>I feel a lot of late NES / SNES and early 3D games seemed to accomplish this well although it seems to be more often with lesser known titles.
Mostly agree but I don't feel its popularity makes a difference for me. That may be because I keep away from 'communities' that discuss specific games; hell I hardly come on here.
My theory to why the late snes/N64/PS1 era seem to be most memorable and nostalgia inducing is due to the game's abstractness. Early games (atari, early nes) were too primitive, such that you had to have unrealistically high suspension of disbelief to be drawn in and end up with a lasting impression. On the other end games today require no true suspension of disbelief; every detail is painstakingly present; every foliage, every shimmer, every crack are all rendered in high-def. Graphically speaking games stopped requiring mental involvement to comprehend and turn to life meaning they are now little more than a well-defined and easily digestible passive delivery mechanism for short but frequent dopamine spikes.
The ps1 era hit the mark perfectly. You could have large 3-dimentional worlds but it was never fully defined for you. Textures were low res, objects were simple representations of what they should be and distant lands were obscured by shitty draw distance so your mind had to be engaged to make sense of it but not too much that it becomes a struggle.