[kemayo]

There's a lot of user interface issues in playing an older game. Not so much the graphics -- people like "pixel" styling in modern games, though generally at much higher resolutions and with better color palettes than in old games -- but rather in how you interact with the games.

There's a lot of experimentation in old games about how to approach certain concepts, where eventually something won out and became the way we do it. So it's very strange to go back to e.g. an old first-person game and realize that WASD controls aren't used.

I recently saw this YouTube video ("How System Shock's Reboot Wrestles With Adapting Its Legacy" by Errant Signal) that talks a bit about this take on the issue, which might interest you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDQ24iAkh90

[wavemode]

That's sort of tangential though. A game can have user interface problems and still be fun. A game can be outdated and still be fun.

I would argue the age of a game is entirely orthogonal to whether it is possible to still enjoy playing it.

Will EVERYONE enjoy playing it? Probably not. But some people do. And that's enough to give projects like ScummVM a valuable purpose.