12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: Make your case that the name/page is broken in the Opening Post, or the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what "Make your case" means.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
Please don't list this on a work's page as a trope. Examples can go on the work's YMMV tab.
Tainted by the Preview
Now, as with most arcade games of the time, a conversion to the home computer formats was almost inevitable. "Hurray!" we thought! "We can play Street Fighter at home!" Then we were told that it was going to be converted by Tiertex. There were no more hurrays....
Sometimes, hyping your project in advance is a double-edged sword. In the best-case scenario, you get people excited about the things that will be in your upcoming movie/show/game/media extravaganza, and early ads will build interest for when the work finally comes out.
And then there are the cases where the advance word results in a large amount of complaining. Tainted by the Preview covers all those instances where the would-be audience for something yet to come out immediately decides it detests something about it, based on a preview, and starts complaining about it. Vociferously.
Mind you, they have no idea whether or not yet it's actually worthy of complaint - the project in question might be over a year away. This doesn't matter to them; they need to proclaim immediately that the project in question is Ruined FOREVER.
While this can happen with brand-new projects, this most often happens with older series with established fanbases. A series with a Broken Base is nearly guaranteed to have some portion react this way; a previously-united fanbase might become one if this reaction isn't universal. Of course, it's always possible that this reaction will be universal whether or not the base is broken; the project can be in real trouble if that's the case.
Of course, there's always the possibility that the preview itself is poorly constructed.
This is a specific, pre-release version of They Changed It, Now It Sucks (although people Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch will sometimes carry this attitude if they manage to stay steadfast in their dislike of the project in question).
Fortunately, it's comparatively easy for anything falling under this trope to be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap - all it has to do is be better than people expected (and given how low the expectations are in many cases...). Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for the first impressions to be the right ones.
Contrast And the Fandom Rejoiced, although this trope can follow that one.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
A whole lot of comic book fans were outraged upon discovering that Batman: Gotham Knight would be done as an anime and produced by multiple Japanese studios. Humorously, people complained about huge eyes and technicolour hair right after seeing the preview, which has only realistic hair and eyes.
Halo Legends was announced as a collaborative project done by several famous names in the Anime industry, and was to be a collection of short films documenting different stories in the Halo universe. Unfortunantly, several "Hardcore" Halo fans felt that this was going to compleatly betray the hyper-military macho astetic that the games portrayed. Their main example? The poster for "Homecoming", which featured a Spartan hand gently taking a teddy bear cellphone strap from what looks like a young girl set in front of a field of flowers. Despite this, Legends sold rather well and has been praised for adding new levels of depth to the Halo universe.
Futari Wa Pretty Cure Max Heart: "It's not two girls anymore! There's a third! And she transforms independently! And she's associated with Pollun! Give me the original!"
Yes! Precure 5: "FIVE GIRLS INSTEAD OF TWO!?!? And important male characters (never mind that season one had them too)? And everyone has individual attacks and transformations? This isn't even Precure anymore! Give me Splash Star!"
Yes! Precure 5Go!Go!: This new Milky Rose chick is Milk? And who had the bright idea to make another sequel when Splash Star didn't get one? And now they have lightsabers, which I'm sure are going to be a major element that completely changes how the show works and not just part of afinishing move? Give me Precure 5!
Suite Pretty Cure♪: "They're going back to the original duo concept? Neat, but the artwork looks so generic! They're just re-hashing elements from the earliest series! Give me Heartcatch!
Mostly averted for Smile Pretty Cure. When the designs were first leaked to the public, many had this reaction, mostly due to rehashing the five-girl dynamic from Yes! Pretty Cure 5 with similar colors, as well as the weird hairdos. Once the designs were confirmed to be official, the fandom reaction became much more positive, in particular due to there being an orange Cure and a second green Cure. Some people still had problem with the hair though.
Happens a lot with Pokémon. Best Wishes revealed, as expected, that Dawn would leave the main cast. Previews and cover art show that she's not being replaced by the Generation V female player character people expected, but an original character. Fandom raged.
Turns out that the girl is actually the eighth Gym Leader in Pokémon White. The fandom's raging died down considerably after this was revealed.
Madhouse is making an anime adaptation of Wolverine!? Awesome! Wait, who's that tall, thin, clean-shaven Bishōnen!? That's Logan!? Ghaaa! RUINED FOREVER!!!!
All it took was a quick preview and few small screenshots before Mobile Suit Gundam AGE was declared doomed to be a failure. The apparent shift to a lighter and softer art style and use of aliens has generated such an outcry from fans that a good nickname for the series would be Gundam RAGE. Check out the promo comments for just a small sample about how much people seem to hate the series already.
Actually, this also happened with Gundam 00. The very stylized character designs made by Yun Kouga from Loveless fame made MANY a fanboy starts stomping their feet and whining about how this is Gundam for girrrrrrls, eeeeeewwwww!.
Comic Books
The DC Reboot keeps doing this to itself. Just when the fans are relaxing, or starting to console themselves (except over Batgirl, that never settles), more preview material comes out and gets them mad again. First it was the JLA. Then the Bat-books. Then Superman. And then the Teen Titans costumes/new back story blurbs did it AGAIN. DC might just want to keep mum starting now, at least then no one will get the wounds re-opened.
The only area where more info might be a good idea is if DC tells us what's happening to characters like Stephanie Brown, who are losing their mantles to the people who had them earlier. That might help their case more, since everyone seems to want to know if Stephanie/Wally West/Donna Troy/Cassandra Cain/ect will be all right. That might be something worth releasing.
Film
When it was revealed that the Spider-Man movie would use organic web-shooters instead of the mechanical ones used in the comics, the uproar amongst comic fans was intense. However, when the movie proved so popular that the organic web-shooters became Canon Immigrants, there was remarkably little and muted complaining, apart from how insane the issue they were introduced in was written (i.e.: Peter turns into a giant pregnant female spider, then gives birth to himself.)
And of course once mechanical web-shooters came back (via One More Day) fans were pissed, but then again the way those things keep running out of web or were jamming up every issue really got on fans' nerves (who were already pissed thanks to One More Day).
And now that the reboot has pictures and a trailer out there are more complaints. Complaints about the mechanical webshooters, complaints about the costume, complaints about it being an origin story again, complaints about the first person sequence at the end of the trailer, complaints about the Darker and Edgier vibe in the trailer, everything. And of course, there are the complaints over the fact that they're rebooting it in the first place.
When it was revealed that Arthur and Trillian would have romantic scenes in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, many complaints (particularly in webcomics) could be found about how terrible it was going to be because they were changing the books. Fans of the radio show had to be forcibly restrained.
Daniel Craig as James Bond initially caused a stir, being blonde, blue eyed and nothing like the most famous Bonds before him. Most people calmed down once they say him in action.
When production on Bond 23 is being delayed in 2010 because of MGM's financial troubles, most fans throw an angry outburst and accuse MGM itself of this.
When they announced there would be a American film Live-Action Adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, you think they would wait until they had something about to tell us besides Spike being played by Keanu Reeves (whose involvement in pretty much anything leads to massive online hatred).
A lot of CGI animation movies for kids put the crudest and most cliched jokes from the film in their trailers. This usually gives a bad impression on older audiences that don't bring kids to the movies.
A Disney film about Rapunzel had its name changed to the more Dreamworks-esque Tangled. To make matters worse, a teaser trailer attached to Toy Story 3 played the above comments painfully straight and put its emphasis on the male lead instead of the heroine. The fandom did not rejoice.
The Princess and the Frog was subject to tons of debate even before trailers arrived, primarily because it was the first Disney Animated Canon film with a black protagonist. The New York Times examined the dilemma here.
The teaser really got the worst of it, mostly because of what it showed - we see Tiana in a sparkly ballgown, standing on what appears to be a castle balcony, kissing the frog. People familiar with the premise of the movie by that point knew that Tiana was a working-class girl dressed for Mardi Gras, and the "castle" was actually her rich friend's mansion. People who were not familiar with that began to complain that (A) Disney was making a fairly large oversight of American politics in having there be an "American princess" by birth (it took quite awhile for word to spread that she married into it) and (B) that Disney was setting the movie in the traditional vaguely European setting, but making the princess black for the heck of it.
This will happen for any "horror" movie that has a good trailer, promises cool characters and bomb-ass action, and then ends the trailer with "Rated PG-13". Likewise any sex-comedy.
The Saga of Darren Shan had this trope occur when it was announced that the film would be a comedy.
James Cameron's movie Avatar has gotten this kind of reaction to its trailers.
to be fair, Cameron is one of the most despised figures in Hollywood for some reason, so a positive reaction to anything he's involved in would be more of a surprise than the alternative.
The casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat in Interview With A Vampire sparked protests from fans and from author Anne Rice; Rice liked him once she saw the film and went on a promotional campaign in his favor to make up for her previous complaints.
In a case where Tainted by the Preview outstripped And the Fandom Rejoiced, the news of a Short Circuit remake was met with cautious but hopeful reception, helped by news that the original's producer and scriptwriters were on board, and that the robot's look wouldn't change. Then came news that the scriptwriters were replaced by one from Robot Chicken, and the subsequent announcement that the director of Paul Blart Mall Cop and Are We Done Yet has been hired. As it stands, only the (currently unbroken) promise of the robot's look staying the same is keeping the fans from totally decrying the whole thing as ruining the franchise forever.
There was much wailing and rending of garments on the news that Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law had been cast as the leads in, and Guy Ritchie was to direct, a Sherlock Holmes movie. Holmesians all around the world were wary, mainly because Downey Jr didn't look like Holmes as he was described and illustrated in the books at all, but some maintained a let's wait and see attitude. Then the trailer came out, which made Holmes seem more like if House and Iron Man had a baby in Victorian times than the real Sherlock Holmes, and everyone but the fans were happy. Some gave up and feared the worst and some preferred to Wait and See. Heated arguments arose and every new clip and trailer served to make matters worse, but some minds were changed. Then the movie came out, and while opinions on how good of a story it was differ, most agree that Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law did a great job as Holmes and Watson, and some put them amongst the most beloved like Jeremy Brett and David Burke/Edward Hardwicke.
The Love Guru. It was decided that Mike Myers (the actor) would promote this film in character during the season 7 finale of American Idol. It was a long segment, it probably gave away too much about the character, it was dealing with subject matter some American Idol viewers would be extremely uncomfortable with, and it was not funny enough. Oh, and it was a long segment on a season finale that ran so long that many people using DVRs had the last name of the winner cut off — which was bad because the finalists had the same first name. It is likely that this segment helped sink The Love Guru at the box office.
The Ultramarines movie is currently having this sort of reception. Good Writer: check. Brilliant actors: check. Being made by an award winning 3D animation company: Check. And then the trailer came out...
When it was revealed that the Fellowship of the Ring movie would not have Tom Bombadil, fans were outraged. There was a petition with thousands of signatures. But the movie came out, and people quickly got over it.
They just announced the director for the GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra sequel! And it is... the guy who directed Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, and never had any experience with action flicks. Oh Crap. And to make it worse, Rachel Nichols announced only Duke, Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow would return...
When it was announced that Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would star Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, people questioned how well he'd do the character justice. Then the movie came out, and people were pleased with how it turned out.
There are guns in the trailer—the series generally Does Not Like Guns, and those that do appear are normally Energy Weapons used by the villains, where as the heroes use science or friendship to save the day.
And, to cap it off, most fans still have very fond memories of Guest from the Future, making it hard for any subsequent adaptation to compete. As of 2011, the project has been frozen for an indefinite period.
All of the trailers for The Muppets have been well received by the Muppet fandom, but the revelation of "fart shoes" has a few fans worried (not enough to declare Ruined Forever, but still less optimistic).
A lot of people had this reaction to the trailer for The Help.
The trailers for the 2011 version of The Three Musketeers left some fans skeptical about its chances of being good. This troper in particular became extremely worried after noticing one of the trailers showed a brief cut of what looked like a flying ship. He got talked into watching the movie and soon realized that it was worse than he feared.
For those not aware, the movie is a steampunk fantasy with very loose ties to the original story and completely different main characters.
A series is being written about a post Covenant war Halo universe? The fandom looked on eagerly to see more information about this... only to see the author listed as Karen Traviss. Some fans have started making bets upon how many pages it will be before the SPARTAN project gets turned into a Mandalorian Expy.
The Erin Hunter series Survivors... is not being written by the authors who work under the Erin Hunter pen name. The Warrior Cats and Seeker Bears fans aren't happy.
Live Action TV
In a case similar to Daniel Craig, count the number of people complaining about Matt Smith's "emo" looks when he was cast as the EleventhDoctor.
Fans of the pilot of Being Human were very anxious about the changes made to the series, rumoured and actual, but it worked out great. There were a lot of complaints before the series proper came out, though.
It seems that some Torchwood fans are getting ludicrously negative over the casting calls for the new characters in series 4, and complaining about characters not being 3-dimensional enough when these are just casting calls.
Before it premiered in the 90's, the Prime Time SoapCentral Park West was promoted in multi-page spreads in trade publications and banner ads across buses and buildings, and promised that the show would change the landscape of television forever by offering risque content for a pre-watershed series. All this talk of throwing as much sex and drama as possible into the series (helmed by Melrose Place creator Darren Star) turned off viewers who, according to reports, were sick of being beat over the head with the message that they were supposed to like the show because of its sex appeal. It didn't help that the pilot episode was scheduled against airings of Melrose and Beverly Hills 90210, which had both already covered the market in terms of pushing the envelope of adult and teen dramas, respectively. CPW was actively avoided by most viewers, and promptly died a quiet death soon after.
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica, full stop. Before the 2003 miniseries premiered, hardcore fans were already up in arms after a preview trailer that showed it was a reboot, Boomer and Starbuck had been changed from men into female characters, and that the Cylons were now CGI and no longer resembled their bulky "man-in-suit" predecessors. Not helping matters was Richard Hatch (Apollo from the 1978 series), who was loudly railing against the show because it had caused his personal continuation project of the original series to be shunted aside in favor of the new series. Even though Hatch hadn't seen the series, he blasted it on message boards and interviews every chance he got. Most of these cries died down when the show become a critical and commercial hit (including Hatch's; he ended up becoming a pivotal supporting character starting in the first season).
Tabletop Games
The early previews for 4e Dungeons & Dragons were meant to drum up interest for the game and show how it improves upon the existing game. Unfortunately, they took a derisive You Suck tone, saying that the game that people had invested hundreds of dollars and up to 8 years of their lives on wasn't really fun. Though the final product has been a financial and critical success (MOSTLY), the Internet Backdraft, Broken Base, and cries of Ruined FOREVER have become legendary.
Theater
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies (2010) is the sequel to his adaptation of Phantom of the Opera. Virtually all of the fan base was decidedly not amused by the preview clips on Amazon; some cancelled their pre-orders for the soundtrack, and when the preview performances started in London and detailed plot summaries arrived...It Got Worse. After it officially opened, the London production underwent a significant Retool and the announced New York production was indefinitely delayed (it was supposed to open that fall), though an Australian production arrived in the spring of 2011.
The announcement of two different Michael Jackson-themed Cirque du Soleil shows has not been warmly received by many of Cirque's vocal fans; for starters, they would represent their third Jukebox Musical variant in five years after The Beatles' LOVE and Viva Elvis. Since that fanbase hasn't been too happy with the majority of new Cirque shows from 2007 onwards, this just adds more fuel to claims that the company no longer cares about art, but money. And then there are the issues of whether this is Too Soon after Jackson's death for both Cirque and his estate and how big an audience for a show about a performer with a lot of X-Pac Heat will be by 2011, when the first show is set to debut. However, to Jackson fans the reaction to this announcement was more And the Fandom Rejoiced.
Video Games
Many fans of Bioware's classic and original RPG Dragon Age: Origins tasted the bitter fruit of disappointment after watching the cliche-ridden trailer for its heavily anticipated sequel. Many were disappointed to find that they would not be encountering the characters they came to know and love in DA:O, and would be limited to play as a human.
Brütal Legend. Tim Schafer talked exclusively about the multiplayer and Action/RTS hybrid battles. Electronic Arts talked exclusively about the presence of Jack Black, the story, the setting, the single player component, and nothing on the core gameplay. The demo consisted of just the first five minutes of the game. Guess who's message got through. To this day Tim Schafer says that Metacritic shows that people who liked the game ATTEMPTED multiplayer, and that the low reviews don't even touch it, and are mostly complaints based on expectations.
Halo 4. Despite being announced nearly two whole years before its release, and still in major development, fans have been sighing, shaking their heads, and pointing out sadly that the series is Ruined FOREVER because Chief doesn't have a freakin' codpiece (they're still working on what he'll actually look like: the trailer-Chief is a fairly early concept). Also, the actual idea that it's a sequel to Halo 3 (which even had a cliffhanger) is detestable to many, and the fact that Bungie isn't in charge irks players. Although, to be honest, continuing the series at all is unacceptable to some fans.
Castlevania Judgment for the Wii wasn't due out for a long while, and had only released limited information about the available characters and gameplay, and yet it was declared Worst Castlevania Ever minutes after the info got out because it's a 3D fighting game and not a Metroidvania.
Of course, it seemed that's more because there's Light- Simon Belmont and Misa-Maria and the bad track record for 3D installments of the series. Not really bad, but not what people want, apparently.
Just looking at the character designs is enough to kill most people's enthusiasm for anything.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was widely scorned when it was first announced that the game would be cel-shaded (leading to the derisive "Celda" nickname), with many proclaiming it to be a complete disaster based purely on the first screens released. Its gameplay (and a graphic update) did change many minds, but there are still some holdouts.
The earlier "preview" (actually a GameCube tech-demo) that displayed a hyper-realistic (for 2000) duel between Link and Ganondorf really did not help matters. It seems that most of the pre-release complaining about Wind Waker was specifically from gamers who felt cheated by not getting a game similar in style to the earlier demo; a style very different in spirit from both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.
In an aversion to this, they actually cheered when they got that very thing with trailers Twilight Princess (but then complained after it came out). Now every time a new Zelda game is announced, the art style will be ripped on regardless of the style - if it's "real", it's derivative, if it's "cel", it's violating the spirit (or kiddie).
Spirit Tracks, with its Wind Waker-like graphics and for putting Anachronism Stew on a whole new level (you know, from a series with a boomerang and a primitive grappling hook as among its iconic weapons) with the introduction of a Steam Train Engine as mean of transportation. Later trailers and the release of the game have reduced this outcry. Considerably.
Devil May Cry 4 - Oh, the teeth-gnashing that erupted when the main character was announced to be Nero and not Dante.
All of that Nero-bashing is nothing compared to the reaction towards the Ninja Theory-developed reboot of the series.
After the first glimpse of gameplay for Sonic 4 was shown - merely 4 seconds showing Sonic jump, go through a loop and a twisted board from Sonic 2 - fans were already claiming the complete ruin of the series due to Sonic not moving his legs fast enough and the jump being slightly higher than in the Genesis games.
Sonic Colors being Wii-only. Sega, being Fan-Savvy, disguised the helper characters as powerups to stifle that element of fan whining.
Sonic Generations's level list. Some people are complaining there's no variation between them, despite the fact that the zones barely resemble their original game counterparts (the Modern-era levels being especially guilty of this.
Which is ironic considering that the level list is rumored to be the result of a poll that Sega held to determine the most popular level in each Sonic game.
Fallout 3 was met with this at it's announcement, primarily because of the perspective was changed from isometric to first-person and turn-based combat was scrapped. Many of the games haters mocked it for being "Oblivion with guns" which is rather amusing, considering that's what made it one of the top selling games that year.
It also didn't take long for people to whine about Portal: Still Alive when it was announced that it would be a 360 exclusive and there would not be any dialogue from GLaDOS in the new maps.
It's also based off of a fan project! A really good fan project, but one you can get for the PC for free.
When Nintendo started releasing details of Metroid Prime, people started assuming it would be bad due to a combination of a 3D shift and an American third party developing it. Then the game came out and allwas forgiven.
Square's initial announcement for Kingdom Hearts consisted of them saying they were going to make a collaborative game with Disney aimed at teenagers. This set off the cynicism in a ton of people.
Anything about Xion from 358/2 Days also got this treatment. The complaints were that she was the heretofore unknown fourteenth member of Organization XIII (where the fact that the Organization only had thirteen members was somewhat of an important in-story point), and was shown to be close to two fan favorites who were best friends and had never mentioned a female friend before, and Axel had in fact specifically said that Roxas was the only one he liked. The actual game proceeded to justify all of this so well, even despite the necessarily bizarre nature of the retcon, that some fans suspect Xion's presentation in the trailers was deliberate trolling of the fanbase.
The announcement for Chain of Memories also brought about how they were trying to make a card-based battle system, and immediately there were people complained about how it was about "Random draw" and how that doesn't work. There exist people to this day who still say that, despite the remake being released overseas, that the system is all random draw...it's fairly obvious that these people are complaining about a game they've only seen the preview and box art of since people who actually tried to play the game or even saw a video on Youtube wouldn't call it "random draw". Especially since any degree of random draw can be easily ignored or even bypassed altogether. (Don't use a "Premium Bonus". It's as easy as that.)
The Xbox 360 game Too Human from Silicon Knights may be the absolute king of this trope. Opinions are still based on a notorious early trailer released in 2006. The infamous behaviour of its creator, Denis Dyack hasn't helped: he has repeatedly slammed both the gaming press and Neogaf for pre-judging the game prior to its release. Now that the game has been released, it's been reviewed as average at best.
Diablo 3's screenshots had a rainbow in it. This caused such an uproar among certain fans that there are online petitions and fan-held contests photoshopping the presented screenshots. Blizzard's response was to have artists go back and put MORE rainbows into the game (as opposed to just that one, or something). On the flip side, Diablo 3's art director 'quit' for 'personal reasons' long before the game was ready for release...
Interestingly, one of the game designers responded to complaints, and refuted several altered pictures, pointing out why they wouldn't work with the game.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts received major ire for being vehicle-driven.
It also got flack for the ugly re-designs of the characters.
Star Wars: The Old Republic, for being a MMORPG sequel to the Knights of the Old Republic series rather than being a single-player KOTOR 3. Never mind the fact that BioWare is returning to the series, maybe Star Wars Galaxies left enough of a sour taste in people's minds to turn them off from another Star Wars MMO.
Let's not forget about Chris Avellone's fans who actually don't want BioWare to be returning to the series.
Then there are single-player fans who, though disliking the idea of an MMO on principle, hope it'll be successful as this may motivate the powers that be to give us a single-player Knights of the Old Republic 3 at a later date.
Not to mention the myriad of complaints surrounding individual parts of the game from the people who are comfortable with the game being an MMO.
Wii Music is possibly the only Wii game to receive so much Internet Backdraft when Nintendo previewed it in E3 2008. Common outcries were "Gaming is dead as we know it!" and "NINTENDO SOLD OUT THE HARDCORE!!!" When the game was finally released, reviews ranged from below average to decent.
This trope is pretty much the reason why Nintendo is no longer releasing previews for their games.
Dead Rising on the Wii. The game was designed with an actual difficulty curve, which required loads of zombies (even if not as much as the 360 version) to be reserved for the last third (?) of the game. Trailers showed parts from the earlier missions, where zombies were fewer, and gamers just assumed this would be the number for the entire game. And the low picture quality of screens and videos didn't help either. The actual game is almost nothing like this (you can see high quality videos that show this on YouTube), so this game had some really bad trailers that hurt its hype.
But it wasn't helped by this widespread fallacy that ports cost little to make (I admit to thinking that once). That is not true, especially with this game, which required virtually every asset to be completely redone just to fit on the Wii and the Resident Evil 4Game Engine. Yet the Fan Dumb still thinks from those trailers that this cost little to make, and is thus a cheap cash-in.
The first one-minute teaser trailer for Mass Effect 2 was greeted with a good bit of flailing from the fanbase, and several proclamations of Ruined FOREVER. Pictures of a new squadmate — a tattooed, pierced woman — also set off the same reaction.
As the marketing campaign for Mass Effect 3 picks up, BioWare has revealed they felt too much of Mass Effect 2 was spoiled by pre-release videos and interviews. It's hard to argue.
Final Fantasy XII was dubbed as Ruined FOREVER when people got their hands on the demo disks. Complaints ranged from the game being too easy due to having the majority of spells right there (although both levels in the game are fairly late locations in the final version) and the new battle system being too different from the previous games.
Every single time a Final Fantasy game is announced, fans will declare the series Ruined FOREVER. Once the game actually comes out, half will stand by their Ruined FOREVER claims while the other half will declare the new game the best the series have ever seen.
The Final Fantasy XIV announcement was almost physically painful. The trailer showed lots of amazingly rendered locales and awesome character designs, and ends with the words "Final Fantasy XIV" appearing onscreen. The crowd goes wild, then the word "Online" appears, and the silence is INSTANT.
Punch-Out!! for the Wii got some flack before it was released. Most complaints ranged from lack of new fighters to being too samey compared to the NES version. The critics were silenced after the game was released and they discovered the significantly deeper New Game Plus mode.
After Nintendo previewed several games from E3 2009, fans were split. The half pertinent to this trope declared that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is too samey, New Super Mario Bros Wii is also too samey, and Metroid: Other M is dubbed as Ruined FOREVER for being more based on action. Note that all these accusations are based on 1-minute or so trailers.
On the subject of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, fans decried the fact that a Yellow Toad and a Blue Toad were playable characters instead of Wario and Waluigi (some even wanted Princess Peach, who is still a Distressed Damsel in the game). Shigeru Miyamoto spoke up about these complaints, saying that Peach would be subjected to the No Flow in CGI problem and doesn't have the proper physique. Also, Wario would need to be a Gasshole.
Also, those fans' complaints were all made off E3 2009 footage (which seemed to include content and features promised to be provided in the original for free.)
The boycott was driven by mainly by people outraged due to statements by Valve higher ups that Left 4 Dead would receive content updated similar to Team Fortress 2. At the time of the sequel announcement, there had been no new content, and several Game-Breaking Bug had still not been addressed that were present at release. It was also partially driven by Half-Life fans, outraged at the several year wait in between episodes while Left 4 Dead was getting a sequel in less than a year (by one day).
And don't forget the large number of Half-Life fans who are feeling very left out by a lack of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or even a third Half-Life.
The excitement some people had for mere announcement of the third Max Payne game has been marred with Max's new design. Then came the new Brazil setting (translating into daytime missions. Then the new voice. Then the cover system.
After Backyard Hockey redesigned the characters of Backyard Sports, many series fans thought the games were Ruined FOREVER. Your Mileage May Vary on this game, but the series reached its peak a few games later.
Mega Man 10 is getting complaints based on a 1 and half minute trailer. Some fans are whining about Capcom's direction to keep Megaman 10 in the NES style like 9 did. The majority of the complaints comes from the advertised Easy Mode. In the trailer, it shows one level where Mega Man is jumping over big pits of spikes and in Easy Mode, there are solid platforms on top of the spikes, allowing Mega Man to just run across the level.
Time Shift was initially a first person shooter with emphasis on using your time travel powers to solve puzzles. However, the reaction to the initial demo was so bad that publishers Atari freaked out and sold the game to Sierra. In turn, Sierra used the bad reaction to the demo to force the developers into totally restarting the game from scratch, and what we ended up with was more of a Gears of War clone with time travel gimmicks bolted on.
X-Com is coming back! As a First-Person Shooter (a second attempt at that. Let's not even mention how Genre Shifts in the series have never ended well). In which you take control of a FBI agent instead of the eponymous anti-alien unit itself. Multiplatform. By 2k Marin. Ladies and gentlemen, this may be the Fallout 3Dragon Ball Evolution of this decade.
Guess how PC gamers respond to one of their First-Person Shooter NOT having dedicated servers? Not very nice, and that was before its release date. This of course doesn't happen with console gamers, not that it helps easing the war or anything.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Metal Gear is now a multiconsole release, but the game is going to be a hack-and-slash starring Raiden? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
The Nintendo 3DS is arguably their most hyped console in their history since it was revealed in E3 2010. However, after reports in early January 2011 that the battery life will run only 3-5 hours with the 3D effects enabled and the return of friend codes, some of the excitement turned to disgust. The same reports claim that keeping the 3D and networking features off will extend the life to 4-6 hours, but that hasn't helped.
Disillusionment with the promise of Duke Nukem Forever has depleted anticipation into deep negative expectation. It was even predicted that a number of fans would be happy just to see the game finally come out. In the end... nope.
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon: The demo forcing you to use Close Range Assault to splash aces has not been warmly received. Others are hoping that one should Never Trust A Demo.
Fossil Fighters was viewed as a Pokémon knockoff, however, besides the Mons aspect and the BB Gang, which is similar to Team Rocket, the two games are actually very different.
Asura's Wrath have started suffering from this after it's demo was released.
The PSP Vita appeared to have a good reception when it was announced at E3, and then they announced the service provider would be AT&T...
Western Animation
Loonatics Unleashed...whoo boy. Now, Warner Bros. certainly has done updated versions of Looney Tunes in the past - BabyLooney Tunes and Tiny Toon Adventures being among them. However, people who saw the apparently Darker and Edgier initial designs for the show immediately flipped out, saying that the animators were raping their childhoods, and one twelve-year old started a popular petition protesting the show over a year before it even came out.
In 2010, while attempting another Looney Toons reboot, the artists are specifically told NOT to repeat Unleashed's artstyle, along with a Team Shot with the caption "Do not do this" underneath. Take that as you will.
Pretty much anytime a new Batman series comes out and Kevin Conroy isn't playing Batman will invoke this. It's telling that just simply having him and or Mark Hamill (aka the Joker) doing a guest spot is a And the Fandom Rejoiced moment.
Chaotic got flak simply for being a Yu-Gi-Oh! ripoff just because the show has a card game in it.
Also, Yu-Gi-Oh! has been accused of being a Pokémon ripoff because it has monsters in it.
Also, the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game has been accused of being a Magic: The Gathering ripoff for having the exact same basic rules system.
Also, Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds was accused of being even more of a merchandise driven series than its twopredecessors, and ridiculous for having card games on motorcycles, among other complains. After released, the reception wasn't really that negative.
And, in a case of things coming full circle, Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal is being derided as a Chaotic rip-off, simply because of the look of the new characters.
Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes has ran into this. While the second season has a lot of fans looking forward to it, they are not looking forward to seeing Red Hulk.
Some fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender declared the franchise Ruined Forever after the first trailer for The Legend of Korra aired at SDCC 2011. Their complaints stemmed from the much higher Steampunk influence present in the new show, including things like cars and motorcycles. Of course, given that the first show had things like jet skis, gondolas, and absolutely massive dirigibles, and that Korra takes place 70 years after that technology existed, it's a logical course for the show to take.
