Kirby Air Riders definitely feels like it keeps that spirit alive. The game could've just been City Trial and I would've paid $70 just to play City Trial, but they packed everything else in there too because they could.
The Fiend's Cauldron from Kid Icarus Uprising. At the start of a stage, you have to wager currency on how high of a difficulty you want to attempt, on a sliding scale from 0.0 to 9.0. Higher difficulties cost more to play, and if you fail, you lose your bet and the difficulty drops if you choose Continue. It's an interesting system for how it forces you to check your ego and self-evaluate just how much you think you can handle.
If I'm going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.
If you'd read the article, Valve says they're working with anticheat devs to come up with a solution together. This can only happen with their cooperation, if Valve somehow could bypass it on their own that would represent a vulnerability that should and would get patched.
TBH, I kinda get the feeling that's what most of the hype surrounding the Machine is. People hoping it sells well, but not necessarily people planning to buy one for themselves.
If devs want to support one, it'll be no problem to support the other. But I doubt devs who already refused to support one will suddenly change their minds.
I wouldn't expect the Machine to be any more popular than the Deck, which already wasn't enough to convince holdouts. In fact I would bet the Machine will sell much less than the Deck, since that had a more unique niche carved out for it.