What’s also very different is the way disk space is perceived by game developers now vs then. Back in the day games were distributed on floppy disks, so if a game didn’t fit on a single one, it meant production costs would be a lot higher. Also shipping a game on many disks is cumbersome for the player, so there was a strong focus on keeping game size to a minimum.
With the introduction of the CD-ROM and later DVD and Blu-ray, keeping games small in size became less and less important, to the point where we are now.
