The reason I still consider OoE as "recent" is for similar reasons. Nothing after that left any sort of favorable impression, if it left any at all. HD might've been cool if I had ever played with anyone.
Actually I didn't play any of the IGAvanias until years after the fact. Roommate in college introduced me to the series with OoE and SotN. I was like "I can't wait to try some of the more recent ones" and he was like "yeeeeahhh... about that..."
But 2008 was, I think, when I was in the middle of discovering Metroid games for the first time.
Bigger Japanese devs have only started coming around to the PC market in recent years. Like, when Dark Souls came to PC it was literally the first time From had tried to develop for the platform. Bayonetta made it to PC just last year. Monster Hunter World's PC release was delayed because that ddev team has no experience with PC development and apparently wants to not fuck it up. Japan's games market was console or mobile and that's it for a long time.
Probably gonna finally order a new copy of Zero Mission this weekend. Excited to start speedrunning it again. I'm gonna have to derust though cause I haven't played it since Samus Returns came out