You also need to remember that back in the days of quicker dev times and lower budgets, a lot of games released with lots of bugs that never got QA'd because of a lack of money and employees. You're viewing the pre-HD era with some pretty rose tinted glasses.
you ain't about to argue that pre-HD era games were more glitchy than today's rushed disasters that they fix eventually through patches
pre-HD (well, pre-day 1 patch, really) games were actually finished