Early digicams weren't powerful enough to pull off a lot of the fancy behind-the-scenes instant post-processinf modern cameras do before you even get to see the picture. The result was they often resembled film photography in many ways, especially the digital noise that in the right circumstances didn't look too dissimilar from film grain.
This is why I personally have a small collection of early digicams I like shooting on from time to time, and why they've recently become a whole TikTok trend.
I think if we allowed modern cameras to have an option that performs little to no post-processing on captured photos (without having to resort to RAW capture), we could get pictures that a lot more closely resemble this stuff.
How early would they need to be? I still have an original Canon 5D (2005) and in a way I prefer the output of it over even my Leica Q. I wonder if the reason is related to what you are saying.
2005 is about as late as you can go before the processors in cameras started being powerful enough to do a lot of stuff to the images. Most of my collection is very early 2000s or even late 90s. The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F717 is a great cam from 2002 that was Sony's flagship at the time. Despite having cool features that modern cams don't (nightshot which also allows for easy IR photography, a swiveling lens assembly), the pictures have that "filmic" look thanks to the CCD sensor and little to no denoising done in-camera. It was also high resolution enough for the time (5MP) that the pictures still look reasonably detailed and sharp. Super early digicams often had like 1MP sensors that produce quite fuzzy images (though I feel that has its own appeal)
This is why I personally have a small collection of early digicams I like shooting on from time to time, and why they've recently become a whole TikTok trend.
I think if we allowed modern cameras to have an option that performs little to no post-processing on captured photos (without having to resort to RAW capture), we could get pictures that a lot more closely resemble this stuff.