I am not even sure that they are waxing nostalgic. I think some of these folks pretend to have played a much wider range of games "back on the day" than they really did.
I question how old most of these guys were when most of this stuff was going on in the early and mid 80's...
This is definitely a thing on YouTube and on Podcasts. You get these shows run by a member of this new generation of kids who are into old games, and they just try too hard to establish credibility. There's a podcast called "Back in My Play" that I listened to the first few episodes of. All other issues aside, I quit listening when they talked about the SNES, and the host went on about how he TOTALLY remembers the SNES launch because he was 5 years old and his mom took him to the mall where there was a Nintendo promotional event going on and after that he was all about the SNES and got LttP as soon as it came out and blah blah blah. Like he was really trying way too hard to over-sell the fact that he was alive when the SNES came out, and it just sounded pathetic.
These younger guys should embrace the fact that they didn't grow up with this shit. Use it. Say that some game that we all love is actually shit because we all just have our nostalgia goggles on, or something.
Actually, my current favorite podcast is Retro Game Squad. The host is around my age (late 30's) so he was around for all of the games that he talks about, but his two co-hosts are younger guys who are playing for the first time a lot of the games that they feature. But they don't try to hide that fact. Instead what you get is the perspective of a guy who has nostalgic feelings about some of these games, and can talk about what it was like when they came out, put them into historical context, etc. Then you have a couple of guys who are just talking about the game objectively, since this is their first time playing it.
Edit: And I will freely admit when I haven't played a game that I clearly should have back in the day.