If you converted how much The Super Mario Bros. Movie earned from American dollars to Mushroom Kingdom coins, you could probably buy the whole place, Princess Peach’s palace included. The movie is set to make a billion dollars(Opens in a new window) soon and is already the most successful video-game movie of all time. 

While the movie won’t be available to stream for some time(Opens in a new window), streaming video-game-based media is getting some power-ups by proxy. Playing off the popularity of the Bros., JustWatch(Opens in a new window) put together a list of the top 10 films and shows that people are watching. 

(Credit: JustWatch)

Video-game movies and TV shows have been notoriously bad until recently, with the critically acclaimed The Last of Us series breaking the curse for TV, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie undoing whatever it was that was done by its notorious predecessor, Super Mario Bros. (which starred Bob Hoskins as Mario Mario and John Leguizamo as Luigi Mario(Opens in a new window)). 

While the reviews and audience ratings for the movies Uncharted, Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Resident Evil, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Mortal Kombat, Warcraft, and Rampage should have spelled game over for some of them, they’re nevertheless the most enjoyed by streaming audiences. 

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Until The Super Mario Bros. Movie came along, Sonic the Hedgehog(Opens in a new window) and then Sonic the Hedgehog 2 were the top-grossing video-game adaptations. That was, of course, after Paramount Pictures remade the movie to get rid of, among other things, Sonic’s terrifying teeth, which repulsed those who watched the original trailer.

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Even with the glow-up, Sonic is not as cute as Pikachu. Yet the beloved Pokémon struggled at the box office and could not outpace the speedy, spiny mammal(Opens in a new window). But Pokémon’s reviews were still far better than other video-game movies, such as Warcraft, which has an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score of 29%. (The film did give PCMag a chance to talk with its director Duncan Jones, though, who is a huge fan of the franchise.)

TV-show adaptations of video games haven’t typically done well either—that is, until The Last of Us proved that mushroom-powered zombies could make for prestige TV. 

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The only thing beating The Last of Us for video-game supremacy in streaming series is Arcane, an animated show in the League of Legends universe. They’re followed by Halo, Castlevania, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, The Cuphead Show!, Resident Evil, DOTA: Dragon’s Blood, Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, and Carmen Sandiego. 

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