Yes, SEGA's definitely been overall really bad at preserving their legacy overall unfortunately. Outside a small handful of evergreen series, they always had a tendency to just drop series in favor of trying out a new IP instead. Which isn't the worst idea, since stagnating can make a series tiring, but it tends to leave a lot of fans of particular games out in the cold. It's actually kinda funny that Capcom's brought up, since they were probably one of the best at actually using their legacy, with tons of characters who appear in the Vs. series being the prime example. It would've been easy to just let them die, but a lot of people fondly regard one-off characters like Jin Saotome because he punched Venom once and they'll openly wish for his return in the next Vs or in Teppen or whatever regardless of if they've ever even had Tech Romancer taking up a corner at their Cici's Pizza. I guess they ARE kind of falling behind on expectations though... if only we had another Vs. Or a PXZ that went out of its way for more unusual picks. So long as companies do
something to carry characters that fans love, it's better than nothing.
It feels like SEGA's soooort of getting the hang of bringing IPs back though, even if by and large they're outsourcing it, at least it's happening. The phenomenal SoR4, Panzer Dragoon remakes (with II in particular being worth anticipating, god willing we get Saga and just remaster Orta), HotD and such is helping bring back their legacy properly instead of the weird stuff they would do before like suddenly making a lot of Altered Beast merchandise and then it never sells so they don't make merchandise for non-Sonic series ever again. Though, ironically, they kinda
did do okay with making sure a lot of arcade games are playable? Starting with Saturn's AGES releases mostly focusing on arcade, games like Shenmue and Yakuza going out of their way to include them as bonus content, making it their next priority after the Mega Drive for a major "Mini" project (even if it didn't get a proper international release) and we're slooowly moving into a world where Golden Axe II being impossible to play might become a memory, even if options at the moment are trend towards pricey. Certainly feels more possible for arcade stuff to happen soon than Saturn's library being officially playable without spending thousands and thousands of dollars on old discs.
The whole "celebration of gaming" bit that Sakurai talked about is meant to describe what Smash already is by default regardless of any future additions, not prescribe what Smash should be. Just because Smash doesn't cover every single aspect of gaming history it doesn't mean that those exclusions count as major holes in the roster because Smash was never meant to celebrate all aspects of video game history by the sheer factor of it being impossible. It's just meant to be a video game crossover that happens to include a lot of both Nintendo and third-party gaming history and because it does that (not just through characters, but also through various other content) it succeed in being a celebration of gaming.
Thank you for your contribution of responding to "i would like for thing to happen very much, it would mean a lot for me" with "well it doesn't actually matter that that happens, does it? it doesn't have to. smash is already good at what it's doing."
Very cool. What if that was actually applied to Smash and the concept of "wanting more of it?" How far could we
go stand still?
Point taken on non-character content mattering too though. I freaked out when the Akira AT was revealed and then, years later with Kazuya's release, immediately pit Kazuya vs. Akira in the only way I could tangibly do. Love that stuff.