I’d also recommend installing whatever quality of life mods/romhacks/emulator settings you can find. Gaming has changed a lot over the years and our brains expect different things than they used to.
I used to love Gen3 Pokemon growing up, but playing it now feels unbearably slow, but it’s a lot nicer with a fast forward setting. Same with adding text speed up cheats, faster running cheats, etc.
That, and I’d recommend starting with remakes of popular retro games to get hooked. Usually they have some revamping of control schemes or graphics that match your expectations a bit better. Then once you get the momentum going, expand from there.