It's funny that in the history of the Super
Mario series, Mario's voice has essentially NEVER changed. Okay, in the very very early days,
he had a bunch of one off voices in the cartoons, and anime. "We've been better!" But as for
the actual, Nintendo developed videogames, before 1996, Mario never spoke. And
then, after 1996, he's had this exact voice - "It's a me, Mario!" - the whole time,
provided by the one and only Charles Martinet. But Princess Peach? She's a completely
different story. From 1996 to the present day, her voice has changed again and again and again.
I mean, compare this clip from Mario 64 - "Dear Mario" - with a clip from Mario Odyssey -
"HEY!" They sound so different! "Dear Mario" "HEY!" If you didn't know the context, you would
probably these were two different characters! So, I started researching into just what
went on behind the scenes, and it turns out it's a lot more interesting than I expected.
So, I want to take you on the journey I went on to answer one simple question: Why has
Princess Peach's voice changed so much? Well, to answer that, we
need to go back to the year 1996. Sure, Peach had a few voices before then. "Mario, Luigi!" I mean, who could forget her
unmissable appearance in Hotel Mario! But as for proper, Nintendo sanctioned
voices, it all starts in 1996. For the last couple of years, a team of developers
at Nintendo werehard at work creating the next big Mario game, called Super Mario 64 - you
might have heard of it. And early 1996, they finally finished. Or rather, they finished the
Japanese version. If English speaking players were presented with this text here, then they would
be a little confused. So, as usual, Nintendo’s Japanese developers sent the game off to America
to be translated and localised into English. Now, one of the people in charge of this process
was a lady called Leslie Swan. She would later go on to found Nintendo Treehouse, but in 1996,
her role at Nintendo wasn’t quite so influential. She would be sent a rough translation of
all the Japanese text from a given game, and her job was to rewrite that text
into more natural sounding English. She’d done the same thing for The Legend of
Zelda: A Link to the Past a few years before, and clearly Nintendo were pleased with the
result, because in 1996, she was asked to do the same thing for Super Mario 64. Any text
you see in this game? That was written by her. Now, after sending the English script back to
Nintendo of Japan, Leslie Swan got a response. Thescript was approved, which was obviously a good
thing! But they also had a request for her. For Super Mario 64, Nintendo wanted to include proper
voice acting for the first time even. They already had a voice for Mario himself - Charles Martinet
had been working with Nintendo on and off for a while, by then - but they didn’t have a voice for
Peach. Which is when they had an idea. Instead of going through the lengthy and expensive process
of running auditions and selecting a professional voice actor, they figured, why couldn’t
Leslie Swan just record the lines herself? Now, with no prior voice acting experience, Swan
didn’t seem like the most natural candidate, but after thinking it over,
she accepted the request. And so, in mid 1996, she entered the recording
booth, ready to record Peach’s lines. Now the instructions from the developers were to try
and sound sweet. But for Leslie, this didn’t come easily - she later described this request as a
bit of a stretch. But she gave it her best shot, and later that year, the game was
released, Leslie Swan’s voice lines included. Millions of players around the
world turned on the game and heard this: “Dear Mario. Please come to the
castle. I have baked a cake for you. Yours truly, Princess Toadstool. Peach!” Now, while this was all going on, another team
of developers inside Nintendo were working on a completely separate Mario game - Mario Kart 64.
This was the sequel to the hit racer Super Mario Kart, and the developers wanted to show the world
how much more advanced this game was. And so, one thing they wanted to include was full
character voice acting. And inside Nintendo's Japanese offices, a similar series of events were
taking place to that of Leslie Swan. You see, Nintendo of Japan’s head of Public Relations
at the time was a woman named Asako Kozuki. And I’ll admit, the details are unclear, but just like
Leslie Swan, Asako Kozuki was brought in to record Princess Peach’s voice lines, with no prior acting
experience. Nevertheless, she recorded the lines, and before too long, they ended up in
the game. Here’s what they sounded like. Now, listening to those short
clips, you could probably hear Asako Kozuki’s Japanese accent pretty clearly.
And so, for the English release of the game, those original voice clips for Princess
Peach was replaced with a brand new set recorded by none other than Leslie
Swan, again! And here's how they sound. Now after this, Nintendo actually
reused those same voice clips for a bunch of different Mario games. But for
1999’s Mario Golf, it was decided to bring in a professional voice actress for the first time.
So, Nintendo of America started holding auditions. Their one requirement was that the new actress
had to closely mimic the current voice of Peach. One person auditioning for the role was Jen
Taylor. She’d previously worked in radio, and voice acting for TV
commercials. Her whole life, Taylor had liked mimicking other people’s
voices. It was sort of a hobby for her. And so, mimicking Peach’s voice wasn’t really
that hard at all. She sailed through the audition process and quickly earned the
title of Princess Peach’s new voice actor! Those early days were by no means
easy though! “I was spending those, those first few games that I did
were very technical because I was really trying to sound like this other person, and
as it became more my own, then I was able to feel a little more comfortable with the role. But yeah,
in the beginning it was all about mimicking.” Over the next decade, Jen Taylor’s
voice was featured in dozens of Mario games. "Ooh, look at that!" There were, however,
a couple of outliers. Like, in 2004, when Nintendo decided to remake Super Mario 64 for the DS. They
wanted to remain authentic to the original game, but they couldn’t just copy across
Leslie Swan’s original voice clips, because they’d rewritten some of the lines.
And so, as a clever compromise, Nintendo asked Leslie Swan if she’d be willing to come
back to the recording studio one more time. To their delight, Leslie Swan said yes, and
so, THIS is how the lines ended up sounding. “Dear Mario. Please come to the castle. I have baked a cake for you. Yours
truly, Princess Toadstool. Peach!” They don't sound identical
to the original voice lines, but they definitely have the
same feeling to them. Very cool. Now, save for this one off Leslie Swan appearance, the Princess Peach ball remained in Jen
Taylor’s court. However, this was not to last. You see, Jen Taylor had been working with the
Seattle Children's Theatre for a number of years. But in 2005, she decided that she wanted to spend
more at the theatre, which she just wasn’t able to do while recording Peach’s voice lines. So, she
decided to give up the role of Princess Peach. This left Nintendo in a bit of a bind. They
didn’t have time to find a proper replacement, someone who could take on the role full
time. So in the meantime, they decided to find a temporary fill in. The person chosen
was Canadian student Nicole Mills. Now, Mills wasn’t trained in voice acting at all, but
her voice was such a good match for Jen Taylor’s that she seemed like the perfect person
for the job. And so, in the Summer of 2005, Nicole Mills was brought into the recording
studio to record brand new voice lines for Princess Peach. And these lines ended up
in Super Mario Strikers, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, and New Super Mario Bros., among
others. Here’s a sample of what they sound like. Now, after the summer was over, Nicole Mills
returned to education, which left Nintendo in trouble. Their new game Super Paper
Mario was set to release in just a few months. With Jen Taylor at the children’s theatre
and Nicole Mills gone, they were left scrambling for anyone who could voice the princess in their
new game! Which is when someone had an idea. How about Leslie Swan? She was still working as
the head of Nintendo’s Localisation department, so for one final time, she was dragged back into the
role of Princess Peach. Here’s a sample of that! Now, while Leslie Swan was recording Peach's voice
lines, Nintendo of America was holding auditions to fill the role of Peach with a more permanent
voice actress. One candidate who showed up to these auditions was Samantha Kelly. Kelly was a
voice actress who’d worked mainly on commercials in the past, but when her agent sent her the
details of Nintendo’s audition, her interest was peaked. Although she’d actually never
played a single Super Mario game in her life, she’d been wanting to move away from commercials
and into playing characters for a while now. “When I was a little girl, I used to make all kinds
of voices. Like I had all these puppets that had different voices, and I would drive my mum
nuts as she was tucking me in at night, cause I would be like “yahh yahh”,
and she’d go “ugh, please stop!”" So, this audition seemed like the perfect chance
for Samantha Kelly to take on a bigger role as a well known character. So, she showed up
to the audition, recorded some test lines, and then headed home. Meanwhile, Nintendo started
going through the various voice samples from the audition, when they came across Samantha Kelly’s.
THIS, they decided, was the best Peach. And before long, Kelly was informed that she had got the
role. She was the new voice of Princess Peach! The first game in which Samantha Kelly voiced
the princess was the football game Mario Strikers Charged, and after recording her lines, Samantha
Kelly decided to try the game out. This was her first Mario game, and it certainly wasn’t a
typical one. Even so, Kelly fell in love with it! And so, if you play a Mario game
now, and Peach says anything at all, then the voice you’re hearing is almost
certainly Samantha Kelly’s. "Mario!" She’s been voicing the character for 14 years, and
shows no signs of leaving the role anytime soon. You can hear her in Super Mario Odyssey, Mario
Kart 8, Luigi’s Mansion 3, just to name a few. But what about all of the many ex-Princess
Peaches? What happened to them? Well, Leslie Swan kept working as the head of Nintendo Treehouse
- the localisation division that she herself founded - for 27 years, running what is regarded
as one of the industry’s best and most influential localisation departments. In 2017, she left her
job in search of new and exciting opportunities. Asako Kozuki continued working at
the helm of Nintendo’s PR department for at least a decade. It's a bit
hard to find information about her, but she may well indeed still work there today,
promoting the company’s new and exciting games. Jen Taylor continued to work in voice
acting, voicing both the narrator from RWBY and, her most famous role, Cortana from the Halo
games who she continues to voice to this very day. Plus if you have a Windows 10 computer, the voice of Cortana (the virtual
assistant) is modeled on hers. Very cool! Nicole Mills went on to study graphic design
and now works as a senior designer at a top Craft Beer design firm in Washington. And finally, Samantha Kelly still works with
Nintendo, providing the voice of Princess Peach in each and every Super Mario game.
My deepest congratulations to her. Princess Peach has changed a
lot across the last 3 decades. But one thing has not changed. Whatever
quest Peach embarks on, whatever sport, whatever minigame, whatever race, the
character remains enthusiastic, upbeat, and loveable. And the credit for that goes to each
and every voice actress who has portrayed her. Hey, thanks for watching to the end! Oh, but wait, don’t go! I’ve actually been working on my own
Princess Peach voice. Ahem. Dear viewer, please subscribe to the channel. I have made a video
for you. Yours truly, Princess Thomas! Peach! I'm sorry! You can subscribe if you
want to see more videos like this, if I haven't put you off. If I HAVE put you
off then I apologise - it is my own fault...
