Sure. Closing in on my 50s too. I generally don't have patience for most games of that era either. I think quite a few of those games still stand up but when I play them now it's more of a historical engineering thing where I am understanding and figuring out how they pulled off certain effects, etc.

    I recently grabbed a NES emulator and a knock-off USB NES 
    gamepad and played through a bunch of old games from my 
    childhood. It hits real different now that I have a life 
    and time is precious.

Getting back to the point of the linked article, there were some special things about how these games looked and played on real hardware on real CRTs. One was the look. Two was a true zero-latency experience. While we may have "nostalgia" about the CRT look, there are also objective differences there.

    And all the while, I'm watching the clock, thinking about how 
    otherwise productive I could be being right now... 

I feel this too. But I also feel this way about reading books at this point in my life, I'm ashamed to say. I hardly read any more. But I don't blame the games, or the books. It's clearly me that has changed.