>I think it has to do with the instant-ON aspect of the games. <click> -> start, immersed. As opposed to many screens, "oh that needs an update"...
I found exactly the same thing. I really got into the Sega Mega Drive over the past year and a bit, despite having a PS4 and modern PC. It's not because the games from 30 years ago are necessarily better, but when you only play games for 2-3 hours every few weeks, a 50GB install followed by a 20GB patch really kills the experience.
Wanted to play Rocket league with my friends one night. Had to reinstall and download 16 GB! For some radio cars driving around in an arena, what the H? This should be 500 MB tops, and that would be generous. But it was nothing to my gamer friends, they couldn't understand why I'm so upset. Look, I've got kids and I have no time to wait for a 16 GB download when all I have is 2 hours to play. Another time I wanted to play some Minesweeper and found out it's not included in Windows anymore, you have to create an _account_ with Microsoft to download it, and lo and behold, it's over 100 MB. Like really? This should not be much more than 100 KB, 1 MB to be generous.
When it comes down to it, developers are disrespecting users, whether it's disregard for the compute (Web slowness), bandwith or storage. I can understand if textures are higher res these days, but in many cases I suspect it has more to do with skins, IAP and general developer laziness.
Buying and downloading Valheim was a breath of fresh air though, something like 1 GB and a beautiful game.
>If you're purchasing a game right before playing it, a 50GB install and a 20GB patch is probably easier than getting your hands on a mega drive game.
To be fair, one half of my house is a literal online retro games store, so perhaps my experience circa 2020 is not the norm.
But also to be fair, back in the day you could simply walk down to the nearby shops, buy the cartridge and play it as soon as you got home.
I'm not necessarily making an argument as to why everyone should own a Mega Drive in 2021 (although if you enjoy collecting physical media, there are some fantastic hidden gems on that machine - my personal favourites are Rocket Knight Adventures, Alisia Dragoon and Shadow Dancer!), but modern console gaming has become a lot less streamlined than it used to be.
With the PS5 and Xbox Series X emphasising their ultra-fast SSDs, I can only see this becoming worse.
When I launch a "modern" game, the auto-updater "jumps right in" and plays with my system. Sometimes it loses, like in the reported cases of Steam wiping whole disks. Then, sooner or later, if everything goes well, I might have an opportunity to play the intended game instead of "Storage Space Manager 2021 SSD Edition", "Backup Busters", or more hardcore multiplayer titles like "Server Overload".
I found exactly the same thing. I really got into the Sega Mega Drive over the past year and a bit, despite having a PS4 and modern PC. It's not because the games from 30 years ago are necessarily better, but when you only play games for 2-3 hours every few weeks, a 50GB install followed by a 20GB patch really kills the experience.