Nintendo Co Ltd has been understandably reluctant to license out its character for film adaptations ever since the release of the hilariously awful Super Mario Bros in 1993. Now it looks like the Japanese game company may finally be ready to give the movie business another shot, but this time Nintendo wants to be the one calling all of the shots.

Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima recently told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, “We want to do as much as we can by ourselves.”

According to Kimishima, Nintendo is looking to form a partnership with a production company, and the game maker is already in talks with a number of studios around the world.

Nintendo has plenty of stellar IPs that could draw film audiences based on name recognition alone, but if Nintendo is interested in movies that are more than shameless cash grabs (*cough* Angry Birds *cough*), the studio will have its work cut out for it.

Game movies have had a dubious reputation for some time, and Super Mario Bros is hardly the only offender, though it is certainly one of the worst. Other awful game movies include Street Fighter, Doom, and anything director Uwe Boll has ever made. Seriously, just glance over his IMDB page. It’s awful.

Of course, the comic book movie boom has already proven that niche genres can still have mass appeal if the movies aren’t terrible, and there are two major game-to-film adaptations coming out this year that could make or break the future of game movies: Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed.

Both films certainly have the budgets to be successful, and between Warcraft’s BAFTA-winning director (Moon director Duncan Jones) and Assassin’s Creed’s star-studded cast, their creators seem to be taking the genre more seriously than many of their predecessors.

Nintendo has always done things its own way, but the Japanese studio will likely be closely watching the outcomes of this year’s game movies as the company maps out its plan to translate its properties to the big screen.

Photo by FaruSantos