CURIOSITYNintendo’s Most Important Year Had Surprisingly Little to Do With Pokémon5 min read

Racing, Voices, and the Torch That Got Passed

Mario Kart 64 released in Japan before the year ended, with North America getting it in early 1997. The SNES original used Mode 7 graphics to fake a 3D effect — impressive for its time, unmistakably artificial. The N64 version had actual 3D environments. Wario Stadium. Toad’s Turnpike. A snowball-flanked stretch of road on Sherbet Land that still lives rent-free in the brains of anyone who played it as a kid. The soundtrack hit differently too — warm, bouncy compositions that matched the chaos on screen perfectly.

Super Mario 64 also marked the first time Charles Martinet voiced Mario in a home console game. For nearly three decades, his high-pitched enthusiasm defined the character across dozens of titles — Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, all of them. The last games to feature his voice were Mario Strikers: Battle League and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope in 2022.

His replacement, Kevin Afghani, was born on November 9, 1996 — weeks after Martinet debuted in Super Mario 64. The symmetry is either poetic or unsettling depending on your relationship to nostalgia. Afghani’s first full performance came in Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023. The skepticism was predictable. The execution was solid. Nintendo appears to have found their guy for the next era — the same way they found everything else that mattered in 1996.