Original Super Monkey Ball announcer didn’t work on new game, Sega says

Original Super Monkey Ball announcer Brian Matt – who apparently teased Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and his own return to the role last June – doesn’t feature in the new game’s credits.

According to a spokesperson for Sega, he was never involved in the new project and has not been associated with the Monkey Ball series for “quite some time” now. Here is exactly what was said in a statement provided to our friends at VGC:

“Brian Matt Uhl hasn’t worked on Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and hasn’t been involved in the Super Monkey Ball series for quite some time.”

The ‘announcement voice’ credits only mention Angela Chubak and Mirai Patrick Sayama:

An update from Brian Matt on Instagram last week claimed there were still “legal issues”:

“Still legal problems. The fact that advertisers are not credited or paid royalties is always a major issue with SegaSammy. Let’s see what happens … I am an advocate for the legal and moral rights of foreigners in Japan, I cannot compromise my beliefs or condone my fellow narrators.

This follows a video the actor shared on his YouTube last November, titled “The Dark Side of Sega” – accusing Sega Sammy of discriminating against foreign actors and exposing a member of the company’s legal team:

“The Sega Sammy law states that they have the right to credit narrators or not …”[he] has been very arrogant and very bad on this subject both morally and legally ”.

The Japan-based voice actor also mentioned at the time how foreign talent had never received royalties for previous work and that 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, for example, from Sega to Xbox, [or] when it goes to an app for iOS […] this is also seen as something from a legal and moral standpoint that Sega Sammy needs to grapple with … No foreign narrator has ever received royalties for this, and we’re going to make a change. It must stop.

Brian Matt was not known to fans of the Super Monkey Ball series until he was discovered in 2019 as the “uncredited” voice announcer of the original games.