Yesterday's Nintendo Treehouse Live presentation revealed Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia as the new game from beloved developer WayForward, and fan reception has been less than stellar. It's the second time in the last month a Nintendo Switch game reveal has disappointed fans, and both Nintendo's marketing and the Switch's relatively bare 2020 release calendar make it easy to see why they're upset.
WayForward is well-known for its beautifully animated 2D platformers. Many of these have taken the form of licensed games, like Aliens: Infestation, DuckTales: Remastered, and several Adventure Time games, but the company is most revered for its cult original franchise, Shantae. The Metroidvania series began on the Game Boy Color and saw its most recent release with 2019's Shantae and the Seven Sirens.
The studio's reputation for taking licenses and turning them into surprisingly competent games drew a natural amount of excitement when Nintendo announced a Treehouse Live would reveal a game "in a franchise new to developer WayForward." Fans speculated this meant WayForward was taking on a Nintendo series, like Wario Land or Metroid, seemingly prompting Nintendo to clarify an hour and a half later that WayForward's game would be "based on a third-party property." This still left room for something exciting, but fans would ultimately be let down.
How Nintendo Keeps Over-Hyping Disappointing Game Announcements
WayForward's game was Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, an RPG based on the 2005 Japanese-Canadian anime franchise. Although Bakugan still relevant, currently airing a TV reboot called Bakugan: Armored Alliance, it's not in most hardcore Nintendo fans' radars, so the Treehouse Live's chat was immediately filled with anger and disappointment upon its reveal. Its trailer and gameplay demo have high dislike ratios on Nintendo's YouTube channel, and although the full Treehouse Live archive has since been made private (possible due to fan hate), Happy Gamer reported the stream gained at least 10,000 dislikes in the 15 minutes following Bakugan's reveal.
Given Nintendo's pre-reveal teases, WayForward's reputation, and the 35-minute Paper Mario: The Origami King presentation fans had to watch first, Champions of Vestroia would likely have upset fans in any context. But recent events doomed the announcement even further. The Pokémon Company's Pokémon Unite MOBA reveal earned what seems to be the new Metroid game teaser. It's almost as if Nintendo said, "Oh, you think WayForward's game might be Metroid? Well, here's that Paper Mario tease again... Psyche, it's Bakugan."
Besides The Origami King, Nintendo's 2020 release schedule is essentially barren. Previously teased games like Metroid Prime 4 and Breath of the Wild 2 are nowhere in sight, so every time Nintendo (or The Pokémon Company, in Pokémon Unite's case) teases a new Switch game, it's setting itself up for a bad reception if the game isn't a major, big-budget release. Unless the July Nintendo Direct rumors turn out to be real, Nintendo could continue this frustrating pattern.
Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia releases for Nintendo Switch on November 3, 2020.
