Thousands of People are Petitioning Against the New 'Metroid,' for Some Reason

Metroid, Nintendo's atmospheric space epic about Samus and the eponymous alien parasites that threaten the galaxy on a regular basis, has been in hiding for a while. Samus' last adventure was Metroid: Other M in 2010, a game that took the series in some irksome directions. Meanwhile, the last Metroid Prime, the highly-celebrated first-person series from Retro Studios, hasn't been updated since 2007. Many fans had been hoping for a new game for nearly a decade, and yesterday Nintendo gave them one with Metroid Prime: Federation Force. The fans have since become restless. In the livid way.

The announcement came out of Nintendo's E3 presentation: a showcase that lacked the razzle dazzle that Microsoft and Sony stomped around to. Even though the company hosted its World Championships and regularly announces updates throughout the year, some fans were… disappointed. According to one Neogaf poster, they were, "literally shaking with anger during that conference. Tears formed in my eyes and my fists were clenched. 'Announce something,' I shrieked at my computer."

Metroid fans lashed out: a petition has now gone live to stop, in our big wide world of problems, the newly announced Metroid Prime: Federation Force. It already has thousands of signatures. Somehow.

"For almost a decade, long time Nintendo fans have been waiting for a true Metroid game," wrote Gilbert Manzanarez in his lil' ol' petition. "What we got however is a disgrace of a game with the name 'Metroid' slapped on the title. It has no elements at all of what Metroid is about and its a disrespectful manner to old and new fans of the series of showing them that the Metroid franchise is not dead afterall. This is not the Metroid we asked Nintendo to make. 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."

While it is true that the series' hero Samus doesn't seem to appear in this spin-off, the game still looks pretty darn similar to 2006's Metroid Prime Hunters, just with a shuffle-slide towards cuteness with chibi-proportions. And god forbid Nintendo decides to do with Metroid what it has done with Mario, Zelda, Pokemon and Fire Emblem by making every kind of iteration imaginable. If anything, fans should be happy, as those franchises illustrate that more begets more, and these games aren't used as sedatives. Even if a multiplayer Metroid party game wasn't my first choice, I'd take it a lot sooner than Metroid: Another Other M.

Usually the geeky overreaction gesture would be to call for a boycott (or as most people call it, not buying something you don't want), but a petition to downright halt production has that special "you gotta be kidding me" touch. But hey, we got an American election coming up, so if any presidential hopefuls want to make the saving of Metroid's glory their pet cause then by all means. Trump? This seems like it'd be in your wheelhouse.