“Playing retro games,” says Schranck, “you’re happy to be feeling like a kid again. As an adult, you have all these responsibilities and anxieties, and if you can just find a way to forget about that, even just for 15 minutes, it can help. I think if you can find something, anything, that can help you feel good, that’s a good thing. Retro games evoke these happy memories. Being a kid, opening up that new game or console on Christmas. How it looks, the beautiful pixel art. It’s the nostalgia, and remembering being young again.” More here.
A good retro game is a wonderful experience, but the best ones are modernisations that keep the original game play intact. That is crucial to me.
For me, it depends on the type of game and how good the graphics and game mechanics were at the time. I’ve looked at a lot of older (old?) RPGs and I don’t think I could play them. The game mechanics are almost as important to me as the graphics. On the other hand, many older games have mods that bring them a good number of years forward.