Which is rather surprising to me. I don't know what the contracts between Nintendo and developers say but I would have expected "rights to publish or distribute in perpetuity" would have been in there as part of the deal for making official carts.

That's probably true for later generations, but in the NES (and maybe SNES) era? Undoubtedly, they didn't have the foresight to write that into the contracts.

In the early days of television, many broadcasters were prohibited by contract to retain any copies of the performance, because no value was seen in reusing them, and there's no other reason to give them any rights. Also see shows like WKRP in Cincinnati where music was only licensed for the slim purpose of the original broadcast (and perhaps direct repeats in syndication), but for release on home video, the music used did not support that use, so it had to be replaced.

> I would have expected "rights to publish or distribute in perpetuity"

I think that would have been unlikely to occur to Nintendo's lawyers, since in the NES era, publishers required the developer's co-operation to provide masters targeting any additional platforms. This was before intergenerational emulation and internet distribution became widespread, and Nintendo would have had a sunset date for NES title sales.

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