I'm guessing you were between the age of 10-20 at that time? Whatever tech minutiae you learned as a tween/teenager will be with you the rest of your life. I still can code in real-mode x86 assembly even though I haven't done so in years.
That said, the other reason you could still jump right in, is that these systems were accessible. Small enough to be understandable by a child's brain, a couple of text files you edited by hand, tinkering among a small number of parameters each of which you could test within a few minutes at most, so that worst case you spent a day dinking around with your setup. And without the distractions of the internet or thousands of free ad-supported dopamine pumps to displace your main purpose of getting this game to work.
Contrast this with today: you buy a game on Steam for $30, it doesn't work. What do you do? You have to search the internet or go to the forums, and try any number of random things that are in no way contained or enumerable and the knowledge isn't transferable. Our systems are 100x bigger than any single person can conceivably know.
I totally agree! I was 15 years old at that time. Just edit and reboot until the game run the way I like it. No internet, no distraction. As much a phone call (line phone) to a friend to discuss possible configurations.
Golden days!
That said, the other reason you could still jump right in, is that these systems were accessible. Small enough to be understandable by a child's brain, a couple of text files you edited by hand, tinkering among a small number of parameters each of which you could test within a few minutes at most, so that worst case you spent a day dinking around with your setup. And without the distractions of the internet or thousands of free ad-supported dopamine pumps to displace your main purpose of getting this game to work.
Contrast this with today: you buy a game on Steam for $30, it doesn't work. What do you do? You have to search the internet or go to the forums, and try any number of random things that are in no way contained or enumerable and the knowledge isn't transferable. Our systems are 100x bigger than any single person can conceivably know.