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Why didn't Battle Mode make it into Star Fox 2 final release?

So last year when Star Fox 2 was launching on the SNES classic. One of my fellow NintendoWorldReport.com staff members and I took it upon ourselves to create a somewhat historically accurate approximation of a Star Fox 2 manual. The whole thing is free to download here. Anyway in the process we wound up creating some new art as well as... I guess I'd say finishing... some of the existing concept art Nintendo had already released. You've probably seen the design documents for the various Arwing variants in Star Fox 2. We went in and cleaned those up and colored them to look more like finished art. We also did our best to create from scratch an illustration of the carrier to match the official art's style. I also wound up building (as accurately as I could) the standard Arwing and its walker form in 3D. We used these images in the controls section of the manual. I build a 3D version of the carrier as well though it never actually made it into the final manual. Anyway it was a really fun project to go back and try to restore some old art as well as create modern renders of the ships. Of course I have to give credit to Tsuyoshi Watanabe for the original Star Fox 2 concept art we worked from. Oh and here (video) is how the finished manuals looked for anyone who was curious.

Battle between OSTs of the SNES era! Which one is superior? I wanna say SF2 because it feels less playful in certain environments than in SF1. Of course, that goes in hand in hand on this game being a defense of the Lylat system rather than an adventure/quest to defeat Andross.

RP Name/Title- Adventures of the Star Fox team Style- (Chat or forum?) Forum Theme- Star Fox Setting- The Lylat System Description- This RP is about the Star Fox team reviving their lost family members and having to go through Andross and Star Wolf to do it. Goal- Revive their lost family members and defeat Andross and Star Wolf. Player count- 18-20

Nintendo Life recently conducted another exclusive interview with Dylan Cuthbert, a well-known figure among Star Fox enthusiasts. They were discussing the cancelled Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Star Fox 2. Cuthbert, a former employee at the now-defunct Argonaut Software (co-developers of Star Fox and Star Fox 2), and founder of Q-Games (developers of Star Fox Command and co-developers of Star Fox 64 3D), stated in the interview that despite Nintendo's decision to cancel the release of Star Fox 2, they continued the remaining work on the game and even sent it to be tested at Mario Club - Nintendo's debugging division. Although, it was not until during the development of Star Fox Command that Cuthbert got back a copy of the game's final, mastered ROM image from Nintendo. Additionally, Cuthbert said that all the ROM images floating about the internet that we know about are all unfinished prototypes, and are "a long way off" from the actual final version as they are missing many elements which made the game feel "complete". Even the multiple patches from the Star Fox community does not do these prototype ROM images any justice! Cuthbert added a commercial distribution of the game may still be possible, but very unlikely due to sustaining legal reasons between Nintendo and Argonaut Software, despite the fact the latter company is defunct. The full interview has not been yet posted for public viewing as of writing of this thread, but will be posted a little later. Source of this specific information can be found here. Update: Full interview is now available - click here.

Star Fox 2 was a complete game for SNES, but never released. Nintendo Power was hyping up the game for a Summer 1995, but it didn't make that date. Behind the scenes, the game was cancelled by Shigeru Miyamoto because he wanted a clean break between the 3D games on the Super Nintendo and the N64. Fans were disappointed when Star Fox 64 was announced, killing all hope for a release of Star Fox 2. There have re production carts and ROMs of the game, but people want that true Nintendo experience. So, I make this to show Nintendo that people want a release of Star Fox 2 in way, shape, or form. They can make it for the Virtual Console for the 3DS so it can be cheap for people to buy, or the remake the game for the 3DS and add extra features and emprove the visuals so they can make it 3D like Star Fox 64 3D. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot. https://www.change.org/petitions/nintendo-bring-star-fox-2-to-the-virtual-console

[EDIT]: (I should have said "An unreleased game that changed everything") To this day, regardless of being a ROM, and an unreleased Beta which had been leaked by a former Nintendo employee a decade ago. I still believe that Star Fox 2 is still one of the most frustratingly hard games to play even today, If you don't think so, try upping the difficulty. Lets recap: TIME: The Concept of the game doesn't make Andross the enemy, but rather time. Your goal is to neutralize the planets under control of Andross while protecting Corneria from gaining as less damage (from enemies reaching the planet at the same time) as possible. It is the only star fox game that uses Real Time Strategy where battling enemies doesn't halter others from advancing to Corneria so killing enemies fast and hard is the key. (Not to get confused with Command which isn't real time strategy but rather a turn based strategy). A Brave New Team with "Limited Lives": Star fox 2 is the only game where the team has a max of six members. You are only given two lives in the game, which are the two you get to pick. If your wing-man is shot down, he's dead throughout the remaining game. Pretty much like real life, they ain't coming back. Andross: If there were an Andross that didn't show mercy, Star Fox 2 would be the kind of cold hearted Ape that shows no mercy as he relentlessly plunges wave after wave of enemies regardless on how much you have neutralized on the map. Especially on Hard difficulty; if you think you got him on the ropes by taking everything down, he comes back for more and each wave gets more and more difficult and you are limited to what enemies you can pick off before some slip by and start damaging Corneria. But when you get to fight him, he becomes one of the easiest bosses to fight compared to the line of enemies you encountered on the map. Mercenaries De Lobo (Star Wolf): Even though they are rather easy to beat, they can almost immediately ruin your streak by interfering with an an emery you may be neutralizing from preventing Corneria from taking anymore hits. Closing: Just because I mentioned it being a hard game, doesn't make it unfair. It is a great challenge for any Star Fox gamer to master, that's if you manage to ever get a hold of the game which had been leaked. For a beta it feels very close to being the final stage of what a game looks like after development. True there are a few bugs left, but most if not all of the issues from the game were fixed by fans and coders who got hold of the game and made patch files to polish the game to make it look like a finished version. Even though it is remarkable, it is still undecidable how good the game really is seeing it has been unofficially released to the public. The game itself has a lot of familiarities that can be seen in later Star Fox games like the upgrades and all range mode in SF64. Star Wolf and the concept of the twin carrier mother ship are also later adapted in SFC too. It is indeed worth trying to play if you are a fan.