Nintendo must have kicked themselves. Not only then, but for the aforementioned Grand Theft Auto. DMA were owned by Nintendo during the development of Body Harvest. In fact, most of the ideas that formed the genesis of what GTA actually is came from Nintendo themselves, and more specifically Shigeru Miyamoto. Yes, the creator of Mario had a major influence on one of the most violent games ever made. Funny how that works out. But just like how Nintendo cut ties with Sony, they also cut them with DMA, and they were then picked up by Take Two Interactive to publish their games in the States. They rebranded them into Rockstar North. Nintendo's game design suggestions for Body Harvest formed a template for GTA, and the rest is history.
Everything I've read about Nintendo even pretty much up to the modern era suggests that their dug-in, no-adult-content and anti-third-party policies are pretty much permanent. This is why I think they wouldn't have kicked themselves over GTA back in the mid 90s really. When Nintendo and DMA's partnership dissolved, it was because Nintendo pitched a fit over the violence of Body Harvest; the original GTA was sold completely on scandal (Max Clifford pretty much deliberately engineered outrage to shift copies, itself an interesting example of "no such thing as bad publicity") and I could see Nintendo wanting absolutely zero part of this. They were years off the lows of the Gamecube era, too.
In the mid 90s, after all, they were still doing things like censoring Mortal Kombat, and were still riding high - even though they lost a ton of ground (at least in the West) to the Mega Drive which pitched itself at an older group of gamers. Something Sony took note of....
I think things turned out for the best, although Sega's diminishing returns in the hardware market were self-inflicted and a bit sad and hubristic; Nintendo stayed put with their policies, and the market expanded in ways far more vital than adult blood 'n' guts: I'd put Sony's policy towards third parties as so much more valuable than Nintendo's "seal of approval" bullshit, and as it turns out, the market was big enough to support both.
Nintendo have always done things their way. For better or worse. I'm just glad we live in a world where Sony went it alone. It seems odd now but at the time it was bizarre that the manufacturer of the Walkman was going to release a console. As weird as Philips releasing a console!
