Nostalgia is powerful. But I think old gamers have rose tinted glasses. I remember blocky graphics, punishing difficulty, long gaps between save points, terrible framerates, short wired controllers, limited BC and having to own tons of hardware to play all the top games.
Games are better today, better balanced with way better controls. Hardware is way better as well.
Edit
Old games have terrible controls and awful camera angles. And I remember having memory cards everywhere.