The E3 gaming expo is one of the biggest gaming events of the year, wherein the major video game companies reveal their big plans for new releases. Fans always hotly anticipate the new titles brands like Xbox and Nintendo have in store, but this year, Nintendo left fans more than a little disappointed.
At E3, Nintendo announced a brand new Metroid game , which is one of the company’s most popular franchises. Except it wasn’t a new Metroid game–not exactly. The Nintendo game doesn’t star Samus Aran, the bounty hunter protagonist of literally every Metroid game to date. Instead, Metroid Prime: Federation Force focuses on the sci-fi troopers of the galactic federation–an interstellar police force that was barely even mentioned in past Metroid games.
You can watch Nintendo’s new Metroi d trailer in the video below. Notice that the “dislikes” bar is ten times as large as the “likes” bar.
Nintendo fans, and especially Metroid fans, are outraged over this new game. After years of anticipating a new Metroid Prime title, or even a regular side-scrolling Metroid game similar to Super Metroid , Nintendo has announced a game without the game’s star. Releasing a Metroid game without Samus is akin to Nintendo releasing a Mario game without Mario, or a Kirby game without Kirby.
In fact, Nintendo fans are so upset that they have started an online petition at Change.org to get Metroid Prime: Federation Force cancelled entirely.
“We should let Nintendo know what we really think of the game and make them actually LISTEN to their fans for once. Help us stop this atrocity of a game from bearing the beloved Metroid franchise name and make Nintendo halt production on it.”
If the petition isn’t evidence enough of the rage that fans felt toward Nintendo, Game Politics collected a few of the responses that fans gave about Nintendo after the E3 conference announcing the Metroid title.
“I was literally shaking with anger during that conference,” said a fan on NeoGAF. “Tears formed in my eyes and my fists were clenched.”
“I loved this company and put my heart and soul into dedicating my gaming life to them,” said another. “But now, I have nothing. I’m an empty shell.”
As a result of the backlash, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata took to Twitter to issue a semi-apology for letting fans down.
. @Nintendo Thank you for watching. We take opinions of this year’s Digital Event seriously and will work to better meet your expectations.
— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) June 16, 2015
What do you think of Nintendo’s decision? For more updates from Nintendo at E3, click here .
[Image credit: Nintendo]
