Games were less mainstream back then, so the difficulty levels usually were higher - so that the videogame nerd back then had sth to bite through.
Today, games have become more entertainment and need to be extremely polished, while back then it was pretty much accepted to deal with what you get. Even if that means fiddling around, noting down things, drawing maps.

Another factor is nostalgia. Several people here were young at a time where Genesis, SNES, Playstation and the like were present just everywhere. If those consoles are your entry in the gaming world the first games you played there will always remain something special. That's distorting things for sure.
And whenever you get back to one of those old games you'll experience the still existing link to the emotions you had back then.

But I guess that's quite okay.

For me personally I found out that in earlier times I was very hyped by some games, and was waiting for release day to grab a copy and then couldn't wait to come home and finally play the game. While getting older, this feeling of excitement has disappeared. A game might get me into "hey that's cool, I want to play some more" mode, but it's not the same as before. There is no hype anymore.
Often enough I automatically try to imagine how they did some things (programatically) I see while playing.
I did not do this in the past.