I was browsing through the other C-Blogs and I didn't see anything about this, surprisingly.
I'm 28, so of course one of my favorite shows from my childhood was the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, with Zelda every Friday.


As many of you know (and if you don't, SHAME ON YOU!), on the SMB Super Show, Captain Lou, a former pro wrestler, would do some funny (more or less dumb and poorly acted) skits with Luigi and they'd have a celebrity on now and then. Basically, it was filler between the cartoons. It was cool that they tried to have a little live-action comedy thing with Mario, but back in those days, he had red overalls, before Nintendo made the switch with SMB2. (even though the box art and concept art gave him red ones, the game still had blue ones!) Well, at least they finally got it right with SMB3 (even though his sprite used black! >_<;;).


The great thing about Lou's Mario was it was really scruffy and deep, like how an Italian plumber from Brooklyn should sound. Too scary for kids? Not friendly enough? Not a chance. I watched the SMB Super Show when I was 11-14 and it never bothered me. Today's Mario is a bit too "Mickey Mouse" for my tastes, but *sigh* guess there's nothing to be done about it. I even remember being irked at Mario's "true" voice the first time I played Mario 64... it was NOTHING like Lou's great rendition.

Ah, that's enough from me for now. R.I.P. Cap'n Lou. You will always be remembered as the "true" voice of Mario in my heart.