shenmue voice acting is beautiful because it is so truly insane that it basically vibrates on the same level of abstraction as pixel art. like despite being actual voices it's still like "this is the idea of what a voice would sound like."

I feel like the only thing that could have prevented it is if there'd been a good Metroid 64, something to keep the series from feeling like a legacy revival project circa Prime and Fusion.

That way that revivals ultimately set in stone what something is. Bad for most franchises but especially dangerous for weird and alien ones.

Yeah you strike me as the type who'd get more out of going back to when they were more unfriendly and weird. I do feel like I could make a coherent argument that Prime's a symptom and the reputation of Super is ultimately what calcified the series, but I'd be talking out my ass.

And that's fine, plenty of games hit in very specific ways that their sequels either can't, don't seek to or could never replicate but I do think people would engage more halthily with a lot of series if the modern mode of engagement wasn't completionist.

I do think Metroid is the ultimate case where a lot of people think of themselves as "fans of the series" when a lot of people are mostly fans of "a game". Not to tag you with that brush but I've definitely seen a lot of people that love Super, don't really like the first 2 and hate everything after

All of valve's hardware is meant to keep people in the steam ecosystem so they can afford to not make much if anything off it, but 500 still feels like a probable floor.