Japan’s gaming icons are getting midlife makeovers as they hit their 40s

Last September, Mario turned 40.

To mark the occasion, fans snapped up limited-edition merchandise from the franchise at Nintendo’s storefronts around the world. In Kyoto, tickets to the Nintendo Museum bore the likeness of the 8-bit plumber, and in New York City, a 15½-meter-tall balloon of the red-capped character floated through the streets as part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

For the start of his anniversary year, Nintendo’s poster boy was the undisputed belle of the ball. However, 2026 holds more milestones than a 1990s memory card could have possibly stored.

Some of these franchises have sustained success by reinventing their approach to gameplay, while others have left their digital roots behind to become cultural and economic institutions in their own right. With so many of Japan’s gaming icons ensconced firmly in adulthood — or worse: middle age — it pays to have a look back at where they’ve come from, where they’re going and what we’ve learned from all the game overs and extra lives along the way.

A red carpet in Hyrule

If you grew up alongside YouTube and the Legend of Zelda series — which celebrates its 40th anniversary on Feb. 21 — you’ll remember an annual April Fools’ ritual: A live-action Zelda trailer would spread like wildfire across a nerdy corner of the internet before being exposed as a prank.

The varying production value of these trailers was proportional to the cruelty of the joke, but they all conveyed the same message: Die-hard Zelda geeks were desperate for a cinematic take on the action-adventure series — and were never going to get it.

It’s not that the Zelda games are unfilmable in the ways novels like “The Catcher in the Rye” or “House of Leaves” are said to be. From 1986’s original title, The Legend of Zelda, through 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom, the series has hewed to a boilerplate hero’s-journey plot that Hollywood studios have long turned into safe but entertaining popcorn fare.

But things can always go wrong, like they did in 1989 when Nintendo licensed out the Zelda franchise to the American producers of the short-lived “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!” Despite the substandard animation and forgettable 15-minute stories, what baffled most was the transformation of Link, the silent, stoic protagonist of the video games, into a brash, unlikable jerk redeemed only by the ridiculousness of his catchphrase (once even shouted after being pushed by Zelda off a cliff): “Well, excuuuse me, princess!”

After the spectacular flop that was 1993’s “Super Mario Bros.” (revisionist histories aside), Nintendo seemed content to leave film and TV alone entirely. However, the gaming giant has done an about-face in the past several years and turned some of its gaming franchises into successful films, including 2019’s “Detective Pikachu” and 2023’s animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”

And then, in November 2023, it happened: Nintendo announced it had greenlit production on a live-action Zelda movie, with Bo Bragason cast as Zelda and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link. The film is set for release on May 7, 2027 (a few months ahead of the 40th anniversary of the series’ North American release).

In some ways, this as-yet-untitled Zelda movie presents the clearest present direction for the franchise. While 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom was one of that year’s best games, it was largely a retooling of 2017’s Breath of the Wild, even down to reusing parts of the latter’s map. For the next game, the Zelda series needs to make a choice between returning to the well of a critically acclaimed yet rehashed format or remaking the wheel once again — as it has done before, first with the jump from top-down 2D to third-person 3D with 1998’s Ocarina of Time, and then again with the transition from the hub-and-spoke level design of nearly every game prior to 2017 to the exploration-heavy, open-world gameplay of Breath of the Wild.

When in doubt, bet on Nintendo to thread the needle on Zelda games as it has for the majority of the past 40 years. On the cinematic front, I have just one request: Don’t give live-action Link a catchphrase.

Gotta cash ’em all

On games alone, there’s little reason the Pokemon franchise should be relevant today. Save for a lukewarm shift to open-world gameplay in 2022’s Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, the series has failed to meaningfully innovate beyond the core critter catching and battling mechanics that took the world by storm in 1996.

And yet, with the Pokemon franchise set to turn 30 on Feb. 27, none of that seems to matter. On the contrary, Pokemon — more specifically, its physical card market — has become a nearly self-sustaining economy.

Look no further than the Feb. 16 sale of a particularly rare version of a Pikachu card given out in a 1998 contest for the manga magazine CoroCoro Comic. One of just 41 copies believed to still exist, the card’s rarity and pristine quality helped its owner, American influencer Logan Paul, auction it off for a final price of $16.49 million (¥2.53 billion).

Not only is this the most expensive Pokemon card in history, it also eclipsed the previous record for trading cards as a whole, surpassing the inflation-adjusted $13.5 million paid in 2022 for a 1952 card of American baseball legend Mickey Mantle.

Is this Pikachu card really worth $16.49 million? Well, no, obviously. But also yes — primarily because of how the Pokemon franchise has grown up with its fanbase.

When the original Pokemon games launched on the handheld Game Boy — first in 1996 in Japan as Pokemon Red, Green and Blue, then in 1998 in North America as Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow — the franchise’s player base was largely children and adolescents. Three decades later, those young gamers are now adults, many with the disposable income to spend on ever-increasing ways to interact with the Pokemon brand, be it in-person tournaments, orchestral performances or theme parks.

With limited supply and ever-increasing demand, collectors willing to pay a premium for a tangible piece of their fandom also create fertile ground for speculation.

A $16.49 million outlier card is just the tip of the iceberg. On Reddit’s r/PokeInvesting community, hundreds of thousands of collectors trade news and insights on developments in card pricing and availability. In August 2025, a promotion between Pokemon and McDonald’s Japan led to a surge of customers discarding food en masse in favor of the cards included with the meals.

So valuable are Pokemon cards that physical shops are often the target of thefts: In April 2023, ¥1.5 million in cards were stolen from a store in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district; the next month, ¥6.5 million were taken from a shop in Kumamoto; in the space of a few weeks earlier this year, police in the United Kingdom reported they were pursuing leads in four separate Pokemon card-related robberies; and in Manhattan on Jan. 14, three assailants made off with more than $100,000 in merchandise after robbing a store at gunpoint.

These incidents are all symptoms of the ubiquitous popularity, not to mention profitability, of the Pokemon brand as it enters its 30th year. The games notwithstanding, the franchise is less the niche hobby it began as and more an economic institution that, for now, shows no signs of stopping.

Digital treasure troves

The sheer breadth of iconic video game franchises that Japan-based studios have birthed over the years means that Nintendo is far from having a monopoly on anniversaries this year.

Of the biggest non-Nintendo series celebrating milestones in 2026, leading the pack is the long-running Dragon Quest role-playing franchise turning 40 this May. Though fans haven’t seen a mainline entry since 2017’s Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, 2025 did bring a remake of the third title originally released in 1988. Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate is currently in development, albeit without the aid of character designer Akira Toriyama, who passed away in 2024 (Toriyama’s iconic blue slime, a comically weak enemy and de facto mascot of the Dragon Quest series, will undoubtedly return).

Also turning 40 in September is Konami’s Castlevania series. So influential was this franchise of side-scrolling action titles that it gave half its name to an entire genre of “Metroidvanias,” alongside the Metroid series, which also turns 40 in August.

Hard times befell both franchises. The armored bounty hunter Samus hadn’t appeared in a first-person entry in nine years until Metroid Prime 4: Beyond released in December 2025. Meanwhile, neither the vampiric Alucard nor the vampire hunters on his trail had been seen for more than 12 years — until this month, when Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse was announced.

Over at Sega, Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35 in June. The speedy character has accumulated more gaming misses than hits over his tenure, but that makes his success at the box office all the more surprising. The 2020 “Sonic the Hedgehog” film launched a trilogy that has since grossed more than $1 billion (¥158 billion) and persuaded Sega executives that other franchises under the company’s umbrella — namely, the Total War series of real-time strategy games — might be ripe for similar multimedia revamping.

Dusting off Donkey Kong

The oldest of the bunch to celebrate an anniversary this year, Donkey Kong firmly enters middle age at 45 come July. But until recently, being the greatest ape in Nintendo’s catalog of characters didn’t amount to much.

Although the simian starred as the villain in the 1981 game bearing his name, he was quickly eclipsed in fame and corporate positioning by the game’s protagonist — known then as “Jumpman” — who would be rebranded in 1983’s Mario Bros. and again in 1985’s Super Mario Bros. as “Mario Mario.”

The decades that followed saw Donkey Kong take on an increasingly supporting role in Nintendo’s roster of characters. Games starring the necktie-wearing ape would come and go, but they would never amount to must-play releases in any given year. At times, the franchise suffered yearslong hiatuses, and releases, when they did come, were a playground for experiments, like the trilogy of early 2000s rhythm games controlled by a set of bongo-shaped controllers.

For Donkey Kong, it was always the bridesmaid, never the bride (are great apes even monogamous?) — until recently, that is.

In December 2024, Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan officially unveiled Donkey Kong Country, a themed area inspired by the series’ jungle environments. In July 2025, Donkey Kong Bananza — the first mainline game in more than a decade — dropped from the treetops to near-universal acclaim, becoming one of the strongest titles on the Switch 2 yet.

And wouldn’t you know it. Even though Donkey Kong appears as a supporting character in the recent Mario movies, a June 2025 copyright filing by Nintendo suggests the big ape might soon be the starring attraction in his own feature film.

With so many iconic characters under its umbrella, perhaps it’s understandable that Nintendo has taken a while to get the Donkey Kong franchise back on its feet. But like the other series celebrating milestones this year, let it be a lesson in perseverance — demonstrating the wisdom of putting the controller down for a spell before taking up the fight again for better results.