Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
That's aside even from the technical difficulty of synching 4 clients in a very precise platformer, that runs at 60fps. NSMB has tons of enemies, moving platforms, and coins on screen. All those interactive elements have to be synched between all four players. On four different connections. It's hard enough to get a 1 on 1 fighting game working online, where there's only two moving objects that matter.
I know that the solution some folks have, is to advocate compromising the game design in the name of online play. Some do believe games are completely useless without internet. Therefore, the game must be brought down in order to work online.
At the same time, many folks really don't understand how this stuff works. You still see plenty of complaints about fighting games for instance, with people asking why their favorite shooter is awesome online but so many fighting games suck. They don't understand what's happening under the hood (and even visually) in say, an FPS vs a genre where the action must be locked 1:1 between clients.
Well, like this. You may believe there's zero excuse for any game to not have live online multiplayer. But sometimes, there's a reason.
Back when NSMB Wii had its Iwata Asks, I seem to recall Miyamoto said that online multiplayer in the game was too technically demanding. The general reaction to this was "he's lying, they're lazy". I didn't think that was the case then, and don't think it's the case now. I'm sure to some that's "defending a corporation". I tend to think it's understanding how the technology works.
FYI, I fully agree that it's frustrating that some games don't have online multiplayer as an option. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's not easy to implement without compromising certain games. The speed of light is a big problem.
