Controversial Pokémon, Metroid fan games removed from The Game Awards ballot

Two games inspired by Nintendo properties are no longer eligible for this year’s The Game Awards, despite their inclusion on the ballot earlier this week. NeoGAF posters spotted that Pokémon Uranium and Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R) have disappeared from the nominees for “Best Fan Creation,” and the event’s organizers haven’t provided a reason for the change.

Pokémon Uranium and AM2R both courted controversy earlier this year as Nintendo cracked down on unlicensed projects that used its intellectual property. AM2R, an ambitious revamp of Metroid 2: The Return of Samus, launched over the summer after years in the making, only for Nintendo to squash the free download just weeks after release. The company cited copyright claims, which it would give as the reason for shutting down numerous other unauthorized fan projects in subsequent weeks.

The same happened to Pokémon Uranium, albeit in a much shorter time frame. The game was hotly anticipated by the Pokémon ROM hack community for nearly a decade, but Nintendo hit it with a cease-and-desist notice not even a week after the full version became available.

We’ve reached out to Nintendo about its possible involvement with the last-minute removal of both titles from the list, as well as The Game Awards’ creator and host, Geoff Keighley. When the nominees were announced last week, both Pokémon Uranium and AM2R were on the list. Now, only Doom-inspired Brutal Doom 64 and Enderal: The Shards of Order, a take on The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, remain.

The winners will be crowned on Dec. 1 during the livestreamed annual event.