I don’t need to be careless or have any real danger of dropping my phone in water to worry about water protection; humidity, sweat, rain, accidental splashes from a sink, spilled drinks, children, etc. are all very real often unpredictable water risks I might have very little opportunity to realistically avoid. I’ve seen those water detection stickers indicate water on devices that I know for a fact have been babied and never dunked for even a moment. Often humidity and a sweaty pocket were the only likely culprit.

Also, the games were designed to run on that display hardware. They exploited the limitations and artifacts to get a better over all image. When you play on something without those artifacts, those tricks don’t work. Hell, you can’t even play some games like Duck Hunt on modern hardware without significant modifications.

And we definitely played that close to our faces sometimes because not everyone had a big TV and no one had wireless controllers so you’d be sitting on the floor between the TV and the coffee table, which was in front of the couch. If you were lucky, you had the game system and an old hand-me-down TV in your bedroom so the TV was likely as close as your toes, or closer.