If I asked you to do an
impression of Yoshi right now, it would probably sound something like this.
“Yoshi!” That is Yoshi’s iconic voice, right? But in the 1990s, he had an entirely different
voice. And, that’s not all - this is Yoshi. And so is this! Yoshi has actually had a lot more voices than
you might have realised over the last 30 years, but why is that? And where did his
current voice - “Yoshi!” - come from? Let’s answer the question: Why
doesn’t Yoshi sound like he used to? Part 1: Two notes For many years, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto
had wanted to include some kind of animal for Mario to ride. He had a sketch of Mario
riding the back of a dinosaur-like creature stuck on the wall in front of his desk
for years and years. However, because of technical limitations, Miyamoto couldn’t bring
this idea to life in Super Mario Bros 1, 2 or 3. The NES just wasn’t powerful enough. But then in
1991, Nintendo brought out a new, more powerful games console - the SNES - and finally, Miyamoto’s
idea could be brought to life, in the form of Yoshi, the green dinosaur-like creature that
Mario rides the back of in Super Mario World. Now, Yoshi was a really important part of
Super Mario World, he was right on the front of the game’s box, after all! And it was up
to Super Mario World’s composer, Koji Kondo, to figure out what this new “Yoshi” creature
should sound like. Now, on the original NES, all music and sound effects had to be created using
simple waveforms. That’s what gives old Nintendo music its distinctive 8 bit sound. However you
could play very short audio samples. They just used up so much cartridge space and sounded so
low quality that they weren’t used very much. On this new SNES console though, audio samples
were everything. Instead of composers using those built in 8 bit soundwaves, composers on the SNES
had to import their own audio samples to be used as instruments. So, for instance, with Super Mario
World, Koji Kondo imported this short recording of a piano note. And that meant he could use
piano sounds throughout the game’s music. Of course, Super Mario World has many
many different instrument samples. But one extremely important one is
this orchestra hit. This orchestra hit is what Koji Kondo used to create
Yoshi’s distinctive sound effect. Kondo first played two notes using the orchestra
hit sound. And then, he bent their pitches - the first note was pitch bent upwards, the second
downwards. And here’s how the final result sounds! Now, for a number of years,
those two orchestra hit notes were used as the voice of Yoshi. Like in
Mario Kart 64, when characters like Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad were speaking full phrases
- “let’s a go!” - Yoshi instead sounded like this. And that works fine in a video game. If you
need to convey more detailed information, just write it using text on screen. But Super Mario
World was a huge hit when it came out in 1990. So huge of a hit, in fact, that it
was adapted into anime, other games, and cartoons. Which caused a problem. How do you
turn Yoshi into a cartoon if he sounds like this? Part 2: The cartoons It took a year for Super Mario
World to be released in America. And when that happened, DiC entertainment
began producing a Super Mario World cartoon. Interestingly though, despite the
cartoon being targeted towards the US, the voice actors hired were almost all from
Canada. And, that includes the voice of Yoshi, Andrew Sabiston. Sabiston gave Yoshi a high
pitched, cutesy sounding voice. Take a listen. Now, that same year - 1991 -
an interactive anime adaptation of Super Mario World was released on
VHS. However, in this anime version, there are three different Yoshis. And unlike
in the American cartoon, all three Yoshis are voiced by women. The main Yoshi is voiced
by Chika Sakamoto, and sounds like this. Then, there’s Yellow Yoshi, voiced by
Tamao Hayashi, who sounds like this. And lastly, there’s Red Yoshi,
who is voiced by Ikue Ohtani, the voice of Pikachu! Here’s how Red Yoshi sounds. Right, so the next Yoshi voice came the following
year - 1992 - but it wasn’t in a cartoon this time. It was actually in a Japanese commercial
for the puzzle game Yoshi’s Cookie. Yoshi only had one line to say, but he was voiced by famous
Japanese voice actress Junko Hori, who also voiced Jerry from Tom and Jerry and Bart Simpson
from The Simpsons. Check out her take on Yoshi! Then, one year later in 1993, the live action
Super Mario Bros film was released in America. Now it did feature Yoshi, but he looks
pretty different here. Dare I say, horrific! And his vocal cry sounds were performed
by American voice actor Frank Welker, best known as the voice of Fred and Scooby Doo
from Scooby Doo! He doesn’t really speak here, but here’s what the animalistic
noises of Yoshi sound like. And then finally in 1994, the infamous game
Mario is Missing was released for Mac. And Yoshi speaks in the game - kind of. He makes this
bizarre “blau” noise when he swallows enemies. Now, there was another voice clip recorded
for Yoshi - a full line of dialogue. However, strangely, this final audio clip was
removed from the game before it was released. The voice actor behind these short snippets
of Yoshi’s voice is not 100% known, as the game’s credits don’t actually specify
which voice actor voiced which character! The most likely candidate
is a programmer called Bruce Sandig. Whether he really did voice the
character is impossible to know, though. So as you can see, from 1991 to 1994, there
were quite a few varied voices of Yoshi, but none of them really counted as
“official”. As far as I can tell, Nintendo had little to no input on any of
the casting decisions made in these projects, except perhaps for Junko Hori in the advert.
But, back at Nintendo, Yoshi’s official, new voice was being worked on. And it is the
voice that he still uses to this very day. Part 3: Back at Nintendo So as I mentioned, Yoshi’s original sound effect was re-used in pretty much every game he
appeared in - up until the year 1997, that is. After the success of Yoshi’s Island on the SNES,
Nintendo began work on a sequel called Yoshi’s Story for the N64. And this time, Koji
Kondo was not the composer. Instead, Kazumi Totaka took over. You might know Kazumi
Totaka for his work on the Animal Crossing series - he’s the guy KK Slider was based on
- plus he wrote the famous Mii Maker theme. But in 1997, Kazumi Totaka’s task was
to compose the music for Yoshi’s Story. Meanwhile, the game’s two sound designers,
Yasushi Ida and Hajime Wakai, were deciding what to do about Yoshi’s voice. Up until then,
he’d only really had that one single sound - but, the two sound designers decided to finally change
that! They wanted to give Yoshi a new voice. Now normally in this situation a professional
voice actor would be hired. But instead, composer Kazumi Totaka was roped into voicing
the character. Or perhaps he asked to voice the character himself! The details aren’t super clear,
but however it ended up happening, Kazumi Totaka himself entered a recording studio at Nintendo
around 1997 and made all kinds of noises that he thought were “Yoshi-like” into the microphone.
Here’s how some of those recordings sounded. Now obviously, those voice
clips sound like an adult man, not a cute green dinosaur. So, the next
step was to speed up those recordings, Alvin and the Chipmunks style. And here’s
the finished result - the voice of Yoshi! So, Yoshi’s Story was released in 1997, and for
a few years afterwards, the voice of Yoshi wasn’t super consistent. Some games immediately began
using the voice clips recorded by Kazumi Totaka, like Super Smash Bros in 1999, and
Mario Tennis, in the year 2000. However, other games kept using
Koji Kondo’s old sound effect, like Mario Golf in 1999 and Mario Party 2 and
3, in 2000 and 2001. But by 2002, Nintendo’s games had completely phased out the old voice
of Yoshi in favour of Kazumi Totaka’s new voice! But back in 1997 Totaka only recorded the sounds
that Yoshi’s Story would need - 60 of them, in total. Which sounds like a lot, but since then
Yoshi has appeared in all kinds of Nintendo games. So about 4 years later, while Super Mario Sunshine
was in development, Totaka recorded a whole new batch of Yoshi sounds. But that wasn’t the
last time he did it. About 10 years after that, Super Mario Galaxy 2’s director personally
asked Totaka to record some new voice lines. According to the director, “When I asked
him to do it, he was a little uneasy. Ten years have passed, so he was worried
it would sound as if Yoshi had aged!” But impressively enough, Yoshi
doesn’t sound any different, I don’t think, to how he sounded back in 1997.
Here’s how Yoshi sounds in Super Mario Galaxy 2. So perhaps one day, Totaka will be
dragged back to the recording studio to record another set of
Yoshi sounds. But for now, Nintendo seems happy to keep re-using the
three collections of Yoshi noises they’ve got. Over the years, Kazumi Totaka has actually
voiced quite a few Nintendo characters: Shy Guy, Professor E.Gadd, Captain Olimar and
even Birdo! But the first character he ever voiced is also his most important and iconic - Yoshi.
It was 25 years ago that Totaka first recorded Yoshi’s voice, and it has become iconic. I
kind of love that alongside writing music for Animal Crossing, Luigi’s Mansion
and Wii Sports, every now and again, Totaka gets dragged back into the recording
studio to record a couple of new voice lines. Hi! Thanks for watching! I’ve always loved
Yoshi’s voice, so it was interesting to dig into where it came from! Hopefully
you also found it interesting. Alright, I’ll see you next week then. Bye!
