I think this is a common enough sentiment. Your first games leave more of an impact and that feeling is often not really related to how good the game is. Just like comfort food, they're comfort games.

I never player Railroad Tycoon, my first in that genre was Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but I feel pretty much the same way about it, and I'm pretty lucky that OpenTTD exists.

Similarly there's a game called Star Reach (also known as Space Federation) that was the first strategy game I played. In retrospect, it was pretty bad, but sometimes I want to play a space game and not even much superior games like Masters of Orion or more modern games like Sins of a Solar Empire will satisfy the particular craving like Star Reach.