I'm a bit younger than you, but I was visiting my mom a few weeks back, and found my old NES in some boxes she had saved for me (along with a few of the better games). Thanks to the composite connector, I managed to plug it into a modern HDTV and it worked just fine. My old copy of Zelda somehow even had a working save battery.

My mom made an offhand comment like "someone isn't sleeping much tonight."

The new games are more complex and realistic, but there is still plenty of joy in those old systems and games, especially for those of us who grew up with them.