing a "short Italian plumber from Brooklyn," he had first thought to try the "Albano"-esque voice (the example I remember him using was a gruff New Yorker-style voice saying "Hey, watch it, I'm under your sink, I'll punch you in the face"). Still, he decided against it because "that wasn't very nice." So he went for the friendlier "Wa-hoo!"-style voice we've heard since. The audition wasn't for a video game, though—Nintendo wanted to feature a speaking Mario at their 1991 Spaceworld trade show, so Martinet was strapped to a face-capturing rig at the trade show and spoke to patrons as he watched them through a camera ("You're-a wearing a red shirt! That's-a my favorite color! Yahoo!"). Martinet's first video game appearance as Mario wouldn't be until 1994's Mario Teaches Typing, which also went on to fuel YouTube Poops but nevertheless shows the plumber as we've always known him: friendly, mildly goofy, but chirpy and fun.

While Martinet kept up the Spaceworld appearances, it wouldn't be until 1996 that players heard him as Mario in a mainstream title—Super Mario 64. Ever since the N64 logo popped up with Martinet's chirpy "It's-a me, Mario!"... well, that was it. The man was Mario, and Nintendo knew it. His depiction of Mario has evolved throughout the years, from his full speech in the 3D Mario titles to the charming Italian-sounding gibberish of the Mario and Luigi games, it was always Martinet. He also expanded into voicing other characters in the games—specifically, Mario's cowardly brother Luigi, to the rude and greedy Wario and the astroturfed Waluigi.

Martinet's abilities as an actor need some credit, too. He wasn't always a voice actor; prior to voicing Mario, he was trained as a thespian and even cited Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew as an inspiration for Mario's voice. He also did a ton of commercials in the 80s and 90s, and they're all hysterical—in no small part to Martinet's gift as a character actor. He also voiced the dragon Paarthanux in Skyrim, which is the "Viggo Mortensen broke his toe in that one scene of The Two Towers"-esque trivia for Skyrim that nobody has seen because nobody plays the Skyrim story past Whiterun. But he also dabbled in some anime in his time: famously, he voiced Senator Wilson Phillips in the original Stardust Crusaders OVA dub. Much more recently, Charles Martinet voiced the villainous Magenta in the film Dragon Ball: Super Heroes—and even showed up to the premiere dressed in Magenta's standout magenta duds.

There was much consternation with the recent Super Mario Bros. movie from Illumination, given that Martinet was bumped down to a cameo appearance within the film, with the role of Mario going to a very poorly-cast Chris Pratt in one of the most maligned cases of stunt-casting in recent history. A lot of folks find a poignant tribute in Martinet's character having the last line in the film—"Those are my boys!"—but I think the role still should have been his. That said, I can see why Martinet might have shied away from it, to say nothing of his retirement. Martinet is 67 years old, and eagle-eared players can hear in his voice that Mario's chipper high registers are much more challenging for Martinet to reach. Some were even quick to point out that Mario's voice in the Super Mario Wonder trailer was emphatically not Martinet.

It's an emotional development, as so many of us have grown up with Charles Martinet voicing Mario for our entire lives. It's not always that an actor can stick with a role for so long—even in recent history, beloved characters have swapped voices at least once or twice. Sonic the Hedgehog has gone through no less than six voice actors (three in Japanese, three in English—not counting the anime/cartoons). It's also not often that we see a character so thoroughly become a part of an actor's life; it's hard to look at Martinet's ear-to-ear grin and not see that Italian plumber in him. I don't want to think of what'll happen when the day comes that the beloved Masako Nozawa is no longer the voice of everyone's favorite space monkey or the day that Dan Castellaneta can't be Homer Simpson anymore. Martinet passing the baton is no less emotional.

This leaves us with a lot of questions. Nintendo's announcement reports that Martinet will now take on the role of "Mario Ambassador;" I'm struggling to understand what that means, but it'll likely mean that he'll still be closely associated with the Mario Bros brand and maybe throw out a "Wa-hoo~!" or two at official Nintendo appearances, on top of him joyously showing up to conventions worldwide to meet with fans as he already does. But if there's ever anyone who deserves getting monthly checks cut to him so he can live the rest of his life well-cared-for, it's Charles Martinet. We also don't know who will be replacing Martinet—I won't be the first to say it, but I will chime in that whoever it is, we should embrace them with arms wide open.

Thanks for everything, Charles Martinet. We should all bake a cake for you.

That'll do it this week. This summer is winding down nicely with Armored Core VI. I didn't think the year would zip by this quickly. Portland Retro Game Expo is around the corner. I'm still weighing whether or not I'll go. If I do, I'd be flattered to see any of you guys! A lot of us are pretty worried about who might replace Martinet. Evidently, we already have a voice for Super Mario Wonder, but I know who should step up to the plate for Mario's voice...

Be good to each other! I'll see you in seven.