http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWHHlnbZOYQ
I post this video a lot... It's all truth though.
Lots of games were bad back then, there are some awesome classics. My earliest gaming memory is playing lots of Pitfall, some racing game and Space Invaders until I was 5 when father got us a Mega Drive(Genesis for you weird people.), from then onwards it was n64, a Computer, the two playstations and then everything got substituted for the computer.
Surely games have changed a lot in their presentation but everything got better mostly, games have endings now that can suck, games have intricate(or very silly) stories I like that, graphics have been on a steady evolution for a long while and the only black mark is the early 3d which was ugly as hell even back then. The bad side is almost every game got easier, games were vicious in difficulty, I think in part to disguise their very very short sizes but still most games nowadays are extremely easy on normal mode.
What hasn't changed? commercial shitty games, licensed games and stuff always existed even though we all deny it. (Genesis Jurassic Park and Atari's ET being the paragons.)
For the record, 24 here.