Oddly, I grew up (in the 80s!) feeling the way you describe about the 2600, that it was just too crude to revisit.. but when i finally bought one some years back, paired with an authentic CRT, I was really enchanted by the elemental simplicity of the games, the instant snap response with no input or display lag, sharpened further by the pixel-perfect (and intuitively predictable) collision detection being done within the video chip. My console sweet spot previously had been the NES and some early 16-bit machines, but for the raw fundamentals of a lot of shooter-type games, the 2600 felt so much better - and to a lesser degree its successor in the 8-bit home computers, but with their expanded capabilities those machines gave developers more rope to hang themselves. Yar's Revenge, Demon Attack, Berzerk - there's real magic there, just you versus the circuitry.