As someone in my 20s who grew up on Windows XP era games, then lots of PS3 games, I'm very attuned to latency. My computer was lower mid-teir at best, and the performance standards for console games were nowhere near what they are today, so the first time I played a game on a high performance machine at 100+FPS/Hz refresh rate, it was like seeing color for the first time.

No. The thing is AAA games are now being released in an unoptimized state way too often. Even if you still get good FPS microstuttering and short lag spikes still occur frequently.

Of course this can make you wonder if this is a you problem and you just got too sensitive.

Nope, this is an industry problem. Why would you optimize a game? No, legitimately asking. It doesn’t affect sales numbers, it often doesn’t significantly tank your steam review score (that most publishers don’t care about), there are practically no downsides to not optimize your game.
But if you do value optimization, it lowers dev velocity, requires more training/awareness for devs and artists, and you won’t be able to ship as fast anymore. And on top of that you get… nothing. A few more sales maybe?

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Older games are a laggy mess when there is too much on the screen. Not to mention sprites disappearing. The issue I think is, we have gotten better and better over the decades until recently. We are just seeing a backward slide in performance (for many reasons, not just poor optimization).

The other way around. I grew up playing games on PCs that were quite underpowered for a long time. I played Doom like this. Hell, I had to reduce screen size even in Wolfenstein 3D. I loved fog in GTA San Andreas because it reduced draw distance and when it was raining in Las Venturas, I had to look at my feet like I was speedrunning Goldeneye. I played through Oblivion in a 640 x 480 window and thought it looked amazing. I still have to fight not to turn off AA completely first time running a game on my RTX 3080 because it was the first thing to go for so long.

All of this trained my brain so now I have bulit-in antialiasing and frame generation. I don't give a shit. Give me good art direction and gameplay loop and I can just generate smooth graphics in my head.

I feel the opposite when I hear people complain about load times... "We want you to buy our SSD so your game will boot in 11 seconds instead of 19 seconds!"

Son, let me tell you about loading games from casette tape.

You'd start it loading, get up and go have dinner with the family. After 30 minutes, maybe it would be done. Maybe.

Maybe it hit an error 5 minutes after you walked away and now you need to re-wind and try again.

If you folks want to have a really hard time find a way to play the NES version of Mike Tyson’s Punch Out on original hardware with a CRT monitor and then play it on any emulator on a modern monitor. You will feel like you’ve aged 80 years.

I grew up on atari/nes/snes and so of course almost all of those games (pretty sure all) are written in assembly and are rock solid smooth and responsive for the most part.

HA!

Older games were laggy as all fuck and had very significant input delay.

But ignoring the rose tinted glasses: I DO think there is some element of truth to this: My formative years of online gaming were 56k and an ATI Rage. I probably logged at least a thousand hours of UT at 20-ish FPS and my ping was regularly in the hundreds. I can definitely appreciate lower latency games, but I mostly just need VRR (for screen tearing and the like) and I am set. Whereas one of the younglings from work pretty much can't play anything below 60 FPS... and we have tested this.

There are only a few reasons I can surmise that this would be the case:

CRTs don't add any input lag

There's no extra latency from being connected to the internet

There's no latency from bluetooth/wireless on the controller

Because most older games are extremely badly optimised by today's standards. The original Metroid slows to an absolute crawl when there's more than about 4 sprites on the screen; the dragon boss in Mega Man (2, I think) was such a laggy, slippery mess that I gave up trying to beat the game; Ocarina of Time runs at 20FPS (worse if you're in a PAL territory like I am), and that's one of the better playing N64 games.

I think you're either noticing one of these extra sources of delay, or you're blinded by nostalgia.

Been wondering this, or something like this.

I used to be good at Mario 1, but I cannot play it on emulators. It feels like there's a delay. It feels a little like Mario is on ice, much like the ice levels of Mario 2. Mario is running, and I want to jump or stop, but there's a noticeable delay and it makes me feel like my old ass has lost my touch. But playing any modern game, my reflexes are good enough. In a Nintendo to Nintendo comparison, I play Animal Crossing on the Switch, and sure enough, if I'm running and pull back on the stick, my villager skids at exactly the time I want them to. But on that same Switch with the same controller, I can't control Mario in Mario 1 worth a damn. I do just fine in Super Mario Wonder, though.

(Side note, more to do with Animal Crossing than older games, but I've noticed a wired controller, plugged into the Switch dock via USB, with the Switch on the dock, gets more latency than the Switch in handheld mode, which I'm pretty sure uses Bluetooth to connect to its controllers, even if they're physically connected — not 100% sure on that. But for one example, fishing — even the five-star rarity fish — is quite easy in handheld. But, with the wired connection, I mash A as soon as the fish bites, and it still slips my hook. Maybe the latency isn't from the controller to the dock to the Switch, maybe it's from the Switch to the dock to the TV (and speakers since I close my eyes and listen for the sound, which most animal crossers agree is the best way to fish).)

You obviously did not play on pc when if you didn't have the newest graphics card everything was laggy but still playable.

It's so weird to me that no one uses the term "slowdown" any more. Lag and latency meant networking delays back in the days you're talking about. Not a complaint, just an observation that I've been wondering about the last few years.

But yeah, as others said, slowdown/lag was pretty common. I immediately think of the ninjas jumping out of the water in TMNT3, the beginning of Top Man's stage in Mega Man 3, and the last boss of The Guardian Legend, but there were many more. Early 3d is shocking too, with more sub-30-fps games than you remember. Some called themselves at 20, even. [Edit: Now that I think about it, even some NES games capped at 20. Strange times.]

Agreed, also CRTs ruined the future for me as well.

On the one hand, we're more accustomed to better hardware latency. On the other hand... we played first-person shooters on 56K modems. The lag was legendary

I distinctly remember mario bros on the nes. There was like a 1/3second latency between pressing the button and mario jumping. You had to time your jumps (especially when running) further back than you'd expect to compensate. You just kinda got used to it after a while.

An effect you may be noticing is motion smoothing, or the lack of it.

If you play Pong on an old console, it likely moves the paddle at full speed the moment it gets input to move. Acceleration is instant. This is very precise, but it also feels unnatural.

Modern versions will usually have some acceleration time that smooths out movement. It can be a very small effect, but it feels more natural and most people prefer it. It's also less precise. People generally learn to compensate for it over time.

Classics still had lag. DK Country 3’s final boss was so laggy it’d affect the boss music.

Not quite super classic you mentioned but a chunk of the speed run tech around Super Mario 64 is how to optimize the camera to avoid lagging on certain effects (the sunshine to the wing cap, the top tower in whomps fortress, the sub in dire dire docks).

Also OOT only ran at 20 fps