esper AOL Netscape asks: What series or franchise has a spinoff game arguably better than its predecessor? (23:32)
PSO and beyond certainly had a much greater impact than the classic Phantasy Star games ever did.
There’s a generation who’d argue for Mega Man Battle Network over any of the sidescrollers, and if Capcom hadn’t Capcom’d it with half-assed sequels it very well could’ve handily surpassed any of the other sub-series financially, too.
Puyo Puyo’s universe is derived from a dungeon-crawling RPG series called Madou Monogatari, and those waters were muddied further when Compile started making Puyo RPGs that weren’t Madou games (and further still by the Compile breakup which means the Madou IP owner can’t make new games using the original characters). They’re so different that one hardly supersedes the other, but I don’t think the Madou games are especially compelling RPGs.
New Pokemon Snap ended up being one of the more successful Pokemon spinoffs in a long time, I think people just stopped talking about it because it’s not the sort of game to sustain a ton of discussion. If anything, people seemed most disappointed by the inability to pelt fruit at Pikachu or whatever.