I can understand why Turtles in Time is not on here because of the confusing licensing that Ubi Soft had to jump through to make the update a few years ago for one (and it didn't even make it to PC).
Super Mario All-Stars though, that is a confusing omission indeed.
What other games would you have liked to see on this thing?
I would have enjoyed seeing some scrolling shooters like UN Squadron and Darius, R-Type, etc myself. Even though I suck at them now, I still enjoy blowing stuff up.
Also, no wrestling games whatsoever. Weird again, considering how popular WWE is. Though this might have required some editing of the ROMs for graphics and even possibly music in certain cases.
Ah, I was not aware of the licensing issue. A shame.
I guess I would have liked to have Mega Man X 2 and 3, but I can understand why they're not included. They weren't as popular as X, and too many X games would have been too much, I guess.
As for WWE, is WWE that popular, though? I think the recent RAW ratings say differently. They've been hitting all time lows, or close to that lately.
I think there's a fanbase for wrestling, per se, as shown by the rise in independent wrestling, but I think the WWE is currently failing to deliver content that the wrestling audience wants.
What do you think?
Tried this response at work but the browser timed out and I lost a REALLY long response. I am going to do my best to rewrite it from memory.
The licensing issue is one that comes up a lot in #retrogaming, unfortunately. I work with a few gaming companies that try to bring back some classics but they constantly run into problems with the licensing. Sometimes it is that no one knows who owns the license for the characters and related things, sometimes it is a case of no one knowing who owns the game code itself. Other times it is a situation where many people claim ownership, yet have no proof other than a hungry lawyer. We see this a lot on Kickstarter, for instance while Interplay released Boogerman on PC and Sega Genesis, there are two guys that claim they own the rights to that game and even tried a #Kickstarter for a remake of it.
Apparently each company did things differently back 20+ years ago - I was not aware that the programmer of the game, under contract and paid for services, retained rights to the game. Or that the artists retained rights to graphics they provided, again under fully paid contract. Yet that is some of what I have heard of popping up when companies have tried to revive a classic. It is a mess. Capcom went through this with Ghosts 'n Goblins, that is why the PS2 games were initially called Maximo instead of an iteration of the popular naming system for that franchise.
A situation like this almost stopped the Ubi Soft remake of the arcade game of TMNT on Xbox 360 and PS3.
WWE is an enigma. People tune in, they pay attention to social media and interviews with wreestlers and then claim "it is dying" or "they are not as big as they seem". Of course they are not. They have no competition, they bought everyone out. They will never reach the levels of the Monday Night Wars ratings because there is nothing for them to go against that would force them to try harder.
I wish they would have spun WCW off as a separate company like intended. They didn't do it because the parent company of USA Network was enforcing a little clause in the contract that restricted Titan Sports to only airing wrestling related shows to that particular family of channels and only USA Network was interested in running a wrestling show. Can't "compete" against another show if that show airs before or after yours.
Now, had WWE done like I thought they would back in the day, spin WCW off under ownership of Shane McMahon, then they could have gotten around that contractual clause. Of course I am sure that would have required Shane to absolve his portfolio of his shares of Titan Sports for legal reasons and this probably was not an option anyone was interested in (a ton of stock being sold could cause a severe drop in value for one).
Anhow, just imagine had they done that. Imagine if Shane, rather than building a PPV style set of fight channels in the Asian market, ran WCW. Would it still be around today? Who nows. I think had he done that we would not be looking at TNA or ROH right now which were created to fill the void of "anything but WWE" that WCW left.
Wrestling games though, getting back on track here, would be a tough sell. I admit that. Other than Undertaker's appearances in those games back then, who else would be the poster child for the games? I am sure editing the ROMS and getting new wrestlers and theme music put in would have been over the budget that Nintendo has for these Classic Mini consoles (though that would be freaking awesome - and the inclusion of Star Fox 2 gives me hope that these will eventually not just be "cash runs").
I would have loved to see some games translated that never got released here in the USA on the NES Classic Mini such as Sweet Home. That would have helped push the plug and play even higher in collectible status.
I am a little dumbfounded as to why they stopped at 21 games. Why not 30? Why not more 3rd party titles or more first party? Where is Killer Instinct (is Microsoft holding that one hostage since they own Rare now?).