Collecting coins

Nintendo surprised fans of the famous video game plumber last week with several announcements celebrating his 35th anniversary.

Among the notables is "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury," yet another port of a Wii-U game that makes me regret buying the original; "Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit," a very cool looking augmented reality game where you control a physical racecar mounted with a camera that you can drive around your house; and "Super Mario. Bros 35," a 35-player battle royale game that looks like it will be both fun and rage inducing.

But one of the biggest announcements has also become one of the most controversial.

After months of rumors, Nintendo finally confirmed that "Super Mario 64" and other classic 3D-platformers would be made available for the Switch. Specifically in a $60 collection titled, "Super Mario 3D All-Stars," which will include slightly touched up versions of "Super Mario 64," "Super Mario Sunshine," and "Super Mario Galaxy."

The game releases next week, but there's a catch.

The physical release of "Super Mario 3D All-Stars" will be limited run. It's not clear how many physical copies will be made, but once they're gone, they're gone.

Moreover though, Nintendo has also said that the game will only be on sale digitally until March 31, 2021.

Limited physical releases are one thing. It costs money to make video game cartridges and ship them around to retailers. Considering the lack of investment Nintendo seems to have put into porting these retro titles (yes, I am bitter that "Super Mario 64" isn't even getting retrofit for 16:9 displays), it's not surprising that they don't want to invest much into physical distribution.

However, limiting the digital release seems weirdly arbitrary. For all intents and purposes, it costs them nothing to leave the game on their e-shop in perpetuity. This isn't a game that will require frequent patches and updates. There are no online components to maintain. Once you've got it on the e-shop, it just sits there and collects money.

This leaves fans to speculate that Nintendo is only limiting the availability of the game as a way of artificially inflating the scarcity, pressuring potential buyers to buy the game before it's gone forever.

The March 31 deadline in particular comes off as Nintendo looking to jumpstart their Q1 numbers more than anything else.

Ironically, for an audience that regularly celebrates gaming conferences and award shows that are little more than a thinly veiled collection of commercial advertisements, gamers have a pretty low tolerance for these kind of manipulations. It doesn't take much for cries of "anti-consumer" to ring through the comments sections.

So is that a fair assessment?

On the one hand, there really isn't a good reason to ever wait to buy a Nintendo game. Contrary to the rest of the industry, where older games frequently see heavy discounts once a certain amount of time has passed, Nintendo games very rarely go on sale. 2017's "Super Mario Odyssey," for instance, still retails between $50 and $60, depending on where you are shopping. Even today, nearly three years later, Nintendo is still asking for the full $60 to buy the game on their digital shop.

This is in stark contrast to games like "Resident Evil 7" and "Horizon Zero Dawn," which came out the same year for the same price, but can now be purchased on the PS4 for just $20.

Nintendo's refusal to lower their prices is also an annoyance among the community, but it does somewhat mitigate the pressure of a limited release. If you've decided you're going to buy a Nintendo game, there's little incentive to hold off. A better price isn't coming.

On the other hand, mitigating pressure doesn't eliminate it. Nobody likes being put in a corner and Nintendo arbitrarily doing so may boost their Q1 numbers, but it's coming at the cost of some good will.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and hopes a better offering is made for The Legend of Zelda's 35th anniversary next year.