

Hot take - everyone is hitting on nostalgia, but personally I think there’s more to it than just that.
Low-res games invite the player to use their imagination, something that gets lost in the pursuit of hyper-realism.
Unlike most modern AAA games, games like Stardew Valley, Minecraft, or BOTW/TOTK invite the player to use their creativity - not just in problem solving, but also in how they view the world.
This was just an inherent feature of older games, due to the limitations of technology, but now it’s a luxury in a world that’s increasingly trying to script or control how you think and interact at every turn.
I used it once to charge my Pixel Buds and went “huh, that was neat, but inconvenient because now I have to keep my phone in one spot, can’t use it, and probably could just plug the buds into something nearby” then never used it again.