>>35614056Speaking for myself as someone adding new mechanics and content to pokecrystal:
For one thing, it takes time to explore the full possibilities of hardware. Crystal had better graphics than Gold/Silver (like Ice Path, with unique tiles and a custom palette), and if Game Freak had kept developing for the GBC they'd have gotten even better. But of course instead they moved on the the GBA (and even then, their graphics improved from RS to E to FRLG). To me GBC hacks still feel like an "old game", clearly different from the GBA, even when pushing the limits of what the platform can do.
For another, while some of the later-gen changes are just newness for the sake of newness, others are genuine mechanical improvements, "bugfixes" in response to feedback on prior gens. Once you've gotten to use Running Shoes or auto-Repel they're hard to give up, even in a gen that hadn't thought to include them yet. Same goes for a lot of battle mechanics that got rebalanced: adding Fairy to counter Dragon, PSS so that e.g. not every Water type has to be a Special attacker, etc.
Anyway, there's a whole genre of video game demakes (pic related). I guess to some people they'll feel like "the same game but with worse graphics" instead of "a good game as it could have been made years ago", but then we're just arguing over taste.
(Besides, even the people working with Gen 3 often try to imitate Gen 4+, presumably because hacking for the DS is too hard.)
