Studies have shown that older games with simpler graphics had a much more stimulating effect on a gamer's brain - actively "training" creative skills and imagination, with positive impact on memory building and abstraction skills. If that sounded to scientific, have a look at the 4 images. The older ones among you will recognize some classic games. In the first one your brain would turn that into a "Rambo" style scenario, dropped in the jungle fighting against hordes of enemies. Have a closer look at the main character - that's 3 colors and a pile of pixels. Your mind does the rest. In the second image your brain converts the image into an epic space battle against aliens, with you sitting in a spaceship, fighting wave after wave. Again, have a closer look at the aliens. One (!) color, 2 animation phases. Now look at your "spaceship". In the third image you are teleported by your creative mind into a fantastic world with heroes, battles, an open world, portals and so on. A magic world, that was created aong the way, by your mind. The fourth picture turns you into Bruce Lee. The common thing in all of those examples is your brain "filling in the blanks" - and that's EXACTLY the part that's positively stimulating it. Now think of hyper-realistic modern games with graphics so good that your brain doesn't need to do any "imagining" anymore... instead it turns into pure consumption mode. Brain waves look entirely different then. No creative areas will fire up. The reason why many retro gamers have fond memories of old games is not just nostalgia. It is connected to what those games have done to our brains and imaginative minds at the time. They didn't oversaturate us - they merely hinted at the right direction and our brains did the rest. Old games were similar to books - the world was created by the reader/player. And those worlds looked different for each and everyone of us.