Metroid’s Samus Almost Came To Fortnite—Here’s Why She Didn’t

Samus Aran from the Metroid series almost made an appearance in Fortnite, but Nintendo and Epic couldn’t agree on how she’d be implemented.

In an interview with Game File, former Epic Games chief creative officer Donald Mustard said that Nintendo declined Epic’s offer to have Samus join Fortnite. “They got really hung up on their characters showing up on platforms that weren’t their platforms,” Mustard explained. “They would be thrilled to have Nintendo characters in Fortnite, but just only if it’s on their platform.”

Mustard went on to say that Epic and Nintendo couldn’t come to a mutual decision because of Fortnite’s content parity across all platforms. Epic wanted the game to be the same experience no matter what device players were on.

Nintendo is the only console platform holder that doesn’t have a representative in Fortnite. For PlayStation, God of War’s Kratos joined the game and for Xbox, Halo’s Master Chief joined the fray, among many other gaming characters, such as Nathan Drake and Lara Croft.

Back during Epic and Apple’s legal battle, court documents revealed that Epic wanted to implement Samus, but that somehow never came to be and there was no clear reason as to why. Now, we know. The inclusion of Samus in Fortnite was even heavily teased back in a Fortnite comic that released in 2021.

Fortnite is still introducing more collaborations, and one with pop star Billie Eilish is coming on April 23.