While my 2021 essay did aim to be as thorough as I could in criticizing PPT itself, all of my criticism of the game is secondary to my greater criticism of how Sega handled the series afterward. I wonder if being too thorough may have caused that thesis to be lost in the woods, but I hope this video today hammers that point back home.
If Sega had followed up PPT1 with a full mainline game, using its commercial success as a jumping off point for the series to go onto bigger and better things, I wouldn't be so frustrated today. But instead of doing that... we got Apple Arcade.