The original Super Monkey Ball announcer, Brian Matt – who seemingly teased Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and his own return to the role last June – is not featured in the new game’s credits.
According to a Sega spokesperson though, he was never actually involved with the new project and hasn’t been associated with the Monkey Ball series for “some time” now. Here’s exactly what was said in a statement provided to our friends over at VGC:
“Brian Matt Uhl did not work on Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and has not been involved with the Super Monkey Ball series for some time.”
The ‘announcement voice’ credits only list Angela Chubak and Mirai Patrick Sayama:
An update by Brian Matt on Instagram last week claimed there were still some “legal issues”:
“Legal issues still. Having announcers not credited or paid royalties is still a major issue with SegaSammy. Let’s see what develops… I’m an advocate for both legal and moral rights for foreigners in Japan, I can’t compromise my beliefs or turn a blind eye to my fellow narrators.”
This follows on from a video the voice actor shared on his YouTube last November, titled the “Dark side of Sega” – accusing Sega Sammy of discriminating against foreign voice actors and calling out one member of the company’s legal team:
“Sega Sammy legal states that they have the right to credit for narrators or not…”[he] has been very arrogant and very wrong on this subject both morally and legally”.
The Japan-based voice actor also mentioned then how foreign talent had never been given royalties for past work and how it was time to “make a change”:
“When you change the title of a game – for example, Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball 2, Super Monkey Ball Sakura – or when it goes to, for example, from Sega to Xbox, [or] when it goes to an app for iOS […] that is also considered something legally and morally that Sega Sammy must address… No foreign narrators have ever been given royalties for this, and we’re going to make a change. This has to stop.”
Brian Matt was not known by fans of the Super Monkey Ball series until he was discovered in 2019 as the “uncredited” voice announcer of the original games.
We’ve reached out to the voice actor and if we hear anything back, we’ll update this post.