Hardcore gamer = someone who plays only cinematic grizzed white dude games and/or military fetishizing FPS
Casual gamer = anyone that is not a 15-25 yo male, and/or plays anything outside of the previously mentioned games, especially if those games are colorful.
So basically the gaming community is full of gatekeeping, misogyny, toxic masculinity and general chuddery. They make sure they're the loudest voice heard when anything about games is talked about, and won't be happy until all games a homogenous stream of bland, hyper-realistic but with a grey filter slog of mindless action with no heart or soul. And don't you dare force them to read any dialogue or story.
When I think of "old games" I think of the opposite, of games that had limited lives and no save systems. Not defending that, but considerations of differing player ability are certainly a newer development rather than the old way of things.
Games back then didn't have to consider differing player abilities (which honestly isn't that true either since multiple difficulties were already a thing) because cheat codes existed. Story mode was basically the easiest difficulty on top of a god mode and infinite ammo cheat code.
Sure but those cheat codes weren't always easy to access before widespread internet use. You used to be able to buy books of cheat codes in fact.
That's what libraries were for. That's how I looked up cheat codes before I used GameFAQs. Most people knew about the existence of cheat codes and things like game genie even if they didn't know the specific cheat code.
I sometimes play old games and I do not consider save states to be even remotely cheating. A challenge is one thing, but forcing you to repeat an entire 8 minute level full of tricky jumps only to make it at the boss at the end with 2 health and losing...that's just not fun. And it was bullshit even back in the day.