7 Video Games That Exploited Your Nostalgia (And WON)

And now we turn to the curious case of the Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a collection of Mario's greatest hits that dropped for the Switch in September of 2020 and then subsequently dropped off the bloody face of the Earth a few months later.

While other entries on this list have been cases of publishers putting players first, this was a case of this appearing to be a gesture of goodwill that turned into greasy marketing tactics by Nintendo.

It's fair to say that a lot of Ninty fans are incredibly nostalgic for Mario's early 3d outings, with many touting these games as being the benchmark to which all others are measured even to this day, and so were incredibly excited when the 3D All-Stars Pack was announced for the Switch and included Mario 64, Mario Sunshine and Mario Galaxy.

The fact that this was also announced alongside Nintendos 35th Mario Celebration Event made the nostalgia hit all that harder. So of course many bought in straight away for the simple fact that this was their childhood on a handheld console, and yet for Nintendo, this wasn't enough. To drive home the fact that you NEEDED to buy this pack, Nintendo announced that after a few months the bundle would be de-listed from online sites and that they wouldn't print any more physical copies.

This was now a slice of nostalgia with a deadline.

A rather insidious move indeed, to effectively hold your childhood to ransom, but at the end of the day, people bought this in droves so technically Nintendo exploited our nostalgia and most definitely won.