Pretty much all those reasons is why we all fell in love with games. Its why when a game comes out now that gets close to certain features of old, then we get a bit giddy and enjoy the nostalgia it reminds us of. Personally, I get we have to be careful of having too much wastage in this planet but I don't see why we couldn't still have Game Instructions and Game Guides for many AAA games. They were amazing to read, didn't blow away the experience, and in fact it made you feel like you'd sit and take it all in more so. I think its why a place Limited Run Games does so well, just a shame they are so expensive with all the additional accessories for the same game.
I think the only rose tinted glasses one could easily be the Complete Games one. I agree with all above that I miss Complete Games and patches on Day One and barely full games aren't delivered are a pain. Two things with this one really. First is that we only get disappointed because we are promised a fully fledged game that is around 40 hours at least for most AAA games. A promise usually that is hard to deliver at the best of times. Secondly, we can easily forget that whilst we used to get complete games, it never tricked us that it was more than it was. Many games were just 5-8 levels of pure fun but could be potentially finished very quickly. The difference was it was on the box, so it never rarely missed our expectations by building it up to be something it wasn't.