Isn't it a weird effect? I assume it has a name but I don't know what it is. But what I do know is: I remember some older games looking better than anything, because when I was playing, they did. When I revisit them years later, they're not how I remember.
They did look better on CRTs. Modern displays will smooth things in a way the original developers didn't intend. It's less pronounced in the PS1/N64 era, but SNES/NES has some games that look noticeably worse without applying a filter.
Even stuff that's more modern gets me, like Skyrim. When I first booted that up, I couldn't imagine graphics getting much better. Now, I go back and see flat textures with sporadic grass nodes...
I find it interesting that people seem to remember graphics being so much better. I remember back then thinking "WTF? Why are the walls wobbling around so much?" Or why characters bodies were broken up into chunky blocks instead of a single shape?
Final Fantasy VII drove me nuts with the blocky characters while you were exploring, but the much more detailed characters during combat.
I will concede, though, I don't remember the N64 looking so blurry back then. Playing it now, it's like goddamn! There's excessive antialiasing and motion blur.
I remember walking into Toys R Us and seeing the Dreamcast for the first time, running NFL 2K. YOU COULD SEE THEIR BREATH IN THE COLD. It was absolutely mesmerizing. I had butterflies.
Did anyone actually think that? I was around playing games at the time. Graphics can be mind blowing and you can still dream of how they could be better.
It's a weird thing, in my experience. Like, I remember a lot of old games having some just absolutely stunning CGI, especially cutscenes. But looking back, compared to what's standard these days, they look like total shit. How could I have ever thought Spirits Within looked real compared to even the current games? And the movie was pre-rendered over many many hours, while the games are doing it all real-time.
I remember sitting on the spirits within website looking at the renders of the characters and talking with my friend about how we couldn't tell it was cgi.