8 Nintendo games that should be movies

Nintendo's best loved characters — (Image credit: Nintendo)

If you were to tell us prior to September 2025 that a Super Mario Galaxy movie would be hitting cinemas within a year, we’d have fobbed it off as an April Fool’s joke.

It’s not that we weren’t expecting a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie – that sucker made an astonishing $1.36 billion at the box office, making a follow-up nigh-on guaranteed.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie | Final Trailer - YouTube

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Rather, it’s the specificity of the sequel (which hits cinemas on 1st April) that took us by surprise. Super Mario Galaxy seems to have lifted both its title and its basic premise from two idiosyncratic entries in the sprawling Mario video game franchise.

Super Mario Galaxy was released onto the Nintendo Wii console in 2007. Many fans rate it and its 2010 sequel to be among the very best games in the series, notable for introducing bold gravity-defying mechanics to Mario’s previously earth-bound formula.

All of which got us to thinking about which other Nintendo games would make for a good movie treatment. In some instances, we’re talking about single entries that don’t necessarily represent the wider IP, much like Super Mario Galaxy itself.

1. Pikmin

All four Pikmin games to date follow the same basic formula, so let’s just start at the beginning. Released onto the Nintendo GameCube in 2001, and inspired by creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s love of gardening, Pikmin casts you as a pint-sized alien astronaut who crash lands on an Earth-like planet. Your tiny explorer is forced to corral the local fauna – tiny plant-like creatures called Pikmin – and put them to work collecting, building and fighting. We’re thinking it would make a charming action-comedy movie that mines the game’s exaggerated sense of scale in a Toy Story/Honey I Shrunk the Kids/Ant-Man fashion.

2. Splatoon

Few would have predicted that Nintendo would attempt to make an online competitive shooter, but that’s exactly what it did with Splatoon and its two incrementally improving sequels. Of course, Nintendo’s family-friendly nature means that this doesn’t play like your teenage nephew’s slur-filled military simulator. Rather, it’s a delightfully colourful, deeply cooperative action game that doesn’t even require you to shoot people if you don’t wish too, thanks to a tactile level-painting mechanic. It also features an excellent single player campaign that fleshes out the squids-vs-octopi lore. Ample material for an animated movie, in other words.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

If any game in this series should serve as the basis for a film, it’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This 2020 Switch game was by far the biggest entry yet, providing solace and a precious sense of community for millions during the global lockdown. It’s not worth being too pedantic about which Animal Crossing entry you would choose here, however. There isn’t really a story to be adapted, just the premise of a mute avatar (that’s you) rocking up on an idyllic island filled with assorted anthropomorphic animal characters and building a blissful virtual life filled with building, trading and fishing. As the Minecraft movie proved, you don't have to have a grand narrative attached to a gaming property to put together an entertaining trip to the cinema.

4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Yes, yes, we know. There’s already a Zelda movie in the works. But we’re petitioning for a full-blown animated adaptation of a very particular entry. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker landed on the Nintendo GameCube in 2003, and is quite unlike any Zelda entry before or since. Its gorgeous cel-shaded art style is a total one-of-a-kind, and the game generally feels like you’re playing a cartoon. Add in its distinctive maritime twist on familiar Zelda staples, and you have all the material for one special animated feature.

5. Metroid Prime

The Metroid series has a long and varied history, but we’re particularly interested in adapting Metroid Prime. This series pinnacle took the hitherto 2D series into the third dimension, switching the style and perspective from zoomed-out side-on platformer to first person adventure. The result was arguably the most immersive game in the series. Three solid sequels have been released since, the latest in 2025, so it’s likely to be fresh in people’s minds. Nintendo might be slightly squeamish about the unabashed influence of Ridley Scott’s Alien, but we think its world is distinct enough to warrant its own cinematic entry.

6. Star Fox

Also known as Starwing here in Europe, Star Fox was released onto the SNES in 1993 with a then-revolutionary deployment of 3D graphics. The adventures of Fox McCloud (who is confirmed to be making his debut in Super Mario Galaxy, voiced by Glenn Powell) and his fellow fighter pilot buddies could make for a cracking slice of family-friendly sci-fi, if it was handled properly. Think of the epic against-the-odds space battles of the original Star Wars trilogy – and particularly those Death Star trench battles – but with a gaggle of babbling animals taking the place of Luke Skywalker and co. Doesn’t that sound ace?

7. F-Zero

Largely thanks to the all-consuming success of the Mario Kart franchise, Nintendo’s other major racing game IP has been somewhat neglected over the years. What better way to relaunch the F-Zero IP than with a movie spin-off? OK, so I may just be angling for a new standalone game in this lightning-fast futuristic racing series, but the original 1990 SNES game (and its mighty fine sequels) could be turned into a unique family-friendly sci-fi racing film. We’re thinking Speed Racer meets the pod racing bits of the Star Wars sequels, plus a little F1.

8. Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong played a fairly major part in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and we think it’s high time the character got his own production. If the past decade has shown us anything, it’s that there’s no such thing as too much Seth Rogen. In the spirit of Super Mario Galaxy, we’d rather Nintendo picked out a specific entry in the great ape’s oeuvre. In this case it’s Donkey Kong Country, the first game in a series of highly regarded side-on platformers initially developed by British developer Rare. The game’s epic production values (it was one of the most visually spectualar games of the 16-bit era), vibrant characterisation, and cheeky sense of humour warrant further exploration on the big screen.