Anecdotal: I tried to start my son off with SNES games via emulation on PC when he was 6. He was asking to play games and I figured I would start him off with the classics, then work him through the PS1 and PS2 era stuff so he had some context for the newer games.
The first day I tried to show him Super Mario World he said "This game looks old. I want a new game that looks good." I wound up buying a few of the Lego games on sale and it was transformative for him. He wound up putting hundreds of hours into Lego Marvel Super Heroes and the Batman games, which were also great for couch co-op. Then he got Minecraft (again, hundreds of hours building shit), and eventually he got into Cuphead, Super Meat Boy, and Fortnite.
More recently he's gotten curious about some older games and on his own, he downloaded some emulators for PS2 and Gamecube. But the only 16-Bit era stuff he's sought out are the old Sonic games.