- access (simply finding an old, functioning console is hard so gotta use emulators)
old consoles are just as easy to find as modern consoles, go to ebay
So in other words, they really are difficult to find and you must resort to Ebay. Glad we agree on that.
- unintuitive progression
Most old games are simply follow the screen from left to right.....its kinda intuitive, go where you are allowed XD
You've never played King's Quest or Leisure Suit Larry, have you?
- gameplay mechanics is just so bad it's difficult to play (like Elder Scrolls:Arena)
bad games are bad games, im sure you could pull up examples of badly made modern games
The difference being that the game was still played by many. As I stated, any Elder Scrolls prior to Oblivion is unplayable for me because I abhor the interface and poor attack accuracy. There will be people who disagree cause I damn well know people are rabid for Morrowind (and I wouldn't be surprised if some diehard fan is already breathing profusely and aggresively typing an angry response on their keyboard).
We're not talkin shovelware here, we're talking about games which had such poor mechanics that they are "bad" to modern standards. In the old days, they were not percieved as bad.
For instance, Takashi's Challenge on NES. That game does not have saving, so if you mess up or die you must restart the
entire game. It has extremely particular methods of progression that nobody could fathom. There are no clues in-game but there were clues in the TV advertisements when the game was released. It is really an unbelievably difficult game. This massively discourages any future players.
Another example is Breath of Fire and Breath of Fire II. I don't even know how I played these games when I was little and understood what was going on. The english translation is so bad I don't even know what i'm equipping on characters or what is being said. The GBA ports did not change anything either.
There's the damned Sierra games like in Leisure Suit Larry 6 you need to progress by making sure the mechanic in your hotel room finishes fixing the sink to retrieve an item he dropped by mistake to progress. Just...wat?