PC Gamers as a whole have enjoyed some of the best offline and online games ever in the past twenty or so years including Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends. However, some of the best games of the past have been on consoles like the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Genesis. Gaming juggernauts such as Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, and Sonic the Hedgehog immediately come to mind.
Recent games and franchises have achieved huge amounts of success but have not been able to recreate the old school magic of the aforementioned games. Playing each new version of Mario or Zelda has been the subject playground chatter for decades. In fact, Super Mario probably has the most popular and well reviewed games ever long after debuting in the arcade classic known as Donkey Kong. BTW, he even plays the villain in Donkey Kong Junior. I remember spending a ton of quarters playing that game in a long gone store from childhood.
That said, take the time to play any game with Mario with in that you can. You will find a wide variety of graphics, titles, and even characters. Some even can be played via mobile and on the PC now so there is no reason not to experience gaming goodness that used to be solely on consoles!
Super Mario 64 is a pretty good game for its time and the speedrunning community is very large and active.
Playing games for the nostalgia is fun. Sometimes you end up comparing them to current games of today
Some old games are used as an example to make new games and get inspiration from.
They’re certainly fun games even today, especially when these games are seeing re-releases whether they’re remade with more modern graphics (e.g. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening [Switch remake]), released as bundles/collections (e.g. Super Mario 3D All-Stars), or released as part of an online subscription (e.g. classic games offered through Nintendo Switch Online).