In theSuper Smash Bros. series, all matches officially start when the Announcer says "GO!"

Theannouncer (ナレーション,Narration), callednarration in-game untilSuper Smash Bros. Brawl, is an unseen character whose voice is heard in all games of theSuper Smash Bros. series, exclaiming what has happened in the game. The voice is often heard in menus when selectingmodes andfighters, as well as within a match to announce its start and end and other events like a player losing all of theirstocks orsharing stock. It also announces the winner on thevictory screen. The only move in the series to involve the announcer in any way isKonga Beat,Donkey Kong'sFinal Smash inBrawl andSmash 4, with the announcer saying "Ready? Go!" upon its activation. All of the announcer's voice clips can be heard in thesound test.

The announcer has been voiced by 14 actors to varying degrees, for each game in the series as well as for different regions andlanguages. The English voice actor is considered to be the "primary" one in each game and is used by default inNTSC versions, as well as in Japanese, albeit with some minor differences in his lines, including character names. The English voice actor for the announcer has also always voicedMaster Hand andCrazy Hand.

Announcers[edit]

Super Smash Bros.[edit]

Jeff Manning was the first announcer in the series.^[1] He started many of the trends that would later be followed by the future announcers; in addition to his booming style and various exclamations during gameplay, such ascharacters being selected, Jeff Manning started a trend where both the Announcer andMaster Hand are voiced by the same person. Manning's voice has a significant filter applied to it, causing his voice to echo, as well as increasing the intensity of his voice; his actual delivery, however, is relatively calm, and he does not generally hold out words for long periods of time. His lines were recorded in Tokyo, and he did not recall saying the names of any cut characters.^[2]

Outside of Manning's voice, two other actors provide the announcer's voice in different regions; Frank Wölfel provides his voice in the GermanPAL version, and Jean-Marc Delhausse provides his voice in the French PAL version. The Chinese version of the game, released for theiQue Player, reuses Manning's voice.

Super Smash Bros. Melee[edit]

Dean Harrington is the main announcer inMelee.^[3] He takes on a different inflection than Manning; Harrington yells more similarly to an emcee at a boxing match, with his phrasing often lasting for long periods of time, as well as a generally more intense voice than Manning's. Like Manning, Harrington's voice has an echo filter applied to it; other filters applied to his voice, however, cause Harrington's voice to have a more muffled tone compared to the other announcers. With the introduction ofCrazy Hand in the series, Harrington also began a trend where the announcer also voices Crazy Hand. His lines were recorded in Tokyo, and he did not recall saying the names of any cut characters.^[4]

Jigglypuff has different German and French announcer calls to match its regional names ("Pummeluff" in German, "Rondoudou" in French). Both come fromPokémon Stadium 2 and were originally done byKai Taschner (German)^[5] andJean-Claude Donda (French).^[6] Both clips are lower in quality compared to the others, but have the same echo filter applied to them.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl[edit]

Pat Cashman is the main announcer inBrawl, and recorded his lines in Seattle.^[7] He ended Harrington's emcee style, and in general, his voice is considerably calmer in sound, more akin to Manning. Cashman's voice is not modified to the extent of Manning's or Harrington's, leading to cleaner sound quality from him; Cashman also has a deeper voice than either of his two predecessors. Cashman's voice also features more personality from the announcer, such as his quizzical inflection when the player selectsLuigi as a playable character.

Outside of Cashman's voice, five other individuals voice the announcer inBrawl, for the game's PAL and Korean releases.Achim Barrestein provides the German announcer,Carlos Lobo provides the Spanish announcer,Jean-Louis Faure provides the French announcer,Luigi Fantino provides the Italian announcer, andChoi Han provides the Korean announcer.

Cashman was the oldest announcer, being 58 when he recorded his lines for the game.

Super Smash Bros. 4 /Super Smash Bros. Ultimate[edit]

Xander Mobus is the main announcer inSmash 4 andUltimate. He acts and sounds similarly to Pat Cashman inSuper Smash Bros. Brawl, with his voice being deeper than those of Manning and Harrington, as well as having few filters applied to his voice. Compared to Cashman, however, Mobus's announcer is less relaxed and reserved, though he still does not act as intense as Harrington. Some of Mobus's portrayals also bear similarities with Cashman's, such as a sinister tone when selectingBowser andGanondorf. His inspirations for using this voice came from a combination ofGary Owens and some oldDisney characters likeGoofy (who is voiced byBill Farmer).^[8]

Mobus also provided his voice in the50-Fact Extravaganza presentation for Nintendo Direct, explicitly introducing himself as "the announcer" and proceeding to narrate the video. He also portrayed the announcer in anoverview trailer forUltimate in a similar manner to his performance in the 50-Fact Extravaganza. In this particular video, his voice is deeper than usual and has more of a "growl" when stressing key phrases.

Outside of Mobus's voice, four other announcers voice the announcer in the PAL release ofSmash 4, all of whom were retained fromBrawl: Achim Barrenstein (German), Carlos Lobo (Spanish), Jean-Louis Faure (French), and Luigi Fantino (Italian). However, they act slightly different than inBrawl: Faure and Lobo's voices are more audible and energetic, Barrenstein plays more powerfully, and Fantino plays more playfully. The Dutch, Portuguese, Korean, and Russian localizations use the English announcer.

The Spanish and French announcers also provide voices for the Latin American and Canadian localizations respectively, with subtle differences similar to the ones seen in the English and Japanese versions; for example,Rosalina is called "Estela" and "Harmonie" in the respective PAL versions but retains her English name in the NTSC versions. The French announcer also tends to pronounce several character names such asBowser andToon Link in a closer way to English, while others such asJigglypuff andCorrin retain the pronunciation in Parisian French. Meanwhile, the Spanish announcer also differs pronunciations in some way; examples include the differences of intonation forKing Dedede, and merged pronunciation of the C's and Z's with S's, such asZelda pronounced as "Selda".

In a series first, Mobus reprises his role as the English and Japanese announcer inSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate (as well as the voice for bothMaster Hand andCrazy Hand); he also provides voice clips specific to the Korean language option, while the Chinese options reuse his Japanese voice clips.

Some lines are also re-recorded betweenSSB4 andUltimate: for example, "Computer player" has more emphasis on "-puter play-" inUltimate than inSSB4, and both "Victory" and "Tourney" are spoken in a drastically energetic tone inUltimate, compared to theSSB4 versions being spoken in a reserved tone (similar to the latter'sBrawl counterpart). Other lines, however, were reused, such as the names of the playable characters returning from the previous game.

Additionally, the previous foreign language announcers retain their roles inUltimate fromBrawl andSSB4 along with two new, unknown announcers for the Dutch and Russian language options. The Dutch announcer's portrayal somewhat resembles Pat Cashman's voice inBrawl, with more relaxed voice clips similar to the French version. Meanwhile, the Russian announcer's voice is deeper and plays slower than those of the rest of the announcers.

Unlike the previous two announcers, Crazy Hand uses a radically different voice from Master Hand and the announcer, somewhat akin toIggy Koopa's voice clips from the same games.

In another series first,Ultimate is the first game in the series to feature an alternate voice for the announcer in the same language, withKazuya having theTekken 7 announcer announce his victory on his victory screen instead, voiced byJosh Keller. Notably, all language versions of the game retain Keller's voice.

Mobus was by far the youngest of theSmash Bros. announcers, recording his lines forSSB4 at the age of 21, and recording his lines forUltimate at 25; by comparison, Manning was 43 in 1999, Harrington was 53 in 2001, and Cashman was 58 in 2008.

Gallery[edit]

Jeff Manning (SSB64, 1999)	Dean Harrington (Melee, 2001)	Pat Cashman (Brawl, 2008)	Xander Mobus (SSB4, 2014 andUltimate, 2018)	Josh Keller (Ultimate, 2021)

Foreign announcers[edit]

SSB[edit]

Jean-Marc Delhausse (French)	Frank Wölfel (German)

Brawl[edit]

Choi Han (Korean)

Brawl onwards[edit]

Jean-Louis Faure (French)	Luigi Fantino (Italian)	Achim Barrenstein (German)	Carlos Lobo (Spanish)

Ultimate[edit]

Trivia[edit]

• So far, four announcers have voiced a character other than Master Hand and Crazy Hand.
  • Jean-Marc Delhausse, who provides the French announcer inSmash 64, later reappeared as a voice actor in subsequent games in the series, voicingLucario,Ivysaur, and variousPoké Ball Pokémon in the French versions of the games.
  • Carlos Lobo and Luigi Fantino, who provide Spanish and Italian announcement inBrawl onward respectively, also voice Lucario in their respective localizations.
  • Xander Mobus, who provides the English announcer inSmash 4 onward, also voicesJoker in the English localization ofUltimate.
• 64 andMelee are the only games in the series to have the announcer shout the game's title at the title screen.
  • Brawl contains unused, empty announcer files for what appears to be the announcer shouting the title's name; in the final game, there are no voice clips for this. Other unused files also feature thecountdown at the end of a match starting at ten seconds, as opposed to five.
  • Xander has, in promotional material for bothSmash 4 andUltimate, said the titles of both games, but neither game features a title shout on the title screen.
• InSmash 64, German voice lines for "Captain Falcon", "Computer Player" and "Team Battle" are missing, so the game uses the English version instead.
• InSmash 4, some lines in the German version, such as "Perfect" and "Replay Channel", soundunusually different compared to other lines.
• The NTSC French version ofSmash 4 andUltimate features several minor inconsistencies on the pronunciation of character names. For example, "Ice Climbers", "Roy", "Link Cartoon", "Daraen", "Larry", "Roy", "Morton", and "Ryu" are pronounced with an "R" which is more akin to the English "R", while most other characters (even "Rosalina &Luma", with the former referred to as "Harmonie" in the PAL version) are pronounced with a typical "guttural R" in Parisian French, which is prominently used in the PAL version.
  • Corrin is a rare case in that they have different pronunciations between regions in the French translation ofSmash 4, but use the same pronunciation asSmash 4's PAL version inUltimate for both regions, albeit re-recorded.
• Xander booked his role with the same microphoneKenny James (Bowser's current voice actor outside ofSuper Smash Bros.) gifted him, when he wasperforming theater alongside James.
• Xander stated that despite being the announcer, he was always made unaware of bothSmash 4 andUltimate's launch rosters or DLC until their release, since in order to prevents leaks, he records for multiple red herrings and random character names in order to obscure who is being included, such as naming titles, random characters that would never be considered, and non-video game characters. Whether or not this is true for other language announcers or beforeSmash 4 is unknown.
  • When recording forDuck Hunt inSmash 4, he was conditioned to believe he was reading it as the title of the NES game and assumed it was fake. He also believed that when recording forSnake, who would return later inUltimate, that he was reading it as the animal rather than the character.
  • He also stated he did not know Cloud would be inSmash 4 until his announcement.
  • For Joker, he first thought it was a joke beforeCassandra Lee Morris,Morgana's English voice actress, confirmed the crossover to him before the reveal trailer atThe Game Awards 2018.^[9]
  • The development team asked Xander to call each character in three different pitches, then picked one of the three. This explains why some characters have their names called in a deeper, less enthusiastic voice than others, likeAlex andSteve for example.^[9][8]
• In spite ofBrawl using a Korean announcer,Ultimate uses the English announcer and translates certain names into Korean (such as theIce Climbers being called "Eol'eum Tagi", the duo's Korean name fromBrawl, andRosalina & Luma having a new announcer call, which refers the former with her English name and the latter as "Chiko", its Japanese name), while using the Japanese translations (such asRobin still being called Reflet) for others.
  • Ultimate's Korean version also mixes English and Japanese announcer clips to accommodate for the language's pronunciation; for instance,King Dedede,Simon andRichter use English pronunciations, whileLucina andKing K. Rool use Japanese. Oddly,R.O.B.'s announcer call also uses his Japanese name ("Robot"), despite his English name being displayed in the Korean version.
• InUltimate,Dark Samus andByleth's announcer calls are slightly louder in the Japanese version, despite otherwise being the same.
• Jean-Louis Faure, the French announcer fromBrawl toUltimate, is the first announcer in theSuper Smash Bros. series in any language to pass away, on March 27, 2022.^[10]

References[edit]

See also[edit]

• Crowd
• List of voice actors

• Characters
• Features
• Super Smash Bros. universe