This is kinda sacrilege, but old games kinda suck by modern standards. They lack a lot of quality of life stuff that has long since become standard and tend to be more focused on providing a difficult and frustrating experience.

There seems to be a sweet spot in the early 2000s 2D games and later 00s 3D games, where games started to become more forgiving, included meaningful mechanics, and the graphics were getting good enough that you’re not just squinting to try to figure out what this blob is supposed to be. Plus that’s also the timeframe that a lot of current major franchises were started or at least got perfected so you’re now digging into current franchises backlogs