From what i gather, they waited until after the reviews were in. They got a good score, which i guess would have been impacted by the inclusion of microtransactions, and released them after the reviews were in. Sounds like they were trying to avoid the bad press they would have gotten for including them (or perhaps purchases even, from people starkly against the practice)
I remember when Mario 3 came out, there was so much hype and demand for yet another sequel that a local game rental store put a copy of “Super Mario Bros. 4” on their shelf. Astonished at our good fortune, we immediately rented it.
Our first clue something was off: the box was much different, square-shaped. Mario was on the box, but the writing was all in Japanese.
The game cartridge was also odd, but we just chalked it up to being a super-secret Japanese release and rushed home to play it. Looking back, It was actually a Famicom cartridge with a converter attached to it.
When we turned on the game, it gave us Mario game and a Luigi game options. We were quite befuddled to pick up the poison mushroom almost immediately and get that face-slap the game was intended to deliver. Somehow my brother later discovered he could play even harder levels right away by holding one or 2 of the buttons while pressing start.
Overall it was a bit disappointing, but it was the game we selected to rent so we were stuck with it and played the hell out of it. What a weird surprise to see it come back years later on the SNES…
Seems more to do with the way things line up–it’s a perfect example of a physical and digital game getting permanently shut down without any sort of refund or compensation to the buyers of the game. It sounds like it’s about setting precedent so people will have a better idea of how this kinda stuff is going to work in the future.
I swear to god, every time i hear about conservatives getting upset about gay and trans rights I’m more convinced it’s projection. They want to have the freedom to follow their own preferences but have been taught by someone in their family and/or society that certain preferences are completely unacceptable. Rather than go against the grain, they lean into the hate side of it. “If i can’t have that, you sure as hell can’t–and if you do, you’re gonna pay dearly” seems to be the philosophy. All this because they want to explore their sexuality but they decided the social price is too much. Not allowed to have what they crave, now they just scorn those that are brave enough to face the storm they themselves avoided…or they just hate people having freedom. Probably both.