The Vita had far more problems than just memory cards. You came very close to identifying what the real problem was, Sony couldn't sustain supporting two separate platforms at once. And conversely, Nintendo unifying onto a single platform was what saved the Switch.
What "standards" are you comparing it to? The Switch 1 was behind home consoles, but that's not really a fair comparison. There was nothing similar on the market to appropriately compare it to, no "standard".
Five years later the Steam Deck outperformed the Switch, because of course hardware from five years later would. But the gap between the 2017 Switch and 2022 Deck is not so vast that you can definitively claim in advance to know that the 2025 Switch 2 definitely has to be worse. You don't know that and can't go claiming it as fact.
All we know so far is that the Switch 2 does beat the Deck in at least one major attribute: it has a 1080p120 screen, in contrast to the Deck's 800p60. And it is not unlikely to expect the rest of the hardware to reflect that.
Puyo Puyo Chronicle, the last good installment in the series, don't @ me. I'd like Sega to make a proper new game, but they're clearly never ever ever ever gonna do that, so the next best thing they could do is port a good one. What I need most is a game that's on all major platforms with crossplay.
Any of the classic era Tales games. Destiny DC/2 both finally got fantranslations, but Namco keeps teasing that they want to bring over the games the west never got. Eventually. Someday. Maybe. Hopefully by the time I finish the rest of my JRPG backlog.
Re: Super Metroid, it's a short enough game that even if a remake does happen, I'd say it's worth playing the original now and then playing the remake too whenever one happens. Though I'm also hard-pressed to see what a remake could bring to the table honestly, it's pretty much perfect as-is. Not like 1 and 2 which have aged horribly and needed a complete overhaul. I think I'd be concerned if they tried to mess with it.
I'd also add Mario 64's use of a controllable third person camera - all the games @Agent_Karyo mentioned are first person, and I don't think movement in those types of games is at all comparable. The camera was the key point to making a 3D platformer even possible at all, and it immediately became vital to many other genres too.
I know that by today's standards that camera is known for being rather antiquated, but it was revolutionary for its time. One detail I think deserves more credit is how they tried to anthropomorphize the camera as Lakitu to introduce it to players.
Most of the games I play are so niche that 'matchmaking' simply consists of whoever's available. Or sometimes it even requires pinging people on Discord.
Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary. They took the best competitive puzzle game ever made and added a ton of goodies to make it the best package deal. 20 variant game modes, 24 character stories, a comprehensive set of tutorials, a devilish set of chain challenges, and a final challenge where you play against max level CPU while it's allowed to cheat.
It's a tragedy this game was never released in the west, and I can rant for hours about Sega has criminally neglected the series with the half-assed slop they put out now because they know that crossovers will sell better than the main series ever will.
Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary. They took the best competitive puzzle game ever made and added a ton of goodies to make it the best package deal. 20 variant game modes, 24 character stories, a comprehensive set of tutorials, a devilish set of chain challenges, and a final challenge where you play against max level CPU while it's allowed to cheat.
It's a tragedy this game was never released in the west, and I can rant for hours about Sega has criminally neglected the series with the half-assed slop they put out now because they know that crossovers will sell better than the main series ever will.