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Because as a child, everything is novel and new for you so you get that sense of high and awe seeing something new. But now as adults, recreating that feeling is almost impossible because you have already experienced it before.

And that's why I generally avoid games that advertise themselves as "pixel art." I have no problem with pixel art itself and I play many pixel art games, but the art style is secondary to whether it's fun.

On spoilers - also the whole goddamm culture shifted. A lot of people won't pickup a game until they see at least gameplay vid of it or read tens of posts etc. Spoilers became culturally mainstream.

I do not partake and dive blind most of the time and still got that wonderfull wonder sensation I got as a kiddo.

Only ya know. We got so powerfull machines now that devs tend to focus on looks rather than story/gameplay. Thankfully slowly changing, in parts thanks to indie devs.

I would also make an argument that the limited technology at the time led to different kinds of games versus what we see now. Sure there's the obvious things like internet enabled games and being able to get updates but I think even the less thought about things like restrictions on RAM and the power of computers led to restrictions on what you could do which led to specific types of games which aren't made that way anymore because they don't have to work around those restrictions. And while in a lot of cases those restrictions going away has allowed for better mechanics and gameplay it also still makes the games different which to people who were used to and liked those games will feel not as good anymore.

Yeah, they would need to be able to turn you back into your kid self, experiences and all. A lot of that magic is from you being a child.

That main menu music was so great

More than that, not being aware of genocide and looming climate collapse and student loans made those old games a lot more fun :)

One could argue that the dynamic shadows of the day and night cycle in Sea of Stars were actually kind of breaking new ground in pixel art.

The era of NES was wild. I don’t think it is purely kid’s-experience nostalgia although that is certainly a factor. A lot of the language of gaming and the genres that are still in existence in some form today were being created for the first time, mostly from thin air. Wolf3d and Doom were probably the last time that a new “language” for gaming was created in that same way, directly in the mainstream of gaming and outside of niche / experimental games.

Also, the scope was incredible. For no reason. I along with a lot of other people had the experience of playing one level or one screen of an NES game and assuming at first that it was the whole game. No, that is 2% of the game. Why did they make so much game? For no reason? With no particular competition that would cause them to need to invest all the resources into creating this luxuriously massive experience? It can only be love.

I haven't played it but I have watched a little bit, and the part that it really captures in my observation, that very few modern games have the balls to capture accurately, is how uncaring some of its games are whether you are having fun.

The fun is not a gift. The fun is not automatic. The fun is your reward once you get your shit together and figure things out, and until you get yourself to that level, the game is not concerned about your experience. It's content on its mountaintop, waiting for you to join it (if you're up for the task, and if not, that's okay too.)