Great question. I don't know if my tastes have changed since I still love the same types of games (RPG, platformer, action) I loved as a kid, but pretty much all the genres I like have evolved and my preferences or what I accept have evolved with them. For example, putting minimaps with quest locations and having fast travel in RPGs is something I can't really go without these days, but none of the older games had that.

I will say that I am much more into 'western' RPGs than in the past where I pretty much played JRPGs strictly (though to be fair those were like 90% of RPGs back then). Dragon Age, Mass Effect, even the Borderlands 'action with RPG elements' style has produced far better content (to me) this past generation compared to what has come out of Japanese developers.

It's interesting to go back to old Nintendo games and see how much we tolerated. Most of those games were punishingly hard and did not hold any hands at all. If I hadn't played those as a kid I doubt I would get any enjoyment out of them at all these days. Makes me scared for how my kids will react to these legacy games once they are old enough to start playing. Maybe some of the throwbacks like Shovel Knight, which retain the simplistic design and good challenge but eliminating the cheap difficulty shortcuts, will help bridge the gap for the coming generation.