I haven't played Minecraft since the alpha so forgive my ignorance but....what? There was a version of Minecraft that lacked HARDCORE MODE of all things??
I've been told that they didn't offer a hardcore mode because the game had a few bugs that could kill you for no good reason. Imagine losing your save because of the game's bullshit. I find this decision smart even though I find stupid the fact that these bugs persisted for so long in the first place.
Correct. Minecraft Java Edition has had hardcore mode since Beta 1.9 but Minecraft: Pocket Edition, which would later become Bedrock Edition, was released that same year with a limited suite of features.
Yup, they had a chance to remake the game with modern code and they completely fucked it up and just made a shitty C++ port that runs worse and has loads of bugs and missing features. But hey, they got the in-game store working!