Even now that I'm in my thirties I still love these games, and enjoy them just as much.
I do think gamers getting a bit lazy is part of it, games have overall gotten easier and like to spoon feed you more often what you should be doing (Exceptions certainly exist), but at the same time there are some old school games that are really unintuitive.
An example, Final Fantasy 1 on the NES. If you don't have a guide or an instruction manual, there is something really easy to not realize, and I noticed when I was showing my nephew how to play the game.
The game doesn't tell you what your characters can use or equip. At all.
If you have never played an RPG before, how do you even guess that the white mage can use a hammer? Or guess at what any class can equip? Why can't a thief use a sword? The lack of information given to the player is kind of surreal looking back on it.
SNES games like Final Fantasy VI had indicators of who could equip things before buying them, which did a lot of good in that area.
SO it's a mix of games moving on from some of it's older less then user friendly aspects, and a bit of getting lazy. :p