I just told you a reason they wouldn't remove the female sprites, though. You assume that the devs all have unlimited foresight or unlimited development time. Neither one was close to the case especially for late 80s games, which commonly were released with nasty glitches or things that just didn't work right.
It's a hell of a lot easier to slap "newhalf" onto concept art and into the manual than redraw an entire spriteset because you realize "hey maybe we shouldn't have a woman getting beat up" close to the release date
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No problem!
This is a cute and pop genocide of love!